Power exploded out of me instinctively. Golden light burst from my hands and collided with the darkness in a shockwave so violently the entire platform trembled beneath us. The tendrildisintegrated. Silence rippled outward. I stared at my glowing hands in stunned disbelief.
Ella gasped behind me. Nadine looked equally shocked. Then realization dawned across Dravok’s face.
“The Heart,” he breathed.
Another wave of darkness crashed toward us. Ella stepped forward this time. Light erupted around her like the birth of a star. Warm. Brilliant. Alive.
The shadows recoiled instantly.
“The Soul,” Zapharos said softly.
Nadine suddenly froze beside Dravok, her eyes widened as impossible streams of energy and movement became visible across the battlefield.
“I can see it,” she whispered. “The fracture lines. The instability points—” She pointed sharply upward. “Strike there!”
Dravok moved instantly. Dark energy speared upward from his hands directly into the section of the vortex she indicated. The entire Harrowed One convulsed.
“The Mind,” Ella whispered.
Understanding swept through all of us simultaneously.
Heart.
Soul.
Mind.
The three brightest surviving fragments of Ashera, standing together once more. The Harrowed One realized it too. And for the first time since arriving on Earth Prime, I felt fear from him.
Fear.
The realization slammed through the bond connecting all of us. The Harrowed One was afraid. Not of the Arkhevari armies battling across Earth Prime. Not of Zapharos' blazing power. Not even of the Shard of Echoes, still pulsing in Dravok's hands. It fearedus. The fragments. The reunion. The possibility of becoming whole again.
The vortex above the fissure twisted violently as if the darkness itself had become unstable. Suddenly, the Harrowed One attacked with everything it had. The sky split open. Darkness crashed downward in enormous waves, obliterating entire sections of the battlefield. Arkhevari warriors screamed as they vanished beneath the assault.
“MOVE!” Zapharos roared.
The shattered platform beneath us exploded apart. Thyros caught me around the waist just as the ground disappeared beneath my feet. For one dizzying moment, we fell together through burning air and drifting debris while black fire spiraled all around us. Then Thyros twisted sharply in midair and landed hard atop another floating fragment of Elysian architecture below.
The impact cracked the crystal beneath our boots. His arms tightened around me immediately. “Are you hurt?”
I shook my head breathlessly. Above us, the Harrowed One descended lower. It no longer resembled anything remotely human. Its body stretched across the broken sky like living night itself, filled with screaming faces and burning gold eyes. And Caelor still fought at the center. Still burned.
“THYROS.”
The voice hit all of us at once. It didn't come from the Harrowed One. It came from Caelor.
The fire inside the fissure suddenly surged brighter, illuminating the ruined world in violent gold and black light. The Harrowed One screamed in fury. It was losing control. Thyros stepped forward instinctively.
“No!” I grabbed his arm immediately.
The moment I touched him, another memory crashed through me. Not a vision. An understanding. The Fire of Darkness. It wasn’t merely a prison. It was a forge. The place where the Harrowed One bound together corrupted Arkhevariessence into itself. And Caelor had been trapped at the center of it for millions of years, resisting from within.
“He’s holding it together,” I whispered in horror.
Everyone looked toward me.
“The Harrowed One,” I breathed. “Caelor is the reason it has form.”
