The silence didn't last.
Silence, after all, was never natural on a battlefield—only borrowed. And now that the light from Liora's Veil-bonded blood ritual faded into whispers, the world remembered it still had teeth.
The rupture above them pulsed—once, twice—then began to fold in on itself, dragged by the weight of what Liora had become.
She was still standing.
Barely.
Around her, the ground was scorched glass and ash. Echoes flickered in and out of form, some fractured from the overload, others reverently silent, watching her like acolytes before a goddess.
And still, the battlefield breathed.
Bodies twitched.
Sobs echoed.
But no one moved faster than Mavrek.
He didn't flee. He didn't cower. He laughed. The sound was broken, unhinged, but unmistakably real.
"You really think you stopped it?" he hissed. "You postponed it. And that cost you everything."
She didn't answer. Her hands trembled. Her soul—now fused with relics, memories, and sacrificed futures—sang with power and pain in equal measure.
And from the corner of her eye, she saw the worst of it:
Thalia was crumpled on the ground, motionless.
A beam from the rupture collapse had crushed the ridge she stood on. Half her body was buried.
Liora's heart stopped.
She stumbled toward her, every step agony. The glyphs that circled her wrists flared violently with each movement, threatening to consume her entirely.
"Thalia…" she whispered. "Please, no…"
Thalia's eyes fluttered.
And then a smile.
Blood bubbled from her lips. "We did it, didn't we?"
Liora fell to her knees, grabbing her hand. "Don't talk like that. I can fix this—I can undo—"
"You can't undo fate," Thalia said. "But you can punch it in the face, if you're lucky."
She coughed. A sob escaped Liora's throat.
"Tell Iskar…" Thalia's voice was faint. "Tell him the forest wasn't cursed. It was beautiful."
Then her hand went limp.
Gone.
Just like that.
Liora didn't scream. She didn't cry.
She froze.
Something inside her broke so quietly it barely made a sound. But the Echoes felt it. They flared—dangerously unstable now, reacting to her soul's fracture.
Behind her, Mavrek spread his arms, basking in the Veil's last flickers of light as it folded closed. "Let them die. Let them all die. I'll build a better world from the bones of this one."
Liora stood slowly, her voice colder than death itself. "You'll die in the ruins you made."
Mavrek snapped his fingers.
From the smoke behind him, a new figure stepped forward. She was tall, cloaked in pure white, no face visible beneath the hood—but her presence was sickening. Reality bent around her. Even Mavrek stepped back as she moved.
"Meet Mother Ivenna," he said. "High Matron of the Deep Circle. You killed a few of her saints."
Ivenna raised a hand.
The sky fractured.
Not a tear—no, this was something worse.
A clean, surgical break in reality itself, as if her will bypassed the Veil entirely.
Iskar stumbled toward Liora, his sword blackened, armor broken. "We can't fight that. That's a godling."
"She's not a god," Liora said. "She's just next."
And then she attacked.
No hesitation.
She ran at her, wielding every ounce of soul-fractured memory magic she could conjure—flames shaped like forgotten promises, spears of broken time, shields forged from Thalia's last breath.
The fight wasn't clean. It wasn't elegant.
It was desperate.
And for every blow Liora landed, Mother Ivenna countered without effort. Each clash of power unraveled something in the world around them—statues aged into dust, grass turned to ash, blood reversed course through the veins of the dead only to boil.
But then—
Liora changed the tempo.
She let go.
Of control.
Of form.
Of limits.
She invited the memories in—not just Alric's, but Thalia's, and Vex's, and every single soul that had died for this cause. They flooded her body like fire and ice, twisting her into something terrifying and divine.
The battlefield trembled.
Even Mavrek took a step back, his confidence cracking.
Ivenna lunged—
And Liora met her mid-air, their collision birthing a dome of pulsing, radiant agony.
Time skipped.
The world paused.
And when the light faded—
Only one woman was still standing.
Liora.
Barely conscious.
Covered in ash and blood and relic burns.
Mother Ivenna was gone. Not vaporized. Not dead. Erased—as if she'd never been born at all.
Mavrek fled.
Coward.
But Liora didn't follow.
She dropped to her knees next to Thalia's body again.
Held her.
And whispered, "We won."
But the battlefield didn't feel victorious.
It felt hollow