The stale air of the chamber beneath the ancient tower chilled against the blood rushing to Erith’s face. Cerus stood beside the elder, eyes fixed on him, as Erith pressed back toward the crystal mass.

“I won’t let you hurt Rhymera,” Erith said under his breath. He saw her again, bound within the carriage. Beyond that image stood those responsible—Cerus and the elder before him, Maeric a step behind, apprentices circling the chamber’s rim.

Cerus tilted his head, his tone smooth as the white shards beside Erith.

“There’s no need for harm to come to Rhymera, Erith. That choice is yours to make, not mine.”

Erith shook his head and turned to Maeric. “And you’re fine with this? She’s Rin’s mother.” Anger cracked through his voice.

Maeric’s jaw tightened. He looked tired, hollow, and full of quiet sorrow.

Cerus spoke before he could answer.

“Leorin Varsk,” he began, “second in his class among the officers at the Academy. Second only to Estorath here.”

He nodded once toward the elder, then back to Erith.

“A remarkable feat for a runaway who arrived with only a first name.”

His tone was soft, yet sharp as a blade.

“He left his family behind. Hated what they were—The masters were taken aback when they discovered him to be a Varsk. To have such disdain to be part of such a prominent family…But young Leorin saw what she was, wouldn’t you agree?”

He turned to Maeric, inviting confirmation.

“A petty Kaida smuggler. Willing to aid Loradun regardless of the horrors it created. Treasonous. A traitor who sold her conscience—her loyalty—for coin.”

Maeric didn’t look up. His eyes flickered. He closed them, exhaling slowly, the sound heavy with resignation.

Each step echoed in the chamber as Cerus moved closer to Erith. “Under the Illuminary, I may cast judgement in the best interest of the Kingdom of Aldarath. A brother of Ranoric Estorath would understand—there is no greater calling than to act when salvation is within reach.”

Maeric lifted his head, breaking the silence that followed. His voice was strained, every word pulled from deep within. “We stand here in the fading echo of another age. In the aftermath of whatever reckoning was cast here.”

He let the words settle, then shook his head. “I do not wish for anyone to be harmed—whatever their past may have been. These ruins have endured enough."

He looked to Erith.

“Please, Erith.”

The word carried more than a plea. It carried surrender.

Erith’s heartbeat thundered. He couldn’t bear to look at Maeric, not now.

The sound of the word still rang in his ears, the weight of what it truly meant stirred inside him.

He shifted his focus to the elder instead, who continued to study him as though appraising a fine Kaida gem.

Erith turned toward the crystal mass behind him, lowering his head and gave a single nod.

A low grin crossed the elder’s face as he stepped past Cerus, coming to stand beside Erith before the crystal.

“The shards require a—”

“I know what to do.” Erith’s voice was hollow, but sure. “It’s a finer line of Kaida than I’ve ever needed, but I see how it would flow.”

The elder’s grin deepened.

“Then I shall see it as well. You’re surprised?” he said, noting Erith’s reaction. “Faint it may be, one can leverage their own Kaida to seek out other sources of Kaida around them.”

He leaned closer toward Erith, who hovered his hands over a shard jutting out from the mass.

Erith drew in a slow breath, closing his eyes. His hands trembled, but he held them steady above the shard.

I’m sorry, Thatch. You tried to warn me…

The elder’s eyes widened as Erith drew a thread of Kaida between his palms—vast, yet impossibly thin.

When he lowered his hands, the shard answered with a cry. A screech erupted through the chamber, bright sparks flared where Kaida met crystal, and a pale smoke unfurled around his fingers.

The shrill sound deepened. Beneath it, something else lay—fragments, as if thousands of voices melded into the shriek of the burning shard.

His hands met incredible resistance, struggling to keep a hold around the shard, until his hands snapped away and he stumbled backwards.

The elder’s arm shot out and caught him. 

For a single, disorienting heartbeat Erith saw something else at the center of the room—an iron frame where the shard should have been. Strangers paced around the chamber at the edges of the light where torches dotted the walls.

It vanished. The chamber snapped back to its dimly lit stillness. The elder held him tight, eyes fixed on the shard. Erith turned and found a faint groove etched into the ghostly sheen where the last smoke had curled away.

The vision had jolted Erith, but as Cerus stepped closer, his plan centered back into his mind. He seized the elder, and drew a thin needle of Mura from his fingertip, pressing it to the man’s neck.

“Step closer and I put this through his throat.”

Cerus froze. His gaze locked with Erith’s. Slowly, he lifted his hands.

“That must be exhausting, Erith, to spend the last of your Mura I gave you so—”

“And after I put it through him, I’ll put it through mine.”

Cerus’s expression didn’t change, but something in his posture did. He gave a single gesture and stepped back.

“I’m taking him up,” Erith directed. “If I hear a boot on the steps, I kill us both. I won't be your salvation.”

He yanked the elder forward. The old man stumbled, catching himself against Erith’s arm. They moved toward the wooden stairs, step by step.

The apprentices peeled back from the walls. None dared move closer.

Erith kept the needle pressed to the elder’s throat. “Move,” he hissed.

The old man’s pulse hammer against the point as they climbed up the narrow wooden staircase.

Cerus stood at the chamber’s center, hands still raised. The calm in his eyes thinned, as if weighing something he hadn’t before.

Where the wooden steps met the open inner wall of the spiral stone steps, Erith paused and turned, just once, to look at Maeric.

Maeric stood rigid beside Cerus, one hand curled at his side, the other tracing one of the blackened scars—a remnant of the Balance, along his neck. His eyes, once filled with comfort, were vacant. Erith searched that face for the man he had known, for a flicker of reason, but found nothing. Only distance.

Something inside him twisted. Anger. Despair. Something too tangled to name. It all blurred together until it was only pain. Blood streaked down the elder’s neck where Erith’s finger pressed. He swallowed hard and turned away, forcing the elder to climb.

They ascended in silence. Erith kept listening for any sign of defiance below, but the stairwell remained still. The air eventually grew warmer, thicker, until a thin light began to gather—daylight pressing at their backs.

At the top of the stairwell within base of the ruined tower, Erith withdrew the Mura needle. The motion locked his muscles. His breath came sharp and heavy. He steadied himself against the elder to keep his balance.

“We’ll walk to camp,” he said, glancing over toward the circle of wagons in the clearing. “You tell them to give me Rhymera, and we’ll leave by horse. Then I’ll let you go outside the camp.”

The elder gave a short, dry laugh. “And I’m to believe I walk away from this unscathed? I may be the only one alive who can finish what you began.”

“Then I’m not worried.” Erith’s tone wavered between certainty and exhaustion. “You could barely sense the Kaida before you. I've known there’s been one wielder remaining at the camp, sitting beside Rhymera this whole time.”

The elder glanced back at him, awe and curiosity passing over his face.

“To cut those shards at all,” Erith murmured as they moved toward the encampment, “you’d need another lifetime of training. I’m not going to take a life from—”

But his words trailed off. His gaze drifted past the elder, toward the tree line beyond the camp.

A rider burst from the forest at full gallop. Their figure was small atop the horse, cloak streaming behind. The horses' hooves struck the ground in a sharp, frantic rhythm that echoed across the quiet ruins.

In the forest behind, birds scattered in a black wave. Trees bent, splintering one after another. Something vast forced its way through.

For a moment, all sound vanished except for the pounding of hooves. Then came the groan of wood tearing apart.

A deep black claw effortlessly parted the canopy, giving way to a distorted figure as dark as the night sky emerging from the forest. 

The Murasi, as tall as the trees, stepped into the clearing, pursuing the rider racing toward the encampment.

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