The sky bled cinders.
High above the ruined spires of Daevemar, the black sun hung like a lidless eye, unmoved by the death below. Magic, once thick as mist in this place, now slithered in dying wisps—barely clinging to stone and steel. And there, amidst charred banners and broken sigils, stood the last king of Veymar.
Thalric. Mage-Sovereign. The Thousandfold Mind.
Now a man reduced to breath and blood and very little else.
He limped through the shattered courtyard, one arm hanging limp at his side, the other dragging a staff carved from the wood of a dead god. Once, it pulsed with arcane force. Now, it groaned beneath the wind's apathy.
"Gone," he muttered, stepping over a fallen knight whose helmet bore the mark of the Northwatch. The body was still warm.
His vision blurred with heat and blood loss. He didn't bother to wipe the soot from his mouth. His lips tasted of copper and ash.
It had happened quickly. The seals broken. The heartstone fractured. The High Circle—the very scholars he'd entrusted with the fate of his world—shattered from within. The betrayal wasn't clever. It wasn't even veiled. But it was effective.
His mind returned to the last face he saw before the walls fell: Evaren, once his brother in all but blood, standing in silence on the other end of the war map as the wards collapsed one by one.
"You were never meant to carry this crown alone," Evaren had said. "You made us kneel—then made us fear what came after."
A hiss of pain escaped Thalric's lips as he stumbled into the old sanctum. The Obsidian Pillar still stood at its center, somehow untouched. Its mirrored surface reflected his wreck of a body—matted hair, fractured armor, and the faint, flickering brand of the First Sigil on his neck.
He had seconds. Maybe less.
Thalric slumped to his knees, blood pooling beneath him. Magic pulsed faintly from the broken leylines beneath the sanctum floor. It wasn't enough to rebuild the barrier. It wasn't enough to win. But perhaps… just perhaps…
He pressed his palm to the carved root of the pillar and whispered the unspoken spell.
It was not resurrection. It was not escape. It was not mercy.
It was unmaking.
He spoke the words slowly, reverently, each syllable heavier than the last. Language older than stone tore through his throat. His soul recoiled as the air bent around him.
"When death comes, and the throne falls, let this name be carved beyond stars. Let memory find me again… elsewhere."
The circle ignited.
Pain. Not the sharp kind. The consuming kind. Bones cracking inward. Breath torn away. Every ounce of power—every spell, thought, and echo of empire—siphoned into the spell's center like water down a drain.
His mind fractured.
Images: his mother's laughter before the wars. The first time he bent fire to his will. The look on a peasant girl's face when he healed her blind brother. Evaren smiling. Evaren bleeding.
Then—nothing.
Then—darkness.