To matter to someone. To not be forgotten.
She forced herself forward, though their yearning pressed against her awareness. One step, then another, past the reaching presences that couldn't quite touch her. Past faces twisted with need and grief and hope that had nowhere to go.
Don't look directly at them. She could fall apart later.
This was what he ruled. Not some abstract concept of death or darkness, but this. Thousands reliving their abandonment eternally, calling out for help that would never come.
"How do you bear it?" The question escaped before she could stop it.
His jaw worked for a moment. Just that one small tell that said more than words could.
"Someone has to."
The answer explained everything and nothing, carrying the weight of ages.
They walked in silence after that, navigating the corrupted landscape. The path toward the failure zone led through terrain that had surrendered to the magical instability. A bridge stood half-finished, its stones floating in mid-air as though construction had stopped. A garden of memorial flowers bloomed and withered in rapid cycles, petals falling upward instead of down.
Reality coming apart at the seams.
As they moved closer to the yellow light, the dead grew more distinct. A woman in a tattered dress, mouth open in a silent scream. A child calling for parents who would never come. An old man wandering in circles, searching for something he'd lost long ago, his form flickering like a failing candle.
She tried not to look at their faces, staying fixed on the path ahead, on the equipment humming against her back as the ward-stones got closer to the damaged magic. But their pull was inescapable, the weight of their yearning to be seen, to be remembered.
Her throat tightened. She swallowed hard.
Fix it and get out.
"The tools are responding to the magical instability," Dante said, his voice pulling her back from the edge of being overwhelmed and grounding her. "They're designed to seek damaged ward-work. Unfortunately, that makes them eager to reach areas that could kill you."
"Reassuring," she managed, adjusting the pack's straps. The familiar sarcasm helped center her, gave her something to hold onto besides the crushing awareness of suffering all around them.
They crested a ridge and got their first clear view of the failed ward-lock.
Oh no.
The structure rose from a crater carved into the landscape with unnatural perfection. The ward-lock was a twisted spire of crystalline material that pulsed with that nauseating light, but it was clearly broken. Sections of the crystal were cracked, others were missing entirely, and the remaining pieces floated in positions that defied gravity, held up by failing magic.
Around the pit's edge, hundreds of the dead had gathered in a thick crowd. Maybe thousands. All drawn toward the damaged structure as though it represented escape or salvation or change from their eternal torment.
Her stomach turned. Not from the damage, though that was bad enough, but from the intention behind it.
"Reaper," she said slowly, studying the pattern of destruction. "Look at how it's broken."
He moved closer, and she felt his presence at her shoulder. His expression darkened. He saw it too.
The crater around the ward-lock was perfectly circular, its edges cut as if by a blade. The floating crystal fragments were arranged in precise patterns, creating gaps that would maximize the magical instability while preventing the structure from collapsing entirely. Someone had wanted it to fail slowly, dramatically, causing maximum disruption to the surrounding area.
This was definitely sabotage.
"The damage is too clean," she continued, forcing herself to analyze the technical problem instead of what it meant. "Too specific. This isn't random decay or natural failure."
"No," he agreed, his voice grim. Cold in a way that made her glad she wasn't his enemy. "It's not."
“Strategic sabotage," she said, the words tasting bitter. "Someone who understands ward-magic better than they should."
His shadows writhed at his shoulders, agitated, as if he were furious and trying to control them. "The question is whether we can repair it, or if attempting to do so will trigger whatever they've planned next."
She studied the damaged structure, letting her newly trained senses explore the chaotic magical patterns radiating from it. The energy felt corrupted in ways beyond mere breakage. Unstable, aggressive, like something fighting against its own nature. And beneath it all, the pull of the watching dead made the magic even more volatile.
