The ship surged forward at full speed. Everything shook. Reality itself seemed to scream around us as we punched through the outer storm surrounding the ruined world.
For one impossible heartbeat, there was nothing but silence. Then we emerged beneath the vortex. My breath stopped. Earth Prime filled the viewport.
Ruined Elysian cities floated in fragments across the broken sky, their crystalline towers hung suspended above shattered oceans. Rivers drifted weightless through the air. Pieces ofcontinents hovered, detached from the planet, beneath spiraling storms of black fire.
And at the center of the ruined world, a colossal fissure split the planet open. Golden fire burned inside it. Not natural fire. Something older. Something alive. The Fire of Darkness.
The place where Caelor still burned.
Naeris went still beside me. Through the bond, I felt her heartbreak. As though some ancient part of her soul had finally found the place it had mourned for millions of years.
The Harrowed One rose above the fissure. The vortex condensed into a towering figure made of writhing darkness and shattered starlight. Faces moved beneath its surface endlessly, screaming Arkhevari souls trapped inside the corruption.
Without warning, the creature spoke. Not aloud. Inside our minds.
ASHE—
The voice broke apart violently. Another voice fought beneath it. A male voice. Broken. Burning. Still resisting.
Run.
My entire body went cold. Caelor.
The voice echoed through my skull long after the sound itself faded.
Run.
Not a command.
A warning.
A plea.
Every hair on my body stood on end. Naeris stared at the fissure splitting Earth Prime apart, her breathing came out uneven as ancient grief poured through the bond between us. She remembered this place. Not consciously. But some part of Ashera’s heart recognized where she had lost Caelor.
And by the stars, I felt it too.
The Fire of Darkness burned at the center of the wound like the exposed core of the universe itself. Gold and black flames spiraled endlessly upward, twisting into the vortex that formed the Harrowed One.
No wonder the thing had become so powerful. It had spent millions of years feeding on a Praetor of War. Zapharos rose slowly from the helm. Golden light unfolded around him in sharp, blazing arcs.
“Prepare yourselves.”
No one questioned him. There was nothing left to say. The final battle had already begun. The ship descended shakily toward a fractured platform suspended above the burning fissure. Chunks of broken Elysian architecture drifted around us, entire towers hanging upside down in impossible defiance of gravity. Reality barely functioned here.
The moment the landing gear struck the platform, the ship screamed in protest.
“We won’t get another launch,” Nadine warned quietly.
Zapharos nodded once. “Then we finish this now.”
The ramp lowered. Heat slammed into us instantly. Not ordinary heat. Emotional heat. Rage. Grief. Despair so concentrated it felt alive.
The Fire of Darkness roared beneath the platform like a living god. I stepped off the ship first, sword materializing instinctively in my hand. The moment my boots touched Earth Prime, pain shot through my chest. The Harrowed One saw me.
Recognized me.Mine.
The whisper came immediately. My vision blurred black around the edges. Then Naeris stepped beside me. The bond snapped tight between us like a lifeline. The darkness recoiled. A low growl rumbled from deep inside my chest.Not today, asshole.
