Discordant Note | The Beginning After the End SI

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Arthur Leywin

The sound of Toren Daen's quiet sobs fell, deadened and muted, upon my ears as I, too, tried to suppress the welling pain in my heart. The sounds that wrenched themselves from Spellsong's throat weren't the kind that you projected to the world, unable to keep them quiet and contained. It wasn't an eruption of pain and misery that tore its way from the throat until you were ragged and sore.

No. This was the weeping of something seeping through cracks that had been open for a long time. It was soft and subdued, the sort of sorrow that comes after seeing a man dying on the side of the road. It was the kind of sorrow that came from necessity and pain all at once, where there was that endless question of what could have been done otherwise.

Sylvie was the first to move. As I stood transfixed at the top of the crater, my draconic bond glided past me, the rain drenching her as much as anyone else. The rims of her dress came away muddy with every step, brown leaching into the black.

She approached Toren Daen without a word, her emotions clear and poignant over our bond. Her golden eyes were warm with characteristic compassion as she knelt across from Toren, but she said nothing as his tears continued to fall.

I stayed back. I wasn't certain I could walk back down the stairway of Hell and look into Nico's empty eyes. I wasn't certain I could keep myself whole.

I didn't know how long it continued like that. Long enough that the runic chains along Toren's arms flickered a deep, bloody red, pulsing for a few moments before something I couldn't understand shifted about him. Long enough that his weeping ceased, draining into something hollow and reserved as he cradled Nico's corpse. Long enough that I reasserted control over my frayed emotions, pulling them into a semblance of order.

At my side, Regis stared on impassively, uncaring. The Elderwood Guardian crooned, sinking and compressing from the weight of everything around us.

Toren let out a shuddering breath, his breath misting in the cool rain. For the moment, the downpour had lightened to a drizzle, but the phoenix-blooded mage was still drenched to the bone. He gently laid Nico's body on the ground, his shifting eyes clouded.

"It feels wrong to leave his body here, cold in the rain," he muttered, as if just now finding the words. His voice was a deceptively calm baritone, with just the slightest hint of a quiver. The light-haired mage brushed his hand across Nico's eyes, closing the lids as raindrops splashed off of them. "Too much wrong has happened already to him."

As Toren spoke, I finally forced my mechanical limbs to move. I put one foot in front of the other, moving the muscles that controlled my forward momentum.

Sylvie raised a slender hand, brushing it through Nico's hair and pushing it away from his face. She pursed her lips, staring down at the body as she contemplated what she would do.

My bond had known Elijah, just as I did.

"Nico did not deserve this kind of end," my bond agreed somberly. "It wasn't right. But he doesn't deserve to just rot in a ditch, either. Forgotten. Abandoned."

I stopped once I reached them, my breath shuddering as I forced myself to stare down at the body of the man who had been my best friend in two lives. And in both, I had failed him. His skin was already unnaturally pale. That hadn't changed, even in death.

But as I looked down at the face, which had been twisted in hideous, rabid snarls and horrid anger, I wanted to imagine it was peaceful, now. Those muscles didn't tense and pull his lips into sneers or make his eyes flash with malevolence. I could imagine that he was at peace, in some sense of the word.

"Will he find another life, somewhere?" I asked, my voice somber as I stared down at the familiar features. "Will he get that second chance, phoenix-born?"

The arts of the phoenix were those of rebirth and reincarnation. Toren surely knew some of them.

"I don't know," Spellsong replied quietly. Gently, he passed Nico's body to Sylvie, who took it with the same sort of sorrowful reverence. "I hope so. I want him to be happy, too."

My head bowed. It was the answer I'd expected, but it hurt all the same.

Toren's jaw worked, and it looked like he'd swallowed something horrid and was struggling to cough it back up. "He was broken inside. His mind was twisted and pulled by Agrona's spells. Like dough, beaten and mashed and pulped by a fist."

Spellsong looked strangely human as he stayed there, kneeling with his head bowed. His shoulders rose and fell with every breath, the drizzle of the rain pinging off his martial clothing. "But it's done now," he whispered. "No Legacy. No death. No destruction."

He looked up at Sylvie imploringly as he slowly stood. "Nobody can know I did it."

My bond nodded slowly, her eyes sad.

I allowed myself to think of the reason Toren had come here. It felt just as planned as Tess' trap, in a way. He swooped in at the last minute, ensuring that Nico would die, and hoping that the blame for the killing stroke would not fall on him. Just like Seris Vritra, he sought to undermine the High Sovereign's plans from within.

My fists clenched as I stared down at my kneeling bond, still tracing Elijah's features. "In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity," I muttered dully, thinking of an old saying from Earth.

Abruptly, Toren barked out a sardonic laugh, his shoulders shaking slightly as he turned away from us, staring up at the sky. He waved his hand, summoning something from his dimension ring: an anvil-shaped artifact that swirled with aether and mana.

My eyes widened as I honed in on the item, recognizing the aetheric signature radiating off of it immediately. Sylvie, too, sensed what I did. The same sort of fluctuations were there as around the points of massacres across Sapin. A teleportation artifact.

But Toren's next words derailed that line of thought with the same efficiency of a massive boulder placed atop train tracks, the towering monolith colliding with the steam engine of my mind.

"Sun Tzu," he chuckled, finding some sort of relief in each syllable uttered. "The Art of War. Who would have guessed that book still existed?"

I focused on Toren with abrupt intensity, catching on to his words. Because I had been quoting that book from a general in a world past, and Toren had accurately pieced it together. That served to refocus me, to draw me onto another truth.

Toren Daen was a reincarnate. He knew me. He knew Nico. Somehow, he'd known about both of us. About Tessia's curse in her core. About why Cecilia slew herself… He knew so much.

And yet I didn't know him.

Sylvie had theorized that Toren was some sort of Returner, like the kind from novels and stories on Earth. She thought he was a man who had gotten a second chance, just like I had, after some sort of doomed future. A future where the Legacy had descended, where he'd been a companion of mine and I'd told him everything.

I'd thought the idea impossible. Fantastical. Even aether itself… Even aether itself couldn't be that powerful, could it? Yet how else would he know of Cecilia's sacrifice, something kept close in every life? It was too absurd. But what was more fantastically absurd than being born again in another world? What was more absurd than the idea of reincarnation itself?

"Wait," Sylv said abruptly as Toren turned to leave, her words softer than the late summer rain. "You made a promise to me."

Toren stopped abruptly, still facing away from us.

"You said you'd tell Arthur everything you could," my draconic bond pressed again. "When we last met, you said you would do it."

The mage turned slowly, sweeping his gaze across us. I could see the consideration in his features: the way his brow furrowed and his lips pursed. "You're all here. Sylvie. Arthur." His eyes drifted from my bond, then to me. His tone of voice was soft. Considering. Then his eyes—each pupil seeing too much—drifted a little bit further to the side. "And—I guess Regis is here too, isn't he?"

For the second time in only a few minutes, I felt disorienting confusion rumble through me as Toren stared directly at the phantom shade of King Grey a few feet from me. He tilted his head, looking the figure up and down. "He looks different than I would have expected, but I guess the magical ingredients in his makeup are different than they would have been. Less Uto, and more… Well."

Sylv's mouth opened into an astonished little oh, and I felt my jaw drop. Someone else could see Regis? Someone else knew his name?

Some part of me—some buried part of me, deep inside—still thought that I was somehow insane. That the entire conversation with the phantom shade of King Grey across Blackbend's walls felt like a fever dream, a vision created by the whirling storm and a mind burdened by too much.

But as Regis tilted his head, staring at Toren with characteristic apathy and unwilling to lend even another word, I felt another measure of validating relief.

"You can see him?" I asked, my mouth numb and my words slow. Not even Sylvie could see Regis. "I mean—"

"This being is fashioned of my soul," a new voice interrupted. It was cool, melodic, and yet also warm all at once in a paradox of color. "It is foolish to think that my son would not sense what he has always known."

I whirled, trying to pinpoint the source of the voice. Sylvie shifted nervously as my mind stuttered into one of automatic fear. The presence that voice carried, the sheer amount of power and wisdom imbued into every syllable… It reminded me of Aldir on that fateful day in the Councilroom.

A phantom stood before King Grey, tall and poised. Her fiery red hair blew in a breeze I couldn't feel, revealing skin covered in burns. So, so many burns. But she was somehow still beautiful, despite the utter horror played across her body, or maybe because of it. She glowed with a faint outline, like an angel backlit by the setting sun. She looked as regal as a summer queen gracing the earth with her steps.

The ghost stared down at Regis, her burning eyes peeling him apart with casual ease. I couldn't tell if she projected interest, fear, or something else. And in turn, Regis matched the ghost with a cool, impassive stare. Unblinking and unfeeling.

A ghost of an asura tracks Toren's steps, I remembered Aldir saying. And this ghost looked familiar, too. Those high cheekbones framed a dignified face that I thought I might have seen once before. That shade of hair had burned brightly in a fight, not long ago.

Aurora Asclepius. Mother of Chul, the Rogue Hero.

"An interesting curse that you have, Weapon of the Titans," she muttered, looking Regis up and down. "A familiar one. How do you bear it?"

"I am a sword," Regis responded immediately. "Nothing more. I am no more caged than the wind."

The phoenix's mouth quirked slightly, as if she were amused by this response. "So says you," she said, her tone almost mocking. "But unlife as a spirit will wear on you eventually. Have you seen to your bond with care?"

I watched the exchange distantly, noting how—for the first time—Regis' mouth curved down into a frown. "I have done my duty."

"You were forged from the foundations of my soul," the phoenix mused, strolling around the shade of Regis. I got the distinct impression that he was uncomfortable, something I would have never guessed from the unfeeling mask of King Grey. Aurora Asclepius drifted with the momentum and cool calculation of a predator. "If your duty forgoes compassion, then Wren failed in your creation. It is a spirit's duty to assist those they watch to a better future, rather than simply observe. Judgment without compassion is rote cruelty."

The phantom didn't respond, just continued to stare ahead. "You cannot know me."

Aurora only laughed, a melodic sound as she returned to her original place. It was the kind of laugh I heard from my mother whenever Ellie said something a little foolish: a motherly sound that resonated with grace and understanding.

"Regis took a little piece of Aurora's soul when you swung Dawn's Ballad through her relic," Toren said quietly, watching the interplay of ghosts. His voice betrayed the barest hint of annoyance as he spoke. "He's connected to you, and you've grown accustomed to the sense of his soul. I suppose it stands to reason you can see my mother now, too, if they're close enough for resonance."

The phoenix shade turned from Regis, the light drizzle falling through her as she looked me up and down. "Anchor," she said, nodding slowly. A ghost of a smile pulled at the edges of her lips, making her burned face seem brighter. "I have heard much about you, Otherworld King. Your deeds precede you."

I resisted the urge to swallow, feeling slightly overwhelmed. Instead, I performed the barest bow of respect. "Aurora Asclepius," I said evenly. "Your name precedes you as well. I am honored to meet you."

She heard much about me, I thought, filing her words away. That implies it is not she who knew of me so intimately, but Toren still. This cannot be dismissed so simply.

"Arthur," Sylvie said quietly, seeming uncertain. She held Nico's body close, as if it might stave off the chill, "I can't see what you're looking at. Is it…"

My gaze darted to the dragon at my feet. I could feel her emotions over our bond so purely. She wanted to see, too. She didn't want to keep being blind. Every moment where Regis bored his metaphysical holes through my soul and she was unable to bear that burden, too, was a burden all on its own.

Toren took a few steps forward, disrupting my thoughts. He looked up at me for a moment, licking his lips nervously, before kneeling in front of Sylvie. "Do you trust me? I can show you what he sees."

Sylv looked up at me, gauging my emotions. I nodded slowly in affirmation, unsure where this would lead.

Toren pressed a couple of fingers to his heart, and I felt his aether pulse. My eyes widened as purple motes of that purest energy flowed from his chest with control I could hardly believe, before it flowed to his fingertips. And when he drew them from his heart and pressed them above Sylv's, a solid tendril of energy followed.

No, I thought. Not a tendril. A vein.

As the process continued, Aurora Asclepius knelt beside Toren as well, seeming to drift like some sort of ethereal fae. She rested her arms on his back in a comforting, motherly measure that must have been done a thousand times.

The ghost watched the young man with a fond warmth that I understood. The same warmth that I'd seen in the moment I'd entered this world, crying in a straw hut in the middle of Ashber. Watching the ghost of an asura stand with Toren Daen made something in the back of my mind—something I'd kept shuttered and locked away since this war started in earnest—seep free like sand through the fingers.

I struggled against the tears that burned in the back of my eyes. How long has it been since I've spoken to Mom?

Reynolds still called me son. But… would Alice call me that? After everything I'd done?

Regis turned away from the scene, the shade sizzling into distorted mist, and then nothing at all. Something about his conversation with the phoenix shade had shaken him.

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Sylv sensed my heavy, mourning emotions as I watched the slow interplay of man and bond, so much different than my own. "Arthur," she thought softly, "are you okay?"

I swallowed back a shaky breath, the weight of everything that had been happening during this storm compounding more. I felt like a rubber band pulled in too many directions. First with Nico, then with this, and…

I sniffled a little. It's nothing, Sylv, I thought back. It's just… you'll see.

And when my draconic bond—kneeling in the mud and with Nico's cooling body held close to her her chest—looked at Toren Daen again, their hearts beating in rhythm with a vein of aether linking them together, her breath choked in her throat.

Toren smiled slightly, still kneeling, Aurora's burned hand on his shoulder. "It's only fair, really," he said softly. "I know so much about both of you. More than I have any right to know. It eases me, for you to know a bit more of me."

The point of all this slowly returned to me as I pulled myself away from the awe and uncertainty. Toren still knelt across from Sylvie in the mud, his head bowed and enshrouded by a loving ghost.

"I know of a future," he finally said, his hands clenching over his knees. "A future that could have been."

I pressed my lips together, silent. Sylv pushed past her shock at Aurora's presence. "Did you live it?" she asked, sounding for a moment like the young girl she technically was. "Were you reincarnated here, too, and then chose to go back? When things went wrong?"

Surprisingly, it was Aurora who spoke next. "Nothing of that nature, young Indrath," she chided, her tone warm in a way that made red rise in my bond's cheeks. "Though it was I who brought my son's soul here from Earth and bonded him, there was no influence of aevum that I can attest to. This timeline is the first that Toren has ever been in this world himself."

Sylvie frowned, even more confused. She opened her mouth to ask something again, looked at Aurora's wry smile, then closed it, flushing again. It was an expression I had rarely ever seen on my foxy dragon's face.

But my analytical mind caught on one facet of the phoenix's words. The first time that Toren has ever been in this world himself.

Toren raised his head, looking at me. His eyes flicked about with micromovements, each of them scanning the lines of my face. "You caught the last part of Aurora's words, didn't you? You're smart, Arthur. You can see the big picture when others can't."

My brow furrowed, a slight hint of unease building in my stomach. Spellsong's eyes felt too knowing for me. "And why do you think so?"

Toren was quiet for a few seconds. "You haven't ever worn glasses," he said after a moment, giving me the strangest look. "You certainly know how they work. When light shines through the lens, it refracts. The waves bend, focusing and warping the image coming through. Depending on what kind of glasses you wear—whether the lenses are red, blue, green, or whatever—you can filter out the light of the world around you, or highlight another color. You can entirely change your perspective just from something over your eyes."

Toren began to pace back and forth in the mud. He appeared deeply in thought, his brow furrowed and the muscles of his face almost contorted as if he were in pain.

"My knowledge of the future was nothing like Rinia's," he said after a moment. "It wasn't anything like Mordain's either. I think it's the strangest form of knowledge I've ever heard of. It was shaded by a unique perspective when it was granted to me, way back on Earth. I mean, Rinia and Mordain both look at possible futures, I'm pretty sure, like following different threads—"

My fists tightened as Toren chuckled a bit, clearly trying to dance around something. "Get to the point, Spellsong," I said, agitation rising in my gut. "You're trying to avoid it. But you said you'd speak."

The young phoenix mage heaved a sigh. He took a deep breath in as if he were a sailor clinging to the mast of a ship as it approached a storm. His eyes shakily drifted to Nico's body, and Aurora Asclepius' shade slowly stood as well. "Sylvie wasn't entirely wrong in her assumptions. She just had the wrong framing. I never lived in this world, but I was given the chance to watch it from… a distance. Almost like Regis. Or Aurora. But also not."

Sylvie frowned, clearly not understanding the connection. But as I looked at Toren, piecing together what he said about perspective, and I thought I did understand.

Memories flowed through my head. Memories of a burning, orange-purple flame that used two others to haul me back from the brink. At the time, I hadn't remembered anything of the event beyond those three bonfires.

But as I stared at Toren, it was as if a dam I didn't know existed finally burst in the back of my head. Words whispered months ago registered as if they had been said just now.

"I know you. Perhaps you might not believe me. But I know you better than nearly any other. Your hopes. Your dreams. Your… Your fears. I've watched your story play out for years. I sympathized with your struggles. I stood on the edge of my seat as you failed, then cheered as you rose again. Every step of the way, I have watched and cared for your journey, for your story. I can say so, so much."

Toren himself had said as much at the end of our fight, hadn't he? He had been watching like an observer from afar.

"You watched my lives," I said after a moment, my voice hard as my face became an angry mask. "How?"

It was a single, simple word. Three letters: but the weight they carried bore down upon him like a controlled tidal wave. The idea that someone—or something—had been watching me from afar, just like Regis, sent unnerving tingles down my spine.

And to my surprise, even Aurora Asclepius' shade shied away from that word. It was a subtle thing in that phantom, but I had been trained in politics for decades. I saw the tightening around her eyes, the way her ethereal grace became a bit more rigid as her head tilted ever-so-slightly.

Toren was quiet for a moment. I could sense the discomfort radiating off him like heat from a stove as he failed to meet my eyes. The ambient mana churned with that reluctant nausea. "It was given to me by a person on Earth. They used a pseudonym of a turtle, but that probably doesn't matter. I don't know how they got the information they did. They might have been a Seer like Rinia, or maybe something entirely different. But they were the ones that presented me with this knowledge. Every now and then, they would show me glimpses into your life in this world."

Toren licked his lips. "I didn't think any of it was real. Not until I came here. Then I had to make do."

My hands clenched, my fingernails digging into my flesh. When ki had reemerged on Earth after the collapse of the Gilded Age of Technology, rumors had abounded about lost arts of divination and symbology. People began to awaken their ki centers and temper their meridians, just like old traditions of the Far East. If these techniques had merit, then perhaps the old methods of trigrams and feng shui did, too.

But none had ever borne fruit, as far as I was aware. I had done my fair share of research, but had never turned any conclusive results in my time as King.

But knowing what I did now, with my command over the aetheric particles around me… Then maybe there was something more to it. Something more to those stories of gods and beings who could see the future.

He said this person used a turtle as a pseudonym, I thought, my mind falling into the cold, analytical framework of Grey. The turtle has symbolized wisdom and knowledge throughout history, as well as time and immortality.

I remembered the all-seeing sensation of being judged when I looked into Regis' eyes less than an hour past, as a crown oversaw a bloody battlefield. That single crown felt like it had stretched the width of the universe itself. It was life, space, and time all at once.

Lady Myre had once told me that the aether had a sort of consciousness to it. A will that the dragons couldn't fully understand. And in that moment, I wondered how all of this fit together.

"I'm sorry, Arthur," Toren said quietly. "If I had known what I was truly witnessing… I wouldn't have watched. But… I wouldn't be here, wouldn't be who I am, wouldn't be doing what I could for the world, if I had not had an example. You showed me first what it meant to fight."

The phoenix shade chuckled slightly as I narrowed my eyes, still struggling to process what was being said.

I looked at the phoenix-born mage, silently digesting his words. For the moment, I pushed away all the nagging thoughts and biting uncertainties that his words brought up. I shoved aside the needling worries that Spellsong might know my deepest thoughts. I ignored the existential worries of some sort of Turtle-God divining a future for me. I ignored questions about what sort of Seer would send a soul from Earth to influence this world, and what purpose it might serve.

I asked the one question that mattered right now. The one question that I could use.

"What is going to happen next in this war?" I pressed, standing tall as Grey suppressed my worries for now. "You have been working to sabotage it from within, haven't you?"

Toren looked at Sylvie, who was gingerly drawing Nico's body into a dimension ring. His eyes clouded over as he stared at the corpse. "I don't know what comes next for you, Arthur," he said. "I did what I could to try and give you a chance. With the seeds I planted, Uto should have broken under torture in time before he could be executed by Agrona. Elenoir Kingdom didn't fall under the Sentry Line. And Nico… Nico is dead. That means Cecilia won't supplant Tessia this time. Agrona won't get his weapon.

"But I don't know any more, Arthur," the strawberry-blonde mage said, reluctantly. "I haven't known for months. Agrona himself is changing his tactics, and I can't understand the High Sovereign. He never acted as an evil dictator in that other future. He tried to recruit you by passing messages through Sylvie, as you were still a Lance. His angle is different now."

I shared a wide-eyed look with Sylvie. I knew she was processing this, her lips curling down in distaste. "Arthur would never join with my father," she said, standing up and pressing out her chest. Her lips curled back, revealing sharpened canines as her amber eyes flashed. "My father would have failed."

Toren spared my bond a sad smile. "You know Arthur better than I do," he said quietly, masking something behind that expression. "But that's beside the point."

The phoenix-born mage shook his head, his smile becoming a bit more potent in its sorrow. "Soon, Agrona is going to make his final push to win this war for Alacrya. Cadell—the Scythe who slew Sylvia—is here to finish the job. Neither I nor Seris know what he is doing, but I doubt you will be able to withstand the fallout, even as the King of this continent."

Sylvie's eyes widened at the mention of the mother she had never met, while I gritted my teeth. "Cadell," I whispered, finally putting a name to the beast who had taken Sylvia from me all those years ago. I remembered that bone-white hair, splaying about him like a graveyard shroud as he lowered in the air, his aura overwhelming. "He's here?"

"I know you want vengeance for your grandmother," Toren said, interrupting my train of thought. "But listen to me. Cadell is powerful, Arthur. He's strong enough to fight asura alone and emerge alive. I beat Taci, but I'm not sure I can beat him, and that means you need a contingency for when the war falls through. But that's not important right now. Because soon, Chul and I will be leaving to—"

Toren's burning eyes, which had been insistent as they held me pinned, suddenly widened. His words cut off as his breath caught in his throat. His hand shot to his chest, his fingers arching like crumpled steel as they grasped his heart. The mage stumbled backward, his aura fluctuating rapidly as he nearly fell to the ground.

The ghostly phoenix shade was faster than me. She swooped in, catching Toren's body as he tumbled backward like a pitched tree. Her movements were simultaneously graceful and worried as she lowered the young man to the ground, incorporeal spirit somehow touching mortal flesh.

"Toren," she said harshly, running a hand over his forehead to check his pulse. "What ails you? Tell me!"

Sweat beaded around Toren's head as Sylvie and I both rushed forward, worry and uncertainty streaking through our earlier emotions. Sylv called dark fire to her hands, purple particles of healing vivum surging around her hand as she knelt by Spellsong's side.

"Don't," he wheezed. "Not… wouldn't help. The soul," Toren wheezed, utterly unintelligible. His wide, pinprick eyes darted about, seeing things that none of us could perceive. His aura fluctuated rapidly around him, and the aether in his heart suddenly pulsed with a rhythm that sent rippling dawnlight spreading from his center.

And then the aether in his heart began to dwindle. It wasn't like a dispersion or a balloon bursting. No, the purple particles centered there started to swirl, as if they were funneling down an unseen drain. I could sense Toren's hold on them, and I got the impression he was sending it away somehow. With every thunderous pulse of his heart, that once-massive reserve of energy dwindled, shoved somewhere else.

My hand snapped out, grabbing Sylvie's wrist before she could lower her aetheric arts to Toren. I watched with bated breath as Spellsong's aether was slowly sent away.

"Seris," he said like a mourning dove's cry. "Seris. She's… She's in danger. Hurt. Asking for my—"

Then whatever it was that was happening snapped. Toren let out a ragged, wet cough, the aether around his heart nearly entirely gone. He blinked bloodshot eyes, then tried to force himself from Aurora's arms.

He only succeeded in pitching forward onto his hands and knees, his arms trembling as the mud absorbed them. "Fuck!" he cursed, slamming another fist into the ground. "Fuck! Aurora, Seris is under attack from… something. The infection—it had spread too far. Nearly everything. We need… need to go back now."

The asuran shade spared us a glance, before tending to her son again. "Toren, you need to replenish your lifeforce! It is too drained to be of any—"

Then her head snapped up, so quickly I could not perceive the movement. She stared at the roaring thunderstorm far above, her hands tense over Toren's shoulders. Those nimbuses of burning suns widened, panic overcoming her burned features as shadows claimed her visage. "Anchor!" she yelled, her voice echoing like a warcry and song all at once. "Cover us in Mirage Walk! Now! All of us! Shelter us from the sky!"

I was already acting, drawing on the ambient mana around me as I embraced my power. Instincts honed over two lifetimes guided my intent as I called on the earth around Sylv, Toren, and me, allowing it to subsume us in a sudden landslide.

In the meantime, I smoothed over my mana signature, forcing it to stay solid and still like the earth. In turn, I incorporated the slight flow of water, masking any and all watching senses with the penultimate technique of the pantheon race.

To the best of my ability, I called on the ambient mana to wash over Toren's weakly shuddering body. The world layered him like a cloak as he forced his rapid heartbeat to settle.

I didn't have the same supernatural control of my body as Sylv clung to me, her hands gripping my shirt as she restrained a whimper of fear. My pulse soared in my ears as the darkness of this cave clung to me. I held my breath, hoping against hope I had enough air in my lungs to wait out the oncoming hurricane.

Several seconds later, the true storm passed over.

Hundreds of mana signatures passed over the conjured hideout like a volley of arrows blotting out the sun. Each one individually was enough to make me lose any and all confidence in running away. Their strength was restrained; at least as restrained as they could be. But my sense for mana was honed for decades, and further heightened by my acclorite-infused senses.

Asura. Hundreds of asura, maybe even a thousand, each of them radiating an aura fit for war and ready for bloodshed, blurred eastward in a scream of power. Incalculable tons of energy pressed around me for an instant. Dragon, titan, pantheon, and more I did not recognize kept to a formation, each of them moving faster than the speed of sound.

Boom. Boom. Boom. The sound of their passing was like the thunder itself as I trembled in my makeshift grave. And at their front…

The storm served to mask the true depths of their power, but I recognized the signature at the front of the army. How could I not?

Aldir Thyestes rode the storm. I sensed his attention briefly washing over us, for barely an instant. I didn't know if he truly sensed us as I held my breath. Toren's body trembled.

And then they were surging east again, crossing the Grand Mountains and disappearing from my senses.

Where were they going? I thought, my lungs burning as I held position. I could sense Sylvie, too, trembling as she fought down oxygen deprivation. What in the hell is Lord Indrath doing?! The war treaty is still on!

Minutes ticked by like sand drifting from an hourglass, each grain a timer ticking toward death.

I brought us up from the earth when I was certain we were in the clear. I gasped for breath, drawing in green wind mana to nourish my lungs. There was immediate, cool relief as my shoulders heaved.

"They're going toward the Hearth," the asuran shade of Aurora Asclepius said with sudden fear. "No. No, they cannot be. It is impossible."

The ghost trembled visibly, staring off into the distance toward where the asura had disappeared. I was only distantly aware of it all, my mask of Grey utterly fractured. What was going on?! I needed to get back to the castle immediately and check on my information network. Had the asura tried to contact me in the past few minutes and failed? But if they had, then they could have afforded to wait for whatever this was.

I stood like that for a solid few minutes, catching my breath and trying to reorganize all that had happened. The Hearth. Was that the name of the abode of renegade phoenixes? It would make sense.

Toren weakly stumbled to his feet, just as disoriented as I was. He fumbled for a minute or two, withdrawing two items from his dimension ring. The strange teleportation artifact, and a spherical device that burned with a flashing red light. I only distantly recognized it as one of the Alacryan communication artifacts.

"We need to go back, Aurora," he said with tired panic, seeming to return to himself from whatever had siphoned the energy from his heart. "They're in danger. It's—"

And then, for the second time, my senses were split by an overwhelming sense of power.

A chill started at the very back of my neck, like ice cubes pressed by an unrelenting glove to my nape. And slowly, as if jagged claws were pulling those slabs of ice down my back, that cold traveled down my spine. The fingers of winter drew their death-touch across each ridge of my vertebrae, allowing that expanding lack of warmth to slowly freeze the blood in my veins solid.

I could almost picture my lips turning blue and my breath misting in the storm as I turned, my body rigid as a corpse, to the north.

Regis fuzzed back into existence, emerging from the darkness as he stood by my side, staring into the distance with his blank expression. Slowly, Toren limped to my side, his lips trembling as the distant skyline pulsed. "No," he said in denial. "No. No, no, no. It's just… It's Resonant. That's what he was doing with the massacres. Fuck, no. All those lives…"

At his back, Aurora Asclepius' body flared with a matching light, her eyes wide with horror.

Light split the sky a dozen miles away. Like a dozen streams of purple-orange starlight, veins of aether as thick as the Sehz River stretched from the far ends of the continent, each carrying unfathomable power to a single point. Each weaving artery flowed like the Aurora Constellate brought down to earth, carrying untold swaths of aether and multielemental mana with it. Even from leagues away, the concentrated power was so thick I could see the threads of yellow earth, green wind, red fire, and blue water, all ensconced by purple aether. The very darkness of the storm was banished by the intertwining lights, each stretch of dawnlight refracting in on themselves in a dizzying array of color.

Xyrus—the floating city sent into the heavens by the ancient mages in a testament to their power—was alight like a candlewick. Ritualistic, unstoppable power coalesced there like a supernova ready to collapse.