“What is one man,” Idris’ voice croons, “against the glorious silence of a thousand worlds?”
He drives Grier’s arms deeper into the ward.
Magic screams.
Cracks spider through the lattice, flickers of null-black eating at the bright braids of elemental power.
The flames dim.
Water sigils sputter.
The earth runes carved into the stone beneath our feet fracture with a sound like distant thunder.
Behind the ward, deeper still, I feel The Ember Vein twitch.
“I will milk it dry,” Idris/Grier says, voice shaking with mad delight. “Drain your precious ore to the last cinder. And when the forges go cold, when the Dreamwrights have no more marrow to spin, Nightfall will cease to fill the worlds with dreams and hope.”
He leans forward—Grier’s body jerking, tendons standing out in his neck.
“There will be silence, Thorne,” he whispers. “Glorious, perfect silence. No more wishing. No more striving. No more messy, inconvenient hope. Just the blessed stillness of unmade possibility.”
A vision flashes unbidden behind my eyes—worlds dimming one by one like candles snuffed in a storm.
Children who never dream of more.
Lovers who never dare.
Inventors whose hands never itch to build.
An entire multiverse slumping into gray, empty existence.
Dead, with its eyes still open.
“You will unmake all worlds if you do this,” I snarl, stepping closer, heat pouring off me in waves. “You will not just end dreams, you will end the will to live. The spark. The light. Everything Nightfall was forged to protect.”
Grier’s body convulses.
For a heartbeat, I see him through the madness—his true gaze breaking the surface, red-gold irises fighting the black.
“L–Lord…” he rasps, his own voice bleeding through. “Help… me…”
Idris smothers him ruthlessly, shadows spilling across his face like ink.
“Hurting my kinsman,” I say quietly, and the calm in my voice frightens even me, “was one of the worst mistakes you could have made.”
I spread my wings to their full span, bone and fire and fury filling the chamber.
The ward surges as if sensing my intent, the lattice flaring in answer to my rage. My sigils ignite, bright as miniature suns, rallying the failing strands of water and air and earth.
“You think you can break me by using my people?” I ask, stepping right up to the edge of the ward, close enough that the heat should be unbearable. “You think their pain will paralyze me?”
Grier’s possessed hands convulse again, nails cracking as he claws at the magic.
“I think,” Idris’ bastardized voice hisses, contorting Grier’s face, “that you will not dare burn what you are sworn to protect.”
Around us, the tunnel shakes. Dust rains from the ceiling. Far above, I can feel the battle raging still—Alaric’s dragon-roar, Kael’s tidal fury, Dagan’s earth-deep strain.
Delia’s fear.
