Behind us, the Barrow looms, wards blazing in visible lines along its walls—roots and stone interwoven into a living bulwark. It’s holding for now, but cracks shimmer at the edges, vein-fine and spreading.
I feel Alina through our bond.
Not clearly—there’s too much interference—but enough to know she’s alive.
Awake. Worried. A steady, stubborn presence in the back of my mind.
Stay inside the inner ring, I told her.
She agreed.
But the bond hums sharper now.
Focused.
Watching.
The next volley from Idris is different.
He lifts both arms this time, corrupted ore whirling overhead, and chants words that make the air taste like burned copper.
Black fire lances out—not toward us, but through us.
It spears the sky, then forks down, striking all four of us at once.
Alaric cries out, staggered to one knee, his Dragon flickering in and out over his skin like a ghost overlay—skeleton, scales, bone, then nothing.
Kael doubles over, choking, water spilling from his mouth as if he’s drowning on dry land.
Thorne’s flames implode, flaring inward so fast I smell scorched skin and hair.
He roars, bone-mask cracking, then reforming.
My knees hit the ground.
Not because my body fails—but because the earth beneath me is ripped out from under my control.
Idris’ ritual claws along the bedrock, a thousand hooks sinking into the same pathways I use, and pulls.
I feel power torn out of me in brutal, wrenching gulps.
The pillars I raised crumble.
The cages I formed around captured SoulTakers shatter, their prisoners spilling free in a snarling tide.
The pits I opened begin to close on their own, as if the land no longer cares about my will.
“What is this?” I snarl, forcing myself upright, every muscle shaking. “What have you done, Idris?”
His laughter rolls down the slope like loose rock.
“I have done what none of you weak little elementals ever dared,” he calls, voice amplified by the warped air itself.
“I have removed the leash from Nightfall’s throat. No more Primes. No more crowns. No more duty to lesser worlds that feed on our light and return only rot.”
His staff flares brighter.
He lies.
