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Toren Daen
I fell through the stone at speed.
The cold pulled at me. The mists of the Unseen warped and drew at my tattered clothes, sapping saturation from the hopeful fire I clung to so desperately. But despite it all, I wouldn't let myself drift away.
I heaved on all my anchors, clutching them with every reserve of strength I had left. The weight of Aurora's sacrifice—the utter silence of this godforsaken Unseen—compounded with the gray. But I couldn't. I couldn't let myself evaporate.
The world passed by in a blur as I darted toward the resonant alignment like a planet caught in a star's gravity well. The shapes and outlines of all that I passed didn't factor in at all. Arches, catacombs, mazes and dungeons and warping space… None of it mattered. Even as I bore witness to a reaper's tree with a hundred fruits of crystallized space, their fractal-patterned skins reflecting the low light. Even as I honed in on a single one of those geode-fruits, several meters tall. Even as I dove into that well of compressed space.
The only sound I could hear was the soul I approached, echoing like a dirge of heartbeats. It was like a roiling, thundering drum, strong and sure and unrelenting. I thought I almost recognized it, but as caverns passed me by, I didn't let anything like thought or contemplation stop me.
For passing heartbeats, I knew what it was like to descend through the layers of the underworld. I was Orpheus, delving down and down and down as I coasted the River Styx. I knew not what song I chased, but still I chased it.
And finally, I emerged into a great cavern.
The first thing that struck me was how colorless the place was. Even as a forgotten spirit, I still seemed to have more life to me than every inch of wherever I'd found myself.
Almost the entire expanse was clustered with geodes of dark crystal, each glimmering in low firelight. They thrust like gleaming daggers from the faded stones, tempting any wary passers-by with their gleaming edges. Every glass-sharp rim seemed a little too eager as I flew downward, stretching out in prisms the length of my arm. Almost as if they were reaching out, beckoning in fell whispers.
A river meandered through the air itself, defiant of gravity as it branched and split a dozen times. But the water itself looked black. But it wasn't black. For the first time ever, as I breezed past the countless streams of water, I thought that there was a difference between black and a lack of light.
Because that water wasn't just darkness. It lacked light on some fundamental level that I couldn't really comprehend. The way the river undulated through the air like hovering floodplains made me hesitant to approach it, even as a ghost.
And—at the very, very bottom of the grayscale expanse—was a single dot of color. A spark of orange-red stood against the endless monochrome.
The creeping ice sunk somewhere deep, deep into my spirit as I halted, hovering in front of the source of the resonance. Disbelief, disgust, and smoldering fury mingled with the pull of the Beyond as I stared at the only source of hope.
Chul slept in a lotus pose, meditating with his hands on his knees. The young half-phoenix had seen better days. He didn't look quite gaunt, but his muscular frame was somehow caving in on itself, just like those arches so high above. He was covered in unhealing cuts that still bled a steady stream of red liquid, the scarlet crystal clear in the darkness. His robes were the same empty gray as those of the prison all around him. They were dirty and stained, wholly unfit for an asura.
His hair was no longer so vibrant. Where once it had been a red as true as Soulplume's, it seemed that the lifeless undertones of the world around him were leaching it. The scruffy, matted beard that was scraped across his chin only added to his bedraggled appearance.
He looked restless. Though he was in a meditative pose, the way his brows furrowed like a great vise clamping around a whirling thought told me that whatever sort of sleep or rest he was trying to get, it wasn't working. The dirt-stained muscles of his jaw were clenched tight enough to crack boulders.
Chul looked… like he was in pain. And he looked so, so much like his mother that it sent a rod of sharp pain through my soul. The same brows, the same hair, the same expressions… Everything that set Aurora apart was sculpted into the world in the place of this young phoenix. Even the Brand of the Banished stood out on his neck, glowing against nothingness.
I remembered the last time I'd spoken to this blustering man-child, imbued with so much rage and sorrow at the pointless loss of life in Burim. He'd professed that he'd change things. He'd make right his wrongs.
And deep inside, I'd known that he couldn't succeed.
I'd felt angry. Furious, because of the lives he'd taken. Furious, because nothing would ever fix it. Furious, because, deep inside, some part of me saw this manchild as my brother.
No, I thought, my grief swirling about with my anger as I stared at the meditating boy. The cloying mists of the Beyond sank deeper into my spirit. No, this can't be it. This isn't the way.
I clenched my shaded fists as I stared at this murderer, feeling a growl build in the back of my throat. My eyes bored through his chest, centering on his mana core as I heard the dirge of his pulsesong. The rhythm of his very soul.
I felt like a rubber band, stretched in too many different directions by every one of my chaotic emotions. My anger, my fear, my grief… They raged with the silence.
Aurora, what do I do? I begged, trembling as I stared down at my only chance. I don't want to do this. I don't want this to be the way forward.
My mother didn't answer as I stared down at her son. But—despite the chaotic maelstrom of my emotions—I did know what she would say.
"Take that step," I could almost hear her whispering in my ear. "Help your brother. Teach him to be better, as you promised."
For a moment, the light of that truth scoured away my indecision. The dark clouds of my thoughts evaporated, giving me clear purpose. It didn't matter what I wanted. It didn't matter that I hated this manchild.
What mattered was that Aurora had given up everything for me. She'd given up everything for him.
I honed in on the resonance, my vision blurring with mist. With a snarl, I shoved my burned fingers past the clothes and flesh and bone, before wrapping them around the half-phoenix's core.
When I'd been alive, I'd known that mana cores were a connection to the physical realm. It was something in how they concentrated a person's willpower, containing and controlling their abilities. Without a mana core, humans were subject to the world and all its dangers. With a mana core, however?
The world was subject to us.
When I'd Integrated, my understanding of this had broadened even further. Mana cores were agency in a world without it. They were purpose in the purposeless, a path of true individuality in a universe that cared little.
Mana cores were the path to transcendence. They were the incubating egg, nurturing a mage as they influenced the energy in the world around them toward becoming something… more.
An incubating egg, I thought with gritted teeth as the tips of my charred digits passed through the sheer white sheen of Chul's core. The egg of my mana core held Aurora's spirit, anchoring her here even before we bonded.
Some part of my spirit had hatched when I'd broken the final ceiling of magecraft, leaving the shell of a mana core behind. To the understanding etched into my spirit, cores were redundant, old things that were cast aside like molted feathers.
But—just this once—I nestled back in the egg. I felt as much as saw a feather slowly coalesce from nothingness, burning orange-bright against the confines of Chul's snow-white mana core.
The world around me sharpened. Senses I hadn't known I'd been missing filtered through me again, battering me with the terrible possibility of life. I did and did not smell. I did and did not hear. I did and did not see. I could and could not sense the mana around me.
I took a breath, feeling the strange, tantalizing agony of existing on the periphery. I stood with one foot over the abyss, one on solid ground. I was a thing of two worlds. Alive and dead, phoenix and djinn, Earth and Alacrya. Twinsoul.
Another duality etched its way into me as my shade shivered, overwhelmed with the sudden sensation. The misty pull of the Beyond drifted away as I anchored myself to a lighthouse. It was still there, looming on the periphery of this single beach of dry land, waiting for me to make a mistake. But like a great beast retreating from prey that had found a cove, I found respite from the tearing vapor.
But when I heard, it wasn't through my ears. The subtle flow of the water—which seemed to lack so many frequencies and rhythms I'd grown accustomed to—reached me from somewhere else. From someone else.
Chul opened his eyes. Purelake blue and volcano orange stared into my burning suns, piercing somewhere deep into me.
For a moment, I remembered when Aurora had first appeared to me. I'd been bleeding out in the Clarwood Forest, my chest a ruined mess and my thoughts a fog. Norgan had just been killed, slaughtered pointlessly by the Joans. I'd been so angry. So hopeless and empty inside, so I'd just taken it all out on the mana beasts around me. I'd thrown myself into the pyre, burning away so my enemies couldn't get the chance.
And then an angel had descended from on high, beautiful and kind. She'd come to me, asking if I wanted to make things better. Asking if I would give myself for another, for a world where brothers wouldn't die needlessly.
That moment remained in my head, held in poignant pain as Chul and I watched each other. I hadn't come down from the sky like an angel descending from the heavens to care for a broken child. I'd arrived like a mangled wraith delving into the underworld itself, burned and charred like a vengeful spirit and ensorcelled in everything but that light of hope that Lady Dawn always brought.
I was a fractured demon, cast from greatness and limping in defeat. I was so, so far from the example that had been set for me. So far from what my mother had been.
Chul's hand came up to his chest, his dirt-scarred and cracked fingernails digging into his tattered robes. No words passed between us as we stared at each other.
I could sense a bit of Chul's emotions as he stared at me. Mine and his were mirrored deep in our chests. I could sense the fires of his grief, casting their null light across the reflecting moon of his anger. Just like mine. The emotions that trickled over were so terribly, infuriatingly in sync with mine.
Chul's eyes roamed across my spirit, uncomprehending. "You are not real," he said, as if trying to convince himself. "You are another illusion, sent by the Indraths to tear me apart."
I gritted my teeth. Chul and I were not bonded like I had been with his mother, but our souls had been dragged closer. I could sense his intent as it interwove with his heartfire.
I didn't know how to respond to the man Aurora had wanted to be my brother. I had come down, following a vain hope, then sunk my talons into his core and anchored myself here, successfully fending off the grip of the Beyond; but I had nothing to say. Nothing that wouldn't lead to inevitable pain.
"I'm… not," I said weakly. The words were strangely melodic, held captive in falling notes.
Chul was silent for a while, his heartbeat slowing. That look of unease and quiet agony on his face darkened as the thoughts I knew would follow tumbled one after the other.
"You're dead, Toren Daen," he said quietly. "You've left your Vessel behind."
I opened my mouth. I imagined that, were I still living, my lips would be dry. The answer that would have left my throat was a "yes." Yes, I was dead. Yes, I'd left my Vessel behind. Yes, our mother was dead.
But I couldn't force out the words. No physical action halted me. My throat could not clench with reluctance, and my voice would not falter so long as my shade held strong. But still, I held my tongue.
I realized suddenly that I didn't want Chul to reach the truth. Already, the pain he'd held in the crease of his brows and the hunch of his mighty shoulders was something I knew deeply. But I felt the agony of Aurora's sacrifice tearing at me still, the wound fresh in its utter silence. No matter how much I hated Lady Dawn's other son, I never wanted anyone to feel what I felt right now.
Chul read the truth from the lines of my seared face. I could withhold the words all I wished, but that would not stop the understanding. His lip trembled as he stared at me, his pulsesong begging for me to deny it.
And when I didn't, tears fell from the half-phoenix's eyes. He howled abruptly, his fists clenching as he shook with all that bundled grief. I wanted to howl, too, but I felt weak. I'd exhausted some part of my soul when I'd first returned, sobbing like a wretched child on the stone floor of the upper catacombs.
Chul's bellow shook the cavern, the sound rumbling through the too-sharp jutting crystals and making the dark water ripple. It seemed to take part of his soul with it, a light that he'd always had leaving his chest with the understanding.
He howled like I had, lamenting the silence.
When it was done, the halfblooded man's eyes were still wild, each of them shaking and darting about. I could sense it in his blood, that rising need to move or do something or vent it. His massive shoulders shook, sweat lining them and soaking through his rags. That howl wasn't enough. It could never be enough to expel all that boiled within him.
And then Chul whirled on his feet, orienting toward a dark part of the cavern I hadn't noticed before, and charged.
I was abruptly yanked along, my perception whirling with the whiplash as the young asura bolted at superspeed toward… a stairway. I could see it now: under rune-etched arches of that same, lifeless gray stone that barred every other way, a stairway tunneled upward. On and on and on that upward tunnel went, the steps vanishing into an unnatural haze.
The young phoenix drank deeply of his mana core, pumping more and more across his muscles as he reached the first step. He glared upward in complete and utter hatred, his muscled body brimming with contained fervor.
And without an instant for me to even question what was happening, Chul blurred upward, racing along the steps at hypersonic speeds. The gray became a blur as Lady Dawn's son engaged his bloodright, flying for all he was worth through the tunnels.
Boom boom. Boom boom. Boom boom. Every pulse of his heart hurled him higher and higher. Chul channeled his grief in a way I could not. He took it, beat it into a train of rage, and boarded the engine of his fury, letting the soaring fires carry him. His emotions washed over me, practically the only thing I could even sense as my shade was hauled along in turn. Tears streamed from his eyes as he clenched his teeth, his only focus on the pathway ahead.
It felt as if he'd convinced himself, deep inside, that if he could only reach whatever was at the top of this staircase, Aurora would be there waiting for him. He kept on going for minutes more, chasing some distant vision I couldn't see.
But something was wrong. Though Chul was moving faster than any jet engine and burning every ounce of his precious little mana reserves, the scenery never changed. The endless stairway remained endless, uncaring of his flight or his sorrow. He continued to move up and up and up, but separated as I was from the mortal plane, I had an itch that something was wrong.
Chul growled again, his manaflow sputtering out. His defective core couldn't hold much mana at all, and the sweat lining his brow dripped like rain down to his chest as his heartbeat thumped weakly. Over the past minutes of constant, unrestrained exertion through his upward ascent, the half-asura had never thought to measure his mana usage at all.
He drifted back down to the steps, heaving for breath. Still, the fire in his eyes didn't dim. Hell, it seemed even brighter now, even as his core lost its light. He took a weak step up, his legs trembling.
"I'll reach… the top," he growled weakly, blinking sweat from his eyes. "I'll reach the top, and then I can make this right."
"And how long will that take?" I asked quietly, feeling too tired to lash out in the way I wanted to. As far as I could tell, the stairs still kept going up with no sign of stopping any time soon. I didn't even know where we were or what had happened after my death, but flying blindly up a staircase when at least three dragons were nearby felt like a poor choice. "What even is at the top of this—"
I drifted, turning back to look at where Chul had come. I expected to see another endless abyss of stairs, this time leading down instead of up. After all, the bulky phoenix must have flown for countless miles at the speed he'd been ascending.
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But that was not what greeted me. Instead, I saw a few gray steps leading down to a familiar cavern that was covered in black crystal. The soundless dark water flowed about in taunting streams, each branch like mocking serpents.
"What the hell?" I muttered, my sunlit eyes widening as I took in the impossible sight.
Chul's mana core chose that time to sputter out, nearly every ounce of his energy expended. The bulky phoenix groaned, wavering on his feet, before his legs buckled. He fell backward in a haphazard tumble, rolling down the few steps to a heap on the cold floor below.
But even as his breath shuddered, his body trembling at near-backlash from his expenditure of mana, the half-asura's teeth still clenched with inborn fervor. He glared upward at the endless steps, as if the fire in his eyes could burn a path forward to the top.
There's some sort of aetheric weave cast over that staircase, I realized after a moment, my eyes tracing over the archway that led to the upward tunnel. Something that stretches or layers space over itself, making it impossible to ascend.
The scattered pieces of my situation slowly seeped back into my mind. High above this dark cavern, I'd seen that arrogant dragon loom over Aurora's corpse, threatening to deface it. Before I'd died, the forces of Epheotus had moved to attack the Hearth, distracted from Agrona's ploy in Xyrus. And now, Chul appeared to be caged in this gray room, unable to leave because of an aetheric spell.
And I'd been able to sense Seris Integrating when she'd called for my heartfire, drawing the Inverted decay across her body and letting it all change. Chul had been there, hadn't he? Captured beneath the castle?
Chul just continued to glare at the taunting tunnel mouth, saying nothing as his rage and grief smoldered. He'd exhausted his body, but his mind refused to relent.
"Where are we?" I finally asked, afraid of the answer that I'd receive.
The young phoenix growled, rolling to a sitting position. "You don't know?" he said angrily, never taking his eyes from the endless tunnel. "How can you not know, brother? You are here. One cannot enter a room and not understand its—"
The word brother rebounded through my head, building momentum as it coasted on the waves of my grief. "I'm dead, Chul," I snapped, marching in front of the manchild and blocking his view of the ascending staircase. "The last thing I remember, you were condemned to a prison cell beneath a Darvish castle. I set out to stop Agrona from turning Xyrus into a firework, but somehow I died."
And because of that, Aurora was dead, too. And I didn't even know why. The reason for this pointless circumstance still evaded me, laughing in the Unseen mists.
I clenched my fists, glaring into the phoenix's soul. "So you are going to tell me what happened after I left. Tell me what happened when the asura came. How you're here, where we are, everything."
As I glared at the upjumped manchild, my rage hot as a sun's flare, Chul's expression slowly withered to dust. His eyes trembled, before he lowered them, unable to meet my demanding stare.
"The asura came, traitors all," he muttered. "An army set to attack the home of our family."
As he said this, the man raised a nervous, weak arm, rubbing at the Brand on his neck. The brand that marked him as banished.
"A basilisk of terrible power remained behind," he continued quietly. "They sought to slay all harbored beneath the Scythe's cloak, and to slay her in turn. I… would not allow it."
The young phoenix turned his eyes back to me, djinn-blue and phoenix-orange uncertain and nervous. Over his intent, I could sense his quiet desire for approval rising up from the depths like magma. "It was no Vritra basilisk, but nonetheless, I did not allow it to kill those you swore to protect, brother."
My burned brow wrinkled as I looked down at Chul. I remembered the sensation of Seris Integrating, the woman I loved basking in the freedom of a higher form. And from my return to this mortal plane… I knew she was alive. "What happened to them? Is the army still alive?"
Lusul, Elder Rahdeas, Cylrit, Borzen, Gruhnd… So many of the people I'd grown to call friend in this world were in that army, each like weeds for an asura to step on. And even if Chul had fought this basilisk, I knew firsthand what the collateral damage of an asura's battle looked like.
"The Scythe set them to retreat. The entire army of men and dwarves marched away, fleeing from our clash. I… tried to avoid them, keeping my great battle to the skies where I held domain," Chul said after a moment, his intent dipping. "I wanted to protect them, brother."
Brother. I fucking hated that he called me that. But memories of Aurora, in our final hours together making me promise to try squeezed themselves into the too-full space of my head.
"That's good," I forced out, crossing my arms and looking at the floor. My soul still burned, seared at the edges from losing so much, but something about saying these words burned more. "Better than last time. Thank you for protecting them."
My eyes darted to Chul's brand. Even right now, I felt the lingering aftereffects of how much the stake through my soul hurt. He accepted banishment to try and save that army, I told myself, suppressing my anger with the mental equivalent of shoving trash in a closet and slamming the door. That's more than anything Mordain has ever done.
That helped soften my anger. Chul shuffled uncertainly, the air awkward as we stared at each other. "Yes. Of course," he said. "While I fought with the strength of my arm and the fire in my heart, she ascended the castle, before taunting the wretched serpent, drawing it close. The monstrous asura had not experienced your nest-mate's cunning, as I have, and so dove headfirst into her trap. It thought it had found easy prey."
My eyes widened slowly as the implication reached me, memories of Seris' desperate plea for my heartfire returning. She'd put together how Inversion was created, and then used it to invert herself at the cusp of ascension… And this basilisk, so close to the point of impact?
I knew what the inverted deviant did to basilisk mana. There was hardly any Vritra art that could stand before it, and if an asura charged headlong into the rebounding waves of an Integrating mage's apotheosis?
I found myself laughing uproariously as I imagined the scene. I'd been the first lesser to best an asura in combat in who-knew-how-many millennia when I'd faced Taci, uprooting a precedent that had been enforced for countless years by the dragon tyrant.
But Seris… Seris was the first woman to truly kill a god. And it was so perfect, the way she'd done it. So like her. I wanted, in that sudden moment, to be wherever she was. I wanted to thank her for drawing me back from the dead. I wanted to hold her and tell her that she was strong and great and powerful for pushing through.
I didn't know when it happened, but tears were falling from my eyes. I felt so fragile right now, so adrift and alone.
Chul's brow furrowed in concern as he saw the tears. "I wish to weep too, brother," he said after a moment. "But your nest-mate still lives. Of this I am certain! Weep not for her! The basilisk died, turned to naught but ash as it embraced its hubris, and your Scythe emerged victorious."
"I know," I muttered, my shoulders slumping. When I took deep breaths in and out, no air filled my charred spirit-lungs. But the act helped to settle the tumult raging through me to something more normal. "But what happened after, Chul?"
Chul finally found the strength to stand. He rose like a lumbering bear, his movements uncoordinated and unrefined from his exhaustion.
"I could not do any more where I was, so I turned my mace east," he said, his shoulders slumping. "The asura sought to end my family, and I would not let them."
I remembered the army of warrior gods as they streaked over me, Arthur, and Sylvie, all of them advancing on the Hearth with bloodlust barely contained. Back when Windsom had prepared to kill me, I'd tried to gamble my own survival for a few seconds by using the Hearth as bait.
But he didn't take it, I realized with horror, because the Indraths already knew where my family was.
I remembered Roa's hopeful face as she welcomed me into the fold, embracing me as an older sister would. Lithen's lazy attitude remained imprinted in my head as if we'd been cousins for an age. Diella's attempts to act unaffected by how much I enjoyed the food she'd cooked for all of us shone like a bright star amidst the darkness I'd experienced.
I'd spent only a few weeks in the Hearth, but there I'd found people who could know and understand me like very few. I'd found a flock who wanted to accept me into their family, and I'd felt a true, blissful happiness for a time. Their emotions rose and fell just as mine did. I was not alien and strange for wanting things to be better, or for caring for others. I wasn't a stranger in a strange land.
But it was only a dream, a mirage of temptation that could never last beneath my ideals. And indeed, the Hearth itself couldn't last between the impending tides of two tyrants. They were destined to be crushed, their nest and little sanctuary turned to cinders.
Yet despite the fact that the asura had turned their spears eastward, when I'd been drawing myself back from the Beyond there had been dozens of distant lantern-suns giving me light and direction.
Rahdeas told me that some of the phoenixes risked banishment to eventually join me, I thought, my fists clenching. A faction was ready to stand and fight. And from what I can tell…
"They're still alive," I said after a few minutes. "The asuran army didn't kill them, and you're here instead of being dead, too. Something changed. But how are they alive? I saw the army that approached the Hearth… And for all their power…"
Chul's weakened chest puffed out, his face darkening into a terrible scowl. "Because our Uncle is a coward!" he snarled. "When I arrived on the battlefield, ready to reap vengeance and defend our family, he stopped me. He spoke with the galaxy-eyed dragon and the Hearth, convincing them to undergo capture instead of fighting! That was when the distant sky alit with heartfire, and you… became the sun."
Mordain had said something to Windsom? The implications of it weren't lost on me. The clan head of the Asclepius likely knew that the attack was coming. Hell, he had to have known what was going to go down in Xyrus, too. But he did nothing.
In that otherworld novel, he didn't even intervene to halt the World Eater, I thought with disdain. Why would he stop a few other massacres? I hated him for that, deep in my chest. So many needless deaths could have been avoided if he simply tried.
But surrendering… What other option would Mordain have when faced with an army of asura?
My first instinct was to condemn Mordain for surrendering to Epheotus. The Lost Prince was so terribly afraid of becoming like Kezess Indrath that he refused to act at all or take any decisive moves, leaving thousands to die and suffer in the wake of asuran domination.
But as I recalled the sheer number of asura that had surged toward the Hearth, I also knew that the only outcome of a battle would have been slaughter. For all of Mordain's power, Aldir Thyestes was set at the head of the spearpoint expedition, ready to fight alongside hundreds of others.
Outnumbered and faced with extinction… What would I have done in Mordain's position?
I wouldn't have let myself get in that position in the first place.
But if Mordain had surrendered the Hearth to the legions of Epheotus to avoid a massacre of his clan, then that meant…
"We're in Epheotus, aren't we?" I whispered, my eyes wide. "We're imprisoned in the land of the asura."
The realization made a slow gnaw of despair chew away at the ember of hope in my soul. If I was somehow in Epheotus… How was I going to get back home? How would I make it to Seris, Sevren, Naereni, and everyone else?
I'd promised Seris that I couldn't return to Alacrya for a long time. Not until I had the power to stand up against the High Sovereign. But I was dead, devoid of a physical vessel.
My shoulder felt cold, empty in the utter silence of Aurora's disappearance. She would know what to do. She'd have the answers or words of encouragement to help me see the next step. But right now, there was… nothing.
Chul looked at me, sensing the encroaching sorrow. He gritted his teeth, that constant fire flaring. "The foolish Indraths think they can take everything from us," he snarled, rising to shaky feet. He stumbled weakly, fighting against the encroaching backlash. "They think they can cage us. But mark my words well, brother! They shall not!"
I blinked in astonishment at the emotions pulsing through Chul's head. There was so, so much. His fire was so bright, nearly blinding. His pulsesong rang with a conviction I felt like a candle flame staring up into a forest fire.
My grief threatened to break me, the shadow smothering my light. But Chul, in his strange, simple way, refused to let his light dim at all. When the shadow of his grief and the misery of all that had struck us both hit him, he angled his grief sideways, turning that shadow to coal that fueled the engine of his resolve.
"They take our mother. They take our family. They take our freedom and our very lives!. But they do not know the heart of Dawn. I will escape this prison in due time. I will climb the steps and reach the sky, and then the dragons shall know hellfire for their crimes against this world. And I… I'll make right my errors! It is how things shall be!"
Chul stumbled forward, then slammed two meaty palms onto my shoulders with the force to crush boulders. It was definitively not Aurora's gentle touch, and were I not a ghost, I was certain I would have crumbled. But the touch was the first solid and real thing I'd felt since my death.
"Look me in the eyes, brother! They will not break us. We will escape this place."
In my weakness, I did look into my brother's eyes. The last time he'd made such a vow of utter conviction, deep beneath the stone of a Darvish castle, I hadn't believed him. The weight of the world itself wouldn't let that happen. But he burned so bright. But now, impossibly, I found myself believing him. That we could escape this prison, then the land of the gods themselves, and do everything he said. Things could be okay.
"Escape, you say?" an arrogant voice cut across my—Chul's—ears like a blade. "You are delusional, lessuran. Already you are going mad, and hardly a few weeks have passed in the time dilation of this prison."
Chul snarled, turning on his feet weakly. I turned, too, feeling a streak of sudden fear.
The entire cavern swirled with dust, the particles clinging to whatever they could. They latched on to every drop of sweat that marred Chul's ragged, bloodstained form. They latched onto the crystals, the dark water, the light itself.
Only I, as a spirit apart from the world, stood untouched by the brush of dust. Only I and the being that strolled leisurely down the endless staircase.
I recognized the arrogant dragon the moment those too-white robes burned against the colorless walls of the crystal-covered cavern. The same bastard who'd threatened Aurora's corpse, who'd shown such disdain for the mother I'd lost.
Disgust. Disdain. Arrogance. When he looked at the half-phoenix, he saw a splatter of mud across his robes. He saw a personal affront to his existence molded into a humanoid shape, but far from human.
The dark-haired asura squinted at Chul in disgust as he strolled down the stairwell, appearing entirely unaffected by whatever aetheric weave had taken Lady Dawn's son in its grip when he'd tried to ascend.
Chul roared, hurling himself at the dragon. I hardly had a moment to warn him away from it, knowing exactly how weak he was and how powerful this dragon was in comparison.
The dark-haired asura twisted leisurely, raising a knee into Chul's path. The young phoenix's ribcage cracked as his charge was turned into a crash of pain, before he fell weakly at the dragon's feet.
The dragon's nose wrinkled as he looked down at his quartz-white robes, noting a single speck of red. Then he kicked Aurora's son again, sending him tumbling across the dusty stones.
That same boiling fury that had compelled me to burn Viessa's happiness from her soul rose again as I saw someone… someone I saw as a brother being beaten.
And just like the last time, I could only watch. Helpless and useless as blood made a gray-red slurry with the dust.
"What was even the point of that attack?" the dragon spat, strolling the rest of the way into the cavern. The dragon made a show of panning his lilac gaze all across the too-desaturated room, before looking back at the kneeling form of Chul and he wheezed over his cracked ribs. "Lessuran you may be, but you must be able to sense how deliberately thin the mana in this little pocket dimension is. There's hardly enough here to keep you alive, and you're content to waste it on foolish ascents up the staircase."
Chul growled, lurching forward as he tried to throw a weak punch at the arrogant dragon. It only earned him another casual kick in the ribs and a hiss of pain.
"How many times have you tried the same thing, running up and up and up whenever you get your mana back? At least half a dozen that I've noticed. And still, your foolish mind can't figure out the reason it's there in the first place."
The dragon shook its head. "Whatever the case is, you'll learn eventually. These prisons have broken better things than you. And you do need to survive, because you are evidence of the Asclepius clan's… Impurities. Their dalliances with lesser beings cannot be ignored, so you need to ensure you survive this place for some time more."
The dark-haired dragon leaned over Chul's body as he curled in on himself. He visibly enjoyed Chul's agony.
"The only way you earn the food you want to live is through work. You can hold out without food for some time, I suppose, but eventually, you will need sustenance. If you want to live at all, you'll do as you're told and mine that acclorite."
I remained silent, staring mutely at the dragon as he continued to prattle on. I made sure to etch his facial features into my memory, carving each of them like limestone as I ensured they'd never leave. Silently, I made an oath that I'd kill this one. I'd rip out his heart and feast on its lifeforce.
Gods or not, they all bled.
Chul finally curled in on himself, too dizzy and close to backlash to think properly. The dragon, apparently satisfied with his abuse, turned on his feet.
"You'll have a guest for some time, phoenix-spawn," it hissed, its intent radiating disgust as it strolled back to the stairwell. "Maybe you can get acquainted with each other. Maybe not."
I noted the scraggly, grease-coated figure that had been tossed to the ground at the archway of the stairs, recognizing them for who they were. But my spiritual gaze remained fixed on the back of the arrogant dragon who didn't even know what Fate they had in store.
The asura didn't spare another glance back down as he strolled casually up the stairs, ascending higher and higher. It wasn't long before he was lost from sight, utterly unimpeded by the aetheric spell.
I turned away from the archway, then knelt by Chul's side. He groaned, his eyes squeezed shut as he fought off the pain of backlash. I hadn't truly keyed into it before, but I could sense it now. The ambient mana was practically nonexistent here. Chul could only sense fire mana, but there was barely any of it to take in to ease his core and continue his life.
I laid a hand on his back, unable to do much more as his breath came in pained exhales. The fury that had taken me as I'd watched his abuse faded in the aftermath, ration and reason reasserting themselves.
But this time… This time, I wasn't filled with such anger at myself for having the emotion at all. I didn't… I didn't want to view Chul as my brother. I still hated him, in some deep, fundamental way. When I thought of this manchild, I thought of Seris' heart pierced by Inversion, her eyes pleading as I tried desperately to heal her. I saw Barth falling to his death among countless others. I saw Olfred Warend nearly dead, Elder Rahdeas clinging to him. And I saw the faces of countless families who had to listen as I delivered the news that I couldn't return their sons, their brothers to them from the rubble.
But I also couldn't…
I couldn't stop seeing Norgan as he'd bled out pointlessly on the cobblestones, crumpled beneath an arrogant woman who thought herself superior.
I felt like a godforsaken whip, ripped from grief to anger to fear to anger and back again. And I had no body to express it. No hands to clench, no mouth to scream. I was a metronome that could make no sound. But as Chul fought to try and take in just a little bit of that ambient fire mana so that he wouldn't die here and now, I did my best to try and center myself. For our mother, and for him.
A groan of mild pain reached me from the other end of the cavern. "Xoratheus' knives," a gravelly, hoarse voice cursed. "Couldn't have thrown me a nicer way, could you, Vajrakor? Damned sadist."
The asura who'd been hauled down with the dragon groaned as he unfurled himself, stumbling to wobbly feet. He was garbed in similar rags as Chul, barely fit to cover his skinny frame. The bags under his eyes had the exact same lifeless desaturation as everything else in this prison, and his brows seemed stitched into a permanent frown of disappointment as if the world itself had stepped on his toes and now he would forever be pissed at it. The dirty curtain of the titan asura's dark hair swayed like seaweed as he observed his new surroundings.
Wren Kain's tired eyes finally focused on Chul, and the titan's slumped shoulders seemed to slump further. He released a sigh that seemed to sap his soul. "That's that, then. I wonder whichway of dying would be faster: running myself to exhaustion like a buffoon, cutting myself on the acclorite, or drinking the water of the River Hosh?"
