The world erupted into motion.
Magic flared. The ground split. Screams tore through the ruins like ragged thunder. What remained of the battlefield became a maelstrom—an impossible blend of spellfire, soulsteel, and raw, unshaped power that should not have existed.
Liora ran.
Not to escape. Not to hide.
She was running toward Aelric, who lay bleeding and bound, a sigil glowing on his chest—White Circle-crafted, designed to siphon his foresight and twist it into a navigational beacon for the Veil Gate.
One of the White Circle warlocks lunged at her, eyes crazed beneath his ivory mask. She didn't slow.
Her palm struck his chest—no incantation, no chant, just willpower laced with fused soul energy. His body imploded, collapsing into itself with a sound like crumpling bones and a wet exhale.
She kept going.
Behind her, Iskar screamed as another staff caught his leg in an arc of violet flame, sending him crashing backward. He rolled, gritted his teeth, and threw a dagger that embedded itself in a robed priest's throat.
But they were surrounded.
Thirteen Circle masters.
Two of them.
And Aelric, nearly unconscious.
Liora reached him and dropped to her knees, tearing at the bindings.
"Don't—" Aelric wheezed. "Trap—"
Too late.
The runes around them ignited in a perfect circle, triggered by her proximity. The Circle hadn't just baited her. They had calculated her.
"We needed you to complete the ritual," her father's voice echoed. "The gate cannot open without twin bloodlines. You and the Seer are perfect. We didn't even need the boy alive."
"No," she whispered.
The sigils on Aelric's chest bled light now—pale gold, tinged with red.
They weren't drawing power. They were preparing for sacrifice.
"You're going to kill him," she said, turning to her father.
He smiled.
"Yes."
Liora stood slowly. The air around her warped, her aura stretching outward like the ripples of something ancient waking from slumber.
"You shouldn't have said that."
A single breath passed.
Then she shattered the circle.
She didn't know the spell. Didn't need to. The soul-fused power within her rewrote the rules—smashed them to pieces and forged its own. Her body erupted with jagged glyphs of crimson and silver. Her skin steamed, her veins pulsing with light. Her eyes turned black.
And the veil around reality thinned.
Everything went quiet.
Then came the noise.
BOOM.
A wall of spectral force exploded outward from her chest, tearing through three of the White Circle instantly. Their bodies didn't burn. They simply ceased—soul and all—undone on a level no magic should reach.
Liora screamed—not from pain, but from release. For the first time, she wasn't holding back. Not buried under guilt or fear. She was fury, unleashed.
Iskar rose beside her, half-limping but defiant, blood streaking his face. "Liora—don't lose yourself."
"I'm already lost," she said quietly.
Then she moved again.
She danced through the Circle like a storm. Her strikes were not clean—they were desperate, raw, personal. Her fingers tore through runes, disrupted channels. She kicked one priest into another, then slammed a palm to the ground and forced an entire slab of earth to rise and crush the third.
Her father was last.
Still calm. Still smiling.
"You've grown," he said. "But you're not ready."
He raised his staff.
Liora didn't wait.
She lunged, catching the shaft mid-cast. The power that surged between them lit the sky. Her body should have crumbled. Instead, the glyphs burned brighter.
"You're not my father," she said.
Then she took his staff, rammed it through his chest, and twisted.
His smile faltered. He coughed once. Then crumpled, mask falling to the dirt.
Behind her, the gate screamed.
Not metaphorically. It screamed—a wail of something ancient being forced open. The magic the Circle had begun could not be stopped. But it could be redirected.
Liora staggered to the center of the broken circle, placed Aelric's limp body down, and closed her eyes.
"You still want to go through with this?" Iskar called out. "You open that gate, there's no closing it."
"I know."
"You don't even know where it leads."
"I don't have to," she said.
She bent low and whispered something into Aelric's ear.
Then she lifted her hands, palms upward, and channeled everything.
The Veil cracked.
Reality tore.
A brilliant white gate—not like before, not like the Circle's crude summoning—opened in midair, framed by bone and starlight.
Liora stepped forward.
The voice of Alric echoed through her memories: "All doors require sacrifice. Even the ones you never meant to open."
"I'm not afraid anymore," she whispered.
Then the gate pulled her in.