I reached the construct, an industrial engine built for a singular purpose. At the bottom sat the reservoir, a reinforced tank churning with my father’s harvested essence. The fluid inside thrashed against the glass, spiralling upward.
Above it, clamped to the foot of the chrome spire, sat the Silverite shard. A jagged slab of dark metal locked in a magnetic vice, it vibrated with tension, focusing the volatile fluid into a blinding beam that pierced the sky.
I stepped forward.
The Eclipse reached its zenith.
The black disk locked perfectly over the sun, strangling the morning light. The world plunged into a premature, suffocatingnight. Below, the streetlights of Ravenholt blinked on in confused waves, but up here, the only light came from the bruised violet tear in the sky and the blinding, relentless throb of the construct.
I holstered the dagger and reached up, pressing my palms flat against the Extractor’s glass casing, directly over the shard.
The restraint snapped—an unconditional surrender to the power stored in my blood. Light poured from me, flooding the Extractor.
The moment my Light hit the Silverite core, the construct screamed.
A mechanical shriek of metal under torture tore through the air. The chrome spire vibrated violently. The Silverite shard flared white-hot, trying to reject the foreign energy just as Riven had predicted. It wanted to explode.
But it didn’t. Korenth had armoured it.
The explosion I tried to trigger didn’t shatter the spire. It hit an invisible wall—a secondary containment field clamping down on the reaction.
It compressed my power.
The energy I poured in had nowhere to go. It rebounded off the barriers and crashed back into my body. The pressure was excruciating. I had detonated a grenade inside a diamond vault, and I was the only soft thing in the room.
My muscles trembled. The heat singed the hair on my skin.
Above me, the sky tore open further. The beam shooting from the spire widened, piercing the Rift and anchoring the two worlds together.
Our plan wasn’t working. The restraints were too strong. The vessel rejected me, but the cage held it all in.
“Break!” I screamed, throwing every ounce of rage, every spark of the golden fire living in my blood against the shield.
I pushed until my vision blurred. I pushed until I felt the bond with Riven stretch thin, draining the very last dregs of my reserve.
But the spire held.
My knees buckled. The backlash threw me offthe spire.
I slid down the hot glass of the casing, leaving streaks of sweat and ash. I hit the gravel hard, slumped against the cold metal side of the reservoir tank at the bottom.
I lay there, gasping, my chest heaving.
I reached for the Light. Nothing.
I reached for the Shadow. Nothing.
I was empty. Burned out.
Above me, the Rift heaved—a widening maw of violet darkness. The hum of the Extractor grew louder, triumphant. I had failed. I was letting Vaelor’s collapse happen again—the same Schism between Light and Dark that had broken the physics of the Old World and turned it into a graveyard. If Korenth brought those ancient horrors through, Ravenholt would become the next site of that endless slaughter, and I would be the reason this world burned just like the last. I was a hollow shell, failing my team, failing Riven, and wasting the sacrifice my parents had made to keep my Spark alive.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, my head lolling back against the metal of the tank. “Dad… I’m sorry. I’m not strong enough.”
And then I heard it, a crack.
The sound was small, but in the silence of my defeat, it sounded like a gunshot.
I turned my head.
