Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!
Toren Daen
The tide did not break us.
We crossed the curtain faster than a bolt from any godbow, trailing ripples as we tore through the atmosphere. We moved faster than a lightning bolt, faster than sound, faster than thought and emotion as the accel path hurled us like the world's greatest spear.We held onto Inversion's tone as we crossed the veil, following Unseen paths to salvation.
It became clear to us immediately that the space within was warped and twisted. Even as we flew through a horizon of glass shards along a hidden path, we did not approach that horizon at the speed that we should have. Though we flew with a hurricane beneath our silver-sun wings, what was the concept of speed to the warping of space? What was distance to those who could command it with a wave of their hands?
Space was bent here. Twisted and mutated by the weight of concentrated grief as it wove itself around our ears. We felt the clawing hands of those ghosts against our white-gold shroud, trying desperately to pierce our protections.
Listen to us, they begged. Hear us when no one else can. Listen to our pleas.
Force enough to grind mountains to dust squeezed inward around us, suffocating against everything that we were. Against our wings. Against our spirit. Against our very souls. All the intent and memories, compressed into a small, terrible dot, tried to overwhelm us again.
For a few moments, as we flew through an impossible expanse of fractals and glassy reflections of our burnished form, our hold began to waver. Against the tide of intent and memory, I remembered the brother I had lost over a year ago. I remembered the loss of all those close to me and my failures throughout this war.
My soul wavered, struggling against the pressures on all sides. I could feel myself burning, my edges flaking away like paper over an open fire. Each little bit—pieces I didn't know I had—drifted from the periphery of my soul.
I could taste the loss like ashes on my tongue. As I continued my descent, the might of a thousand dead gods pulsing through my exhausted body, I tried to recall what it was that was leaving me. But I could not… Not now. It was gone, and I didn't know what it was.
And then Aurora's soul tore its way closer to mine once more, unwilling to let me shoulder these searing flames alone. As not-souls screamed in a false echo of the Song, she alone pushed past the tumult, wrapping me once more in her protective embrace.
Mother, I thought, tears streaming from my eyes as I continued in my endless flight, Aurora, I—
"Forward, Toren!" she cried, our bond alight with fire and fury. "Never, ever stop! We move onward! I have you, my son."
She threw herself about me like a cloak, her wounded-star soul blanketing me as best it could. And together, we found equilibrium. We were caught between a volcano erupting beneath a thousand miles of ocean pressure, the two impossible forces battling each other for dominance. The Will of the Asclepius would burn our souls to ashes—it was already tearing us apart. But in turn, the pressure from the countless doomed lives compressed everything inward, seeking to crumple us with their misery like a fist around a gentle rose.
So we took the impossible force and the immovable object, and we found a balance between. Like the edge of a horizon, we teetered on oblivion as we flew through endless space, always on the brink of annihilation. Though our shroud was torn and battered and our wings withered, we found our way to the eye of it all.
Inversion led us true.
Our skin burnt from the heat building within and around us as we reached the nexus of the ritual. A dragon's heart was forced to beat amidst the torment of countless howling ghosts. Every swirl of aether and mana coasted toward Inversion's whitened hilt, before flowing through the dragon's heart and into the space around us.
Our flight stumbled as we reached the center. It was harsher here. So, so much harsher, where it was all most concentrated. Our shroud was splintering and withering away, aether seeping between the cracks and trying to pry itself toward our sanctum.
The memories of the damned broke like matchsticks before the inexorable march of our Third Phase. But they just kept coming, battering against walls that couldn't hold forever.
We hovered there, gazing down at the dagger and heart.
It was strange. A malformed mirror of our ascension stared back at us. Long ago, Lady Dawn had driven a dagger into her son's heart. She'd imbued every ounce of love and care for her new child into that sacrificial act, forging him a new physique that could withstand the burdens of this world.
So much love had been held in that pivotal strike. So much hope and rage against the death of someone she loved. She had given Toren his heart, then, and they had found their bond once more.
As we gazed down at this corrupted reflection of that love, we considered what this next ascension would bring—if the gambit would play out well at all. If we failed, we would both die, alongside millions.
We couldn't just rip the dagger from the dragon's heart. These two kept each other in perfect balance—a funnel and an engine both, akin to how we kept balance between outer and inner forces. Remove one, and all the gathered energy would disperse—violently. More violently than anything we had witnessed in our lives. Violently enough to make the power of a split atom look like a matchstick. Violently enough to match the greatest spells of the Old Asura.
Xyrus would cease to exist in a fracturing wave. The Grand Mountains themselves would be swept away next. Anything that dared to stand close to this mighty bomb would face its shrapnel. We could see it, rumbling like a World Eater over all those we'd sought to protect.
One could take the Funnel and rip it free of its malice and purpose. But it needed an engine: one that could handle the weight of it all. An engine that would turn this grief toward something better and pure. An engine that could show it a brighter, better path than spreading its pain.
We remembered the plan that had formed in our mind before we'd engaged our Third Phase. We'd known that this energy needed somewhere to go. It could not merely disperse. And as we were now, we were not enough. We did not have the power yet to cleanse these lost spirits of their sorrow. Even imbued with the weight of countless lifetimes of asuran insight, all paths led toward this one, final gambit.
We gripped Inversion's handle, feeling that familiar texture beneath our palms. Heartfire and mana both flowed through it, bound by a basilisk's spell.
Then we ripped it free of the dragon's heart. It slid free with contemptuous ease, belying the impossible forces threading through the focusing horn. The riptide froze, teetering on the brink. Space shuddered around us. No longer did those disparate souls have a path forward. No longer did they have a target for their pain.
The world danced before us in a pregnant pause as the blood-streaked horn hovered before our chest. The knife-point tip gleamed with promise.
"Another gamble," we whispered into the suddenly still air. "Another gamble in this second life."
We knew that the great orchestra crashed toward a separate end. One where space would tear and utter war would rip through the world. But we had defied that Song once before. We had seen the heartless, empty nature of those heartbeats, and we had cast our own chords.
As we gripped the handle of that white horn, we put every ounce of love and care we knew into it. Toren's love for Seris. His care for Cylrit and Sevren and Lusul. His desire for Arthur to reach his happy ending. His hope for a Hearth of his own. Aurora poured her love for Chul into our weakened muscles. Her love for Andravhor and Mordain and Soleil and everyone else.
Above it all, we poured our love and trust in each other. Our certainty that together, we could overcome any dirge of damnation. We could defy any Fate. Agrona or Kezess? It didn't matter. In this torrent of agony, we glowed like a little ember of hope and care.
Then we drove Inversion through our shroud. The knife-point tip passed through without resistance. Scarred skin offered little protest, before flesh beckoned the impossible sharpness. Our heart shuddered as we drove Inversion through it, then began to thunder.
The shuddering aggregate of spacetime twisted as those long-departed imprints of souls found another engine. The energy—which had been about to erupt outward in a tide of fractured spatial glass and destruction—began to collapse inward.
Through Inversion, and into our heart.
We only knew agony. Like a filament in a lightbulb, energy greater than any other burned through us. We lit like a matchstick, golden light streaming from the wound in our chest. More and more and more and more flowed through us. More than any mortal could comprehend. Even with hundreds of thousands of years of asuran experience, we could feel ourselves breaking apart.
Mana rushed along our veins, surging like a landslide toward our snow-white core. It tore apart every barrier of resistance in its way, the intent only knowing pain. Lifeforce, too, flowed along our veins. They ruptured as it went, our body nearly ready to pop after barely a second beneath the tide. Our skin blackened and charred, the flesh sizzling and screaming as our staked heart failed to heal it.
We screamed. We screamed in anger and sorrow and burning souls as we felt ourselves begin to disintegrate into the dark of the Beyond. But even our screams were swallowed by the hundreds of thousands that had echoed before.
We understood what it was to be a star. We knew—together, in that terrible, burning instant where our senses became little less than blips within our shared scream—what it meant for a star to collapse. The weight of worlds collapsed in on us, and we would be ground to a petty, terrible singularity, before releasing terrible fury across the cosmos.
That terrified us. We felt fear—one of the only things the deluge let us know. Fear that this was the end. That we'd gambled wrong. That we would burn out, and it would all erupt anyways.
I… I felt Aurora pull herself around me. Even as more energy than any asura had ever felt coursed through our veins, scouring away everything that made our Vessel whole in waves of agony, she clung to me. Her soul whispered sweet nothings in ears that could no longer hear. Amidst the raging noise, I heard her quiet assurances.
I could feel my Will breaking apart, my very soul losing cohesion. I was burned. I was fire. I was in so, so much pain. So much, and I just wanted to… to lie down and close my eyes to it all. I wanted to become the wind, nothing left behind.
My eyes burned away. Now, all I could see was my Sea, deep beneath the surface of the world. The lake of blood churned and thrashed like an angry beast, red motes of blood cascading upward beneath the rippling, golden fire deep below.
The motes of red blood containing all that I ever was… They burnt away, sizzling in the terrible haze of my Will's golden fire. All around me, those motes rose as I broke apart beneath the strain.
I knew some of those. Naereni's face was there, laughing at something alongside Wade. Hofal and Greahd and Karsien were there, too, all looking disapprovingly at the Young Rat. But I… I couldn't see their faces. I didn't know their faces as that mote of blood rose to the beckoning Beyond.
I lost more as my soul slowly burnt away. The name of a boy I'd helped escape Mardeth. The anger I'd felt watching an undead creature haul Sevren toward its maw. I tried to hold onto them, but I was so tired. It was the small things torn away, the things that didn't have substance.
But I felt something else burning, too. Something that burned at the very core of my being, scouring it away in my hubris.
That burned more than nearly everything else… That sense that I had lost something… that it was a part of me. I felt the frayed ends of the connections as more and more of my bloody Sea rose into the dark sky as an evaporating mist. It left me empty of something. Hollow of some cornerstone of my existence.
I cried out in a pain I couldn't name as Aurora held me, the phoenix shade bracing with her soul. I didn't understand what I'd lost, but it was something beautiful. It was supposed to make everything… better. But it was gone, ripped from my soul.
Despair seeped in as I slowly died. Despair at my hubris. Despair, seeping in from the countless lives that tore chunks of my flesh away. Despair at the fire burning my Sea. I felt it rising, ready to swallow me whole.
But then, amidst the terrible tremble of our pierced heart and the collapsing weight of the ambient mana itself, something changed. Beneath that impossible compression of mana coursing through my charred body, my core cracked. The sound reverberated through even the impossible roar of a sundered world, sending tremors through my disintegrating soul.
Then my mana core shattered.
—
Aurora
The sound of Toren's crumbling core froze his soul. My son's light had been burning him away, scouring every memory he held close. They'd been drifting away, unbound from his anchoring gravity.
But then it froze. Something rumbled from a distance I couldn't understand, coursing along leylines of life. It sounded… like a heartbeat, as powerful as any drum. It started slowly, coursing up that frayed tether he bore with his heart. But then it grew in chorus, rippling through the waters of his essence.
In my arms, my son's spiritual avatar bore a shaky, hesitant smile. Here, in the recesses of his soul, he wasn't a blackened and charred husk like outside. He was covered in burns, true. Burns like mine, from the countless trials we'd undergone. But as my arms clenched around him, relief threading through me, I felt laughter echo from my weary spirit.
"It worked," Toren whispered. Beneath us, the golden fires of his Will were changing. They still coursed through the blood-red of his spirit, but they weren't charring like before. That strange dirge of the deep, mortal world seemed to calm them. "It worked, Aurora."
I laughed, feeling how burned my own soul was. Toren alone could bear the brunt of the Phoenix Will, and I could only watch as it tore him apart. I'd thought we'd failed. I'd thought I would watch as my little songbird burned away into nothing.
"Integration," I whispered into the expanse of night beyond. Beneath Toren's soul, his charred body was changing. Even as the ritual continued on, this little slice of frozen time echoed the truth. "You've done it, my son. You've spread your wings."
Red rain fell from the sky above. Little drops of blood splashed back into Toren's sea. It was so strange. Toren was still using his Phoenix Will, but that soul-deep strain was gone. No longer was he fighting to keep himself intact, simply basking in the return of his memories as they cascaded like the brush of May.
Integration. The highest peak a human mage can reach, I thought, lightning streaking across my mind. I believed it was only of the body, but… There is something more. Something we did not anticipate.
Toren slowly stood, strength returning to his spiritual limbs. His eyes were closed as the blood streaked down and across him, coating him in red. "I'd forgotten," he whispered, flexing his hands. His fingers danced in strange patterns as he held them before him. "I'd forgotten what it felt like. The tension of the strings beneath my fingers… The sweet sound of music. It was gone, for a time. I can't believe I'd forgotten the kiss of the violin's bow."
I breathed out, still kneeling on the surface of Toren's soul as it morphed and changed beneath me. I should not have felt so weak. I was not even a physical body anymore, just a shade bound by the soul. But the effort of keeping my mind close to my son's—the strain of sheltering him as best I could from the rage of our Will—it left me exhausted.
The Brand of the Banished hummed nearby, the long spear piercing Toren's soul visibly vibrating as fluxes of power washed through the void.
Toren looked at it, only seeming partially aware. "It's resonating," he said quietly. "It resonates with the physical. Like an anchor. I've pierced my heart, and so, too, has my soul been pierced. It keeps me… intact."
I slowly struggled upward, forcing myself to stand. I wavered, feeling how deep the burns in my soul reached. I hadn't been wounded like Toren, but I was tired.
Beneath me, the ocean of blood was starting to change. It began to pulse in that rhythm, condensing and congealing and taking on texture. At the edges, golden fire danced as my son stared at the stake piercing his soul. "Toren," I said through burned lips. "My son…"
Toren turned to look at me, his smile still there as his soul metamorphosed around us. He wrapped me in an embrace, clutching me close. And I could feel it, so powerful and vibrant over our bond. His love and his hope and his care flowed across our souls. Even as the phoenix feather that had always resided in his core gradually disintegrated, the sheer pull of Toren's care kept me anchored.
"I know you're tired, Mom," he said quietly, the words flowing through me with meaning I could hardly comprehend. "I can take it from here. It's going to be… rough. And it's going to hurt."
I chuckled, holding this young man close. He'd been a boy when I'd first brought him to this world. A scared boy, too hopeful and naive for his own good. But his wings were spreading about him now. As he stood here, confident atop his soul as it began to take a familiar shape, ready to weather whatever the world threw at him.
Deep in the recesses of my mind, I'd been terrified of this moment. As Toren reached the white core, found his place, and blazed through the obstacles in his way, I'd felt this coming. He was growing ready to find his rhythm in this world. Even as I taught him all I knew, he was a chick leaving the nest.
I didn't want him to go. Deep in the confines of my soul, I couldn't lie to myself.
I didn't want him to leave this behind. I wanted to stay his mother for another thousand years, keeping him by my side like the chick he should still be. But I also knew, deep within, that this was how he blossomed.
"Okay," I said quietly, hugging him tight. That resounding pulse spread through him to me, too. "Spread your wings, Toren. Let them know who you are."
I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I was once again a lost spirit amidst a whirlpool of collapsing despair.
But something had changed. Toren's body—charred nearly to the bone—began to twitch. Heartfire streamed in a renewed cascade through his body. Veins of orange-purple flowed from him, stretching out into another white-gold shroud.
But it didn't remain as a simple, armored spirit. Those arteries of existence stretched further, latticing out as more and more heartfire cycled in and through them. A moment later, Toren's white-gold shroud began to take shape around it.
My son's wings and shroud operated on the same principle. His body—somewhere deep within—understood his bloodright. I had granted him claim to the sky above, and so his body knew wings. So, too, he could layer himself in a visage of an avian spirit, using veins of lifeforce as the lattices that held it up.
Pride swelled in my breast as I watched, embracing my son's body. My teeth gritted as tears streamed from the edges of my burning eyes. This… This was everything. This was majesty and fulfillment, the highest pinnacle a creature could reach.
Because an avatar grew around my son, ten feet tall. Then twenty, then thirty. Silver-sun plates of mana stretched over a body illuminated by the collapsing weight of countless ghosts. Feathers and talons and plumage so beautiful grew atop him.
Toren was phoenix. Why wouldn't my son bear such a form? Who could deny him, as he continued to swell with power?
Once upon a time, Toren's shroud had broken and buckled when assaulted with this expanse of mana and heartfire. Once, it had been unable to bear the brunt of it all, too small and weak.
Back then, Toren's telekinetic shroud had only been that. A cloak against the darkness, unable to bear its brunt. But as the burning avatar of golden light screamed to the heavens, my renewed son cradled at its center, I knew something else.
Toren's shrouds were an extension of his body. And now, with Integration, his entire body was his core.
Wherever the mana touched, it was drawn into Toren's growing avatar. The mana was purified of that sorrow the moment it crossed the boundary, shown a better path. So too did the heartfire find peace as it became part of something greater. On and on and on it went, reinforcing an already exponential process.
Toren's body began to heal beneath my hug. His hair still burned an impossible red—my red. Runes the color of a volcano's caldera still lit the growing expanse of his skin and avatar as more and more mana flowed into him. But despite it all, I could not sense the presence of our Phoenix Will anywhere within him.
He looked at me as his skin and muscle began to heal, the blackened char flaking away. His sunlit eyes crinkled at the edges as he smiled at me, strained with the effort of containing so much.
And then his avatar reared back its head, still accepting the heat of all those lives ruined by the High Sovereign, and it roared. A beam of golden plasma thrust from its beak, the power concentrated within hot enough to burn through the core of any world. I couldn't see where it went, my vision too clouded by the swirls of energy.
But I could sense it, in that strange extension of Toren's senses. The beam of golden power ripped through the ritual's confines, streaking into the sky as it expanded for miles upon miles. It punched through the thunderstorm, banishing it in an instant. Clouds ran in fear, making way for the true light. It arced up and up, piercing the horizon as it left this planet in a single beam of power. Starlight left to rejoin its distant mother, dissipating in the cosmic air.
It was my turn to watch in true awe, my jaw agape as I sensed that spear of energy continue on and on and on.I could hardly comprehend the amount of energy contained in that breath of resplendent aureate. My shade trembled as the power washed through me. With wonder? Fear? Hope?
And still, Toren took it all into himself. His integrated physique purified every ounce of mana and heartfire to touch the edges of his shroud, before hurling them back into the darkness. The impossible ritual—which had once seemed to be a sentence of doom for every living being in this world—instead became fuel for my son as his roar echoed into the night.
I didn't know how long it continued. Time lost its meaning as countless trials and struggles and pains finally manifested themselves in the succulent fruit of success, of ascension. I could only howl in tune with my songbird as he found his wings, joining him in his crescendo.
We were the dawn. Always, the world tried to cast us down. From the start of our journey to now, every hurdle and barrier and barb had led to this. Single. Moment.
When it was done, even the shroud adorning my son gradually dissipated. The beam of sunlight screaming from him misted away into little motes of refracting energy, before nothing at all.
The Constellate across the Xyrus skies misted away. It would come again in a few years when the world next decreed. A sphere a thousand feet in radius stretched around my son as we floated there, exhausted and drained. No longer did our vision dance with crackling space. No longer did it weave tales of tragedy and despair.
Now it was silent. So, so silent. There had been nothing but noise for the past hours. The thunderstorm, the clashing of battle, and then the torrent of screaming ghosts. There had been so, so much noise. So much.
Not even a breeze ghosted across my son's vibrant red hair. No chirping of birds… No breaking of stone… Nothing.
It was night, high above. Little golden embers drifted down from the sky, like stardust offerings from distant gemstones. They anointed Toren with their happy glow.
Toren, I whispered, sensing how near he was to his limit, you've done it.
His breath shuddered in his lungs. A sliver of Inversion's handle still peered out from his chest. The stake piercing his heart pulsed, glowing with strange and friendly light. It was strange, how a dagger piercing the heart could keep someone alive.
"I did," he thought back, every brush of his mind across our bond streaked with exhaustion deeper than the Boundary Sea. "I did. They're all… safe."
And then he fell from the sky. His hair was a curtain of deep red as it masked his face from my sight. He fell through the night, his consciousness flickering like a candle as the darkness of the spherical corpse of the failed ritual yawned below us.
Toren! I called, suddenly frantic as the unnaturally smooth chasm rushed to meet my son's falling form. Toren, take control! The ground. Do not let yourself hit the ground!
My son barely registered my words. Pillars of force sputtered around him, cushioning him from the ground, right before he struck the hardened stone a thousand feet below.
Something crunched in his arm as he landed strangely on it, but Toren was too tired to even cry out in pain. He groaned, lying in an unimpressive heap at the bottom of that divot.
He breathed in, then out again. In and out, his sunlit eyes absorbing the night high above. Deep in this little hole of eroded space, the darkness seemed to stretch on forever. Within this crater, the twin stars of Toren's eyes were like two children cast down from the heavens to nestle here for a time. One day, they'd return to the great expanse. But right now…
"The stars… They're so bright," Toren muttered, staring hazily up at the sky. His broken arm slowly healed in little flickers of dawnlight, before his grasping fingers stretched upward as if to feel the heavens. "It's almost like I can touch them."
I sighed, kneeling down by Toren's side. "We can make them, my son," I whispered, sensing his grip slipping. "You already have."
That earned a bare curl at the edge of Toren's lips. A weak, satisfied smile, before his arm fell limp. The draw of slumber and exhaustion pulled him under at last.
I gave myself a moment to observe my songbird's features. They'd sharpened again under Integration, becoming more polished and pristine. The scars he'd always carried with him as markers of his life were washed away, whether by intent or accident, I could not tell.
And his hair… it was a deep, soulful red. Runes like feathers stretched across his body, pulsing low.
They shouldn't be there, I thought, my brow furrowing. Not without his Phoenix Will engaged.
But our Phoenix Will wasn't engaged. In fact, I couldn't senseit anymore. Toren's soul was still morphing in the aftereffects of Integration, and I felt an electric tingle spark across my veins as a suspicion made itself known in the depths of my heart.
Integration is the gateway to evolution, I thought, remembering a quote from Toren's journal. Integration is the key to growth.
One made their entire body their core. But what if that extended beyond just the Vessel? What effect did it have on the deepest essence?
Toren's body was exhausted, stretched in a way I couldn't fully understand. Steam rose from his mana-devoid form as he exhaled shuddering breaths, his part-asuran physique struggling to repair itself. I suspected that if Inversion had not pierced my son's heart, he would have burnt it out. Like the wind blowing out a candlewick instead of feeding it oxygen, my son had barely avoided utter catastrophe.
And my feather… It wrapped about his heart.
I was torn from my ponderings as I sensed something on the edge of the massive crater. Even unconscious, Toren's senses granted me an impossible knowledge of the world around me, beyond even what I'd known in my mortal life.
Dicathians gathered at the edges of that great crater. The bold few who were willing to put themselves in potential harm watched from high above.
Rest, my child, I thought, brushing a lock of hair from my son's face. You've earned it. I can take it from here.
I straightened as I sensed the boldest of them all skating down the edges of the crater. The Anchor, King Leywin himself, slid along the rim on a road of ice. Even from here, I could see his pinched and worried features. Through the countless cuts, burns, and signs of battle, the King of Dicathen had emerged whole from his duel with Agrona's Hand.
Arthur Leywin heaved for breath as he finally reached the bottom, before blurring faster along currents of wind. He was exhausted, I realized. Toren's senses told me that he was experiencing backlash right now, yet he was pushing himself toward us with a fervor and fear plastered across his face.
I thought I knew what had him in such a grip of terror. Kezess Indrath's army was assaulting our Hearth. They were nearby. My son's display would have rippled across the entire continent, and maybe even beyond. After that impossible light, the asura of Epheotus would need to intervene, even if it meant abandoning their assault on my flock.
A strange silver lining. I was reasonably certain it would give my family a chance at safety, but now… Now, they would come for him. All of them for my son, and he had no way out.
No way except Arthur Leywin, I thought with rising anxiety. No way to make it out except with his help. Arthur is our only chance to escape the scrutiny of Epheotus, and he knows it.
I took a few steps toward the Anchor as he approached at speed, considering what options we had to save Toren from the backlash. The dwarven sanctuary, perhaps? But no, that might be too risky and within scrutiny. The Hearth was impossible.
My eyes flicked to the side, noting the strange Sword and Crown, forged of my own soul as it approached. It hovered at Arthur's side, a reflection of how I stood guard over my son's body. And now, as I locked eyes with that changed ghost, I saw the compassion that had been unearthed by the Anchor's Coronation.
Arthur skidded to a halt before us, before nearly collapsing to his knees as he gasped for breath. But even as his frantic eyes darted from me to Toren's body and he tried to form words, I remembered what I had divined of this man not long ago.
My memories of that time when I'd merged with Toren to bear the brunt of his Will were vague. I remembered… A song of some kind. There was some great melody that Arthur was a part of. It was almost the Anchor's melody, but that was not right, either.
"It is well that you emerged victorious in your fight, Anchor," I said swiftly, wanting to be done with the preliminaries. I knew that so long as the Crown was close, Arthur Leywin could see my shaded form, and we had no time. "But I must demand that you see my son to safety. The asura of Epheotus shall soon be—"
"Cadell," Arthur interrupted as he finally found breath, staring up at me. "Cadell said it was within expectations. All of this. He mocked me as he died. I mean, that power that…"
Arthur's azure eyes clouded over for a moment as memories played behind them. There was an almost haunted look behind them as they flicked to Toren's body. I could see his body loosening, almost as if he were expecting a blow.
Then he returned his attention to me, that frantic light glimmering behind his eyes. "I can't explain it, Aurora. It's something in my gut that's telling me that I've missed something. Or you have. Something is wrong here, Lady Dawn. Toren's still in danger."
My brow furrowed as I considered this. For all the High Sovereign's plans, I was certain that he could have never calculated for this outcome. But whatever repercussions Agrona had in store could be dealt with when my son was not in imminent danger of being slaughtered by Aldir Thyestes. The Anchor's words were not ones to dismiss, but I needed to focus on what could be done immediately. "Agrona will always be a threat, Anchor, but right now we must assure that Toren is not in the path of the asuran army. We can worry about the High Sovereign when time allows."
"When time allows?" Toren's voice echoed behind me. "I thought we were closer than that, Aurora. It hurts me, you know, to cast that aside so quickly."
I did not have a heart any longer. I had sacrificed it to give my son a path forward in one of his darkest hours, ensuring that he had the strength to continue onward. But as that tone—so confident and sure—hissed behind my ears, I was certain that any heart I might have had would have stopped.
Toren's voice. Toren's voice. That was my son's voice.
But it was not Toren's tone. It was devoid of the warmth and subtle naïveté that characterized my boy. Gone were those musical notes he always added, the emotion bare and passionate in every word.
No. All that reached me was cold, cruel mocking. A tone that knew more than it should and held the keys to escape just out of my reach. A tone that had wormed its way within the confines of my skull for centuries unnumbered.
I ignored Arthur's horrified eyes as he stumbled forward, weak from his battle.
I turned toward where Toren should be, all my instincts screaming in terror. Soul-deep fear grasped my everything as flashes of a cage pressed me in. Suddenly, this chasm wasn't a divot carved by my son's power anymore. No, it was a domain of darkness that would chew me apart and spit out the bones. It was the steps of an ancient cathedral, a trap for the damned.
Toren's body was on his knees. And he stared at me. Not my son. Not with those red eyes. Not with that pitch-black hair. Not with a demon's amusement dancing in the blood-red of his irises. Not with the cruelty of that smirk.
I was already blurring forward. My mind remained so very terrified, but my body moved. My son was in danger. Somehow, Agrona was doing something. I needed to stop him. I needed to save my son! This wasn't the Cathedral anymore.
I was screaming. I didn't know when I started screaming, but I was yelling in terror as I blurred towards my son.
In painfully slow motion, Toren's hand reached up to his chest, where Inversion's hilt still jutted barely past his flesh. All the while, Agrona's eyes stayed locked on me, filled only with amusement. Not triumph or malice or anger. Just mild curiosity, as if this was all within expectations.
"Fascinating," Agrona said through my son's mouth. "Everything is kept together through this… single… point. I can hardly imagine what it must have taken, for this lesser to anchor himself with a reflection of his very own self-image. I wonder what would happen if I just…"
Then his fingers gripped the stake piercing Toren's heart, and with one, painfully quick motion, tore it out.