EIGHT
ARAX
The anchoring ritual is one of the Choir’s most obscene innovations. Instead of using geographic features or constructed artifacts as ritual anchor points, they use their own members. The willing sacrifices become living conduits for ash magic, their bodies stabilizing corruption zones that would otherwise dissipate.
The cost is absolute. The anchors don’t survive. But while they live, they create pockets of stable erasure that expand outward, consuming everything within range.
Eight anchors. Eight points of expanding destruction.
If we don’t stop them in the next thirty seconds, Niren Hollow’s market district will cease to exist—and us with it.
I launch myself toward the nearest anchor, my domain surging with focused destruction. The zealot sees me coming and smiles—a terrible expression on a face already beginning to blur as the ritual consumes his identity.
I erase the connection before it can stabilize. The anchor collapses, the ritual framework shattering, the zealot dead before his body hits the ash-covered ground.
One down. Seven to go.
Tanith moves.
I don’t see her clearly—I’m already engaging the second anchor, my attention split between the immediate threat and the peripheral awareness that tracks her constantly—but I feel the shift in magical pressure as her Termination gift activates at full power.
Two anchors collapse simultaneously. Then a third.
She’s ending them faster than I can erase them.
The realization sparks a reaction I can’t name—not jealousy, not competition, but recognition. Her magic is better suited to this work than mine. Where I must erase the connection and then deal with the physical vessel, she ends both in a single application of power.
Four anchors remain. The ritual framework is destabilizing, but the remaining zealots are compensating, pouring more of themselves into the working. The air tastes of copper and ash and the particular wrongness of magic consuming itself.
I reach the fifth anchor as Tanith reaches the sixth. We move in parallel, our attacks synchronized without communication. She ends; I erase. The anchors fall.
Two left.
The surviving zealots scream—not in pain, but in ecstasy. They believe they are achieving transcendence. They believe the Cardinal’s promise is being fulfilled in their flesh. Their faces bear the characteristic blur of the devoted, individuality consumed by what they have become.
I take the seventh. Tanith takes the eighth.
The ritual collapses.
The backlash hits like a physical blow—displaced magical energy releasing in a wave that throws both of us backward. I twist mid-air, orienting myself to land in a controlled roll, already scanning for additional threats as I come to my feet.
Tanith is down.
My body moves before my mind engages. I cross the distance between us in a blur, my domain already expanding to shield her from any follow-up attack, my hands reaching to assess damage before my rational mind can catch up to my actions.
She’s conscious. Breathing. Her eyes meet mine as I crouch beside her, and I see irritation rather than injury.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You were thrown fifteen feet by magical backlash.”
“I’ve survived worse.” She pushes herself upright, wincing as the movement pulls at muscles that will ache for days. “Is it over?”
I scan the market district. Sixteen bodies lie scattered across the ash-covered ground, none of them moving. The anchoring ritual has fully collapsed, its framework ended so completely that not even residue remains.
“It’s over.”
She nods and accepts my offered hand, allowing me to pull her to her feet. The contact sends awareness racing up my arm—the texture of her palm against mine, the strength in her grip, the way her fingers curl around my hand with an assurance that suggests trust.
