The wind hadn't stopped screaming since dawn.
It howled through the broken forest, through the half-collapsed camp, and through the hollow silence that followed Kirin's death.
Liora sat motionless by the ashes. Her thigh was wrapped tight with Iskar's torn cloak, blood seeping through it in pulses. But she didn't flinch. Not from pain, not from grief. She just stared.
Kirin was gone.
And unlike the others, there would be no soul tether. No Echo Rite to preserve his wisdom. The White Circle had made sure of that. His death was total—a silent erasure.
Gone.
"You need to rest," Iskar said softly. "We're vulnerable here."
"No," she said, voice like crushed glass. "We move now."
He looked like he wanted to argue, but the storm in her eyes silenced him.
Behind them, the remaining survivors—only eight now—stood like broken statues. Hollow-eyed. Silent. They had seen too much, lost too many.
But the danger was only beginning.
Far beneath the Obsidian Hills, inside the citadel's core sanctum, chains clattered as the Ash-Eater stepped into the ritual circle.
He was lean, almost skeletal, but his presence filled the room with oppressive heat. His skin glowed with buried runes. Not tattoos—brands—each one a ward, a curse, or a locked spell. Each one hiding something monstrous.
Eight White Circle elite stood around him. Their leader, the Warden of Bone, raised her hand.
"Liora grows too bold. Too powerful. We need a lesson—etched into flesh. Leave her alive, but break the rest."
The Ash-Eater smiled.
"Ah," he breathed, licking dry lips. "A massacre with intention. How… nostalgic."
The Warden snapped her fingers. The circle pulsed.
In a flash of flame and shadow, he was gone.
Liora's group reached the edge of the Vale's fractured border by nightfall. It was here that the veil between worlds was thinnest—where lost things whispered, and forgotten magic bled through the cracks.
"We rest here," Iskar said, setting up a perimeter. "If they strike again, it'll be tonight."
"I know," Liora whispered.
She stepped away, into the fog that coiled at the border. Alone.
She didn't want to sleep. Couldn't. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Kirin's ashes blowing away. She felt the warmth of the doppelgänger's blade inside her thigh. And underneath it all—a sound.
Whispers.
No. Not whispers. Chanting.
Her eyes snapped open.
Too late.
The fog ignited.
The scream that followed wasn't human.
From the white fire stepped a monster.
The Ash-Eater.
His presence alone warped the ground. Grass turned to charcoal. Stones cracked. Magic sizzled in the air as though reality rejected him.
"Liora," he said, voice like a choir of the dead. "I've waited so long to meet you."
The others rallied behind her, weapons drawn—but even from a distance, their blades trembled.
Iskar shouted, "Everyone, fall back! Veil-class threat!"
Liora didn't move.
"What are you?" she asked coldly.
"Once," he said, "I was like you. A soul with purpose. Then the gods lied to me. So I burned them."
He stepped forward, and the nearest survivor—a young spellblade named Maren—charged.
She never even reached him.
He breathed, and her body collapsed into ash mid-sprint. No scream. No sound. Just... gone.
Panic erupted.
"Scatter!" Iskar roared. "Move! He's too strong—"
Liora stood her ground.
She reached deep—deeper than ever before. Into the shard. Into the fused souls. Into every memory and every ounce of grief.
Into Kirin.
The Veil bloomed around her in black and silver light. She stopped running from it. She let it in.
Then she spoke.
"I challenge you," she said to the Ash-Eater, her voice steady. "Ancient to ancient. Soul to soul."
The air froze.
A smile crawled across the Ash-Eater's face.
"You've been watching old rituals," he said, amused. "Fine. Let's play."
A ritual circle formed beneath their feet—massive, ancient, thrumming with rules older than time.
Liora could feel it. This wasn't a duel. It was a soul reckoning. A trial.
Only one would walk away whole.
The battle began without warning.
He attacked with fire not born from flame, but from despair. Every spell he cast carried the weight of cities burned, lives consumed, gods dethroned. It was overwhelming.
Liora bled, screamed, faltered—but didn't fall.
She countered with soul echoes—fragments of Kirin's foresight, Alric's old blade techniques, even the doppelgänger's chaotic rage. For the first time, all her selves were aligned.
Every time he struck, she adapted.
Every time he sneered, she grinned.
Until he made a mistake.
He tried to draw on her shadow.
And saw something else staring back.
It wasn't Liora.
It was the thing beneath her skin.
The echo that should never have survived the Veil.
A third soul.
Something that had never belonged.
It bit him.
The Ash-Eater recoiled in confusion, a scream of agony bursting from his throat.
"What are you?" he gasped, clutching his burned arm.
Liora stood there, breathing heavily, face pale, eyes now flickering between silver, gold, and black.
She didn't answer.
Because she didn't know.
The ritual shattered.
The Ash-Eater retreated with a bellow of fury, his body flickering like a broken flame. "This isn't over," he spat. "The White Circle will send worse."
"Then I'll bury them too," she replied.
He vanished in a roar of fire, leaving only scorched earth.
And silence.
Three more had died. The group was down to five.
Liora turned to them—bloodied, cracked, barely standing.
"We leave tomorrow," she said.
"To where?" Iskar asked.
She looked east, toward the old capital ruins where whispers of her mother's bloodline stirred.
"To finish what I started."