Chapter 67: Where Reality Falters

  All Aeor could remember were moments of lucidity. Moments where his thoughts surfaced, only to be swallowed again by the burning sky.

  It was beautiful.

  He knew he should have felt anger at what the flames represented. Rage should have followed. Instead, the sight held him, mesmerizing in a way that made outrage feel distant, almost childish.

  Between those brief returns to himself, he heard only one thing.

  The tranquil beat of his own heart.

  Aeor let that rhythm carry him. Time blurred. The world narrowed to the cerulean above and the quiet within.

  "Is this how it is supposed to end?"

  The voice was familiar.

  Death.

  His mind lurched as the rhythm faltered. He had thought it was gone, fallen silent the moment he accepted who he was.

  "Is this the legacy that I carry?"

  The words came again, and this time the dissonance struck. The tone did not fit Death as he knew it.

  It sounded like him.

  Understanding followed.

  The words had been spoken by him.

  The burning sky pressed closer, as if it were listening.

  "AWAKE!"

  His voice bellowed through whatever trance held him, and a ripple ran through his body as if reality itself had flinched.

  The tranquility shattered.

  His heart surged, dragging him back toward himself.

  Pain followed, immediate and absolute.

  Not the burn of flame.

  Something else.

  He felt himself on the brink of fading. Not into death.

  Into the absence of existence.

  Aeor awoke.

  He drew a deep breath as his eyes opened.

  Cerulean flames raged across his body.

  Aeor reached inward and ushered Primeval Death to the surface. Violet surged to meet cerulean, the clash rippling through him as the grasp of Existence faltered.

  His Death roared.

  Aeor screamed with finality and released his Essence in full, letting it devour the hold Existence had claimed. The flames fractured, then tore apart, dissolving into nothing.

  He lay there afterward, breath ragged, easing the flow of his Essence until the pain dulled and the roar fell silent.

  Only then did Aeor finally take in the world around him.

  Stone floated where it should not, massive slabs suspended in the air as though caught mid-fall and forgotten there. Cliffs rose in jagged tiers, their faces split and torn, roots and soil hanging exposed where the land had been peeled apart. Strange trees clung to those heights, their branches thin and sprawling, leaves pale and translucent as if they had grown beneath an alien sky.

  Below, the ground was carpeted in low, flowering growths that shimmered faintly with color. Orange and fiery reds spread across the stone. The air itself felt unstable. Dust drifted upward instead of down, and motes of light moved in slow, uncertain currents.

  Above it all, the sky burned.

  Cerulean flame still stretched across the horizon in vast, fractured patterns. At its center hung the sun, dim and strained, its light thin and wavering as it fought to reach the world below.

  The sword was still there.

  That massive cerulean blade remained driven through the heart of the sun, exactly where it had been before. Its shape was unchanged, its presence absolute, anchored somewhere beyond sight.

  The radiance Sol once cast had thinned, stretching across the shattered land in muted colors.

  The floating stone and the strange, unfamiliar growth made Aeor wonder if he was still in Sol'Karenth. That doubt lingered only until his gaze found the pierced sun.

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  For a moment, he lay there and took it all in. Stone drifted slowly, while the flames crackled faintly overhead.

  He exhaled and shifted, the spell of stillness breaking as his attention turned inward.

  Aeor lifted one hand and examined it closely. Dried blood caked his fingers. His sleeve was torn, the fabric stiff with grime. And yet, despite how it looked, the hand felt fine. His Essence still stirred beneath his skin, knitting what should have been worse.

  He tested the rest of his body next, shifting carefully, flexing each limb in turn. The damage was mostly surface-deep.

  Knowing the others did not have that luxury, Aeor pushed himself upright.

  Mid-motion, a thought surfaced, sharp enough to stop him cold.

  He did not know how much time had passed.

  Panic flickered. Aeor reached for his coat and searched for his parchment. His fingers found the pocket at once, or what remained of it. The fabric was ripped open, torn badly enough that he expected the contents to be gone.

  They were not.

  The parchment was still there.

  Barely.

  Its edges were torn and uneven, the surface scuffed as though it had been dragged across stone alongside him.

  Aeor willed the parchment to display the thread. As he did, the damage across its surface began to mend. Golden motes of varying geometric shapes gathered around it, drifting inward and blending into the parchment as it repaired itself.

  Aeor held the paper steady, his eyes fixed on the words as they took shape.

  It was the fifth day of their journey. They had set out for Sar'Vareth roughly half a day after this thread had first revealed itself. By all accounts, there should have been around sixteen days remaining.

  Time Until World Collapse: 15 Days.

  For once, Aeor let out a slow breath of relief as the numbers settled.

  He scanned the rest of the thread, searching for discrepancies or shifts. There were none.

  Satisfied, he folded the parchment carefully and rose to his feet.

  He stood near the ridge's edge and looked out across the fractured terrain, searching for any sign of his companions. There was nothing. No movement. No voices.

  But something else caught his eye.

  His lance lay nearby, half-lodged in a thick cluster of brush. Aeor made his way over and pulled it free, inspecting the shaft as he stripped away what remained of the torn cloth wrapped around it.

  Aeor ran his fingers along the length of the lance. A few chips marred the surface, small imperfections where it had struck stone, but nothing structural. Considering the fall they had taken, it had endured well.

  Beside it, he noticed several bags scattered across the ground.

  He crouched and opened the nearest one. Medical supplies. Or what remained of them.

  Most of the potions and ointments had shattered, glass reduced to shards soaked into ruined padding. A handful had survived intact, their containers bruised but whole. Bandages and a few other tools fared better, crumpled but usable.

  Without pausing to consider it, Aeor emptied one of the bags and began sorting. Anything salvageable went back in. Anything broken was left behind.

  Only after a moment did the thought surface.

  He was calm.

  Too calm, perhaps, given the circumstances. But the feeling did not come from the altered sky or the weight of Existence pressing on the land. It came from himself, from everything that had unfolded since the Initiation began.

  Somewhere along the way, a part of him had learned to endure.

  There is a limit to how much one can process while fighting dragons and grappling with concepts like time and existence.

  The thought passed without weight. His hands did not slow.

  Once he had gathered everything usable, Aeor slung the bag over his shoulder and closed his fingers around his lance.

  He rose into the air.

  The shift in elevation revealed more of the terrain. Broken ridgelines stretched outward, fractured and suspended at odd angles, stone drifting where it should have stood firm. He turned slowly, scanning the horizon. It was the same in every direction.

  When he looked back the way they had come, he could not tell where this altered reality began or where the darkness ended.

  But that question could wait.

  Aeor steadied himself and turned forward.

  He needed to find the others.

  Aeor had hoped to spot the massive silhouettes of the Wyrmkin. Instead, there was no trace of them.

  The thought that they might have been carried farther away crossed his mind, but it did not sit right. And yet there was no sign of them, neither above nor below.

  He began to move.

  Aeor circled the area methodically, lowering himself at intervals to search between fractured stone and drifting ridges.

  Time passed without result.

  Unease crept in, slow but persistent.

  Then the sound came again.

  A deep, booming resonance rolled through the air, unmistakable.

  Aeor froze.

  He poured Essence into the ring at once. Violet scales swept across his frame, wings unfurling as the mantle formed around him. He scanned the sky, senses taut, bracing for impact.

  Nothing happened.

  The sound faded, the last vestiges of its echoes dissolving into the distance. Silence rushed in to replace it. Aeor could hear his own heartbeat, loud in his ears as he hovered in place.

  Then a voice cut through it.

  "Descend. Now!"

  Zoey.

  Instinct took over. Aeor dropped hard, driving himself downward.

  A massive boulder tore into existence where he had been floating only moments before. Then another. And another. Hundreds of them erupted into being, filling the sky in an instant.

  For a heartbeat, they hung there.

  Then they moved.

  All at once, the boulders shot off in violent, erratic paths, tearing through the air in every direction as the space around him erupted into chaos.

  The sky turned hostile as the rocks surged, accelerating without pattern or warning. Some collided midair, stone detonating into clouds of debris. Others slammed into the ground below, sending tremors through the fractured land.

  Aeor moved on instinct.

  His wings beat hard as he wove through the chaos, banking sharply between converging paths. A few boulders came too fast, too close. For those, he brought his lance to bear, Primeval Death flaring as the weapon struck. Stone shattered under the impact, fragments scattering away in spinning arcs.

  Then the space around him fractured.

  Reality itself split apart.

  Massive shards tore free from the surrounding space, suspended like broken panes of glass. Each fragment reflected a different slice of the world. In one, Aeor saw the drifting ridges beneath him. In another, the burning cerulean sky stretched at an impossible angle. Others showed places that did not align at all, landscapes bent and layered wrong, as if several moments were trying to exist in the same breath.

  The rocks did not slow.

  They carried their momentum straight through the fractured space, slipping into one shard and bursting out of another far away. Aeor saw one emerge from a fragment to his left, stone tearing free from nothing and racing straight toward him.

  He pulled back hard.

  His shoulder cut through one of the floating fragments, and the world folded.

  The pull was instant. His body was dragged through the surface, vision tearing apart as the sky inverted around him. Then he was elsewhere, spat out into a different stretch of fractured air.

  "Aeor!"

  Zoey's voice rang out again.

  He twisted toward the sound below and saw her suspended within a fragment, one arm supporting Velora's limp form while the other held an ice shield fast against the chaos. Baron clung to her shoulder, fur bristling, eyes fixed on the shifting space around them.

  The fragment Zoey occupied reflected her standing somewhere underground.

  Aeor's mind strained to reconcile the images. It failed.

  He let it go.

  Act first. Think later.

  He drove forward, refusing to think past the next breath.

  Zoey dropped her shield and extended her hand. Her fragment bent in response, its surface rippling outward and sending visible distortions through the surrounding fragments.

  Navigating the shards scattered around him was a nightmare. Aeor had to dodge boulders tearing through erratic paths while keeping his distance from the shards themselves.

  He failed.

  He brushed against one, and was pulled sideways without warning, displacing him into an unfamiliar stretch of sky.

  There, not far from him, another presence emerged.

  Kayneth burst free from a fragment, wings of flame flaring from her back as she stabilized herself midair. Their eyes met across the chaos.

  For a heartbeat, both froze.

  Then Kayneth surged toward him.

  "Wait!" Aeor shouted.

  Too late.

  Her wing clipped the edge of a nearby fragment, and she vanished mid-flight, swallowed whole without resistance.

  Aeor spun, searching.

  There was no sign of her.

  He forced his focus back to the fragment where Zoey stood.

  Then, as abruptly as they had appeared, the fragments vanished.

  The floating rocks lost their violent momentum all at once and hung motionless in the air, suspended as if the chaos had never existed.

  Silence rushed back in.

  Aeor hovered there, breath unsteady.

  "Véurr, what is going on with this cursed place?" he said, the words dragged out between breaths.

  "Aeor."

  Another voice rose from below. Different, but no less familiar.

  Aeor looked down and spotted Dregor on a fractured ridge, barely upright, one hand braced against the stone. But it was not his stance that drew his attention.

  It was the cerulean flame that crawled across Dregor's frame, carrying a loss of definition. The weight he carried flickered, his control over gravity collapsing in uneven pulses as the fire remade him toward something simpler.

  Dregor tried to move. His body responded a moment too late.

  The flame surged, his knees buckled, and he collapsed.

  "Dregor!" Aeor shouted.

  He dropped at once, driving himself downward toward the ridge as the fire roared.

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