Chapter 45: Requiem of the Scion

  Ash drifted in slow spirals.

  A soldier beside Aeor sagged, strength leaving him all at once, knees striking stone. His sword scraped across the tiles and stilled. Aeor's gaze flicked to him. Wild abandon burned in the man's eyes, a look that had no room left for hope.

  "Why have you forsaken us, Sol?" another whispered, desperation raw in his throat.

  Around them, the dead stirred.

  The survivors held their ground in a hush of terror, faces tipped to the crater. Below them, Naeysar heaved herself upright from the ruin like a wounded star dragging free of the earth, bronze turned to ash and shadow, black fire threading her wounds. For an instant, Aeor felt the city hold its breath, the whole of Aurel'Tharan caught between prayer and collapse.

  The stone trembled under his boots. Somewhere behind him, a sob broke. Ahead, the dead took another step.

  Aeor's grip tightened around his lance until his knuckles turned white. Rage rose inside him, slow and crushing, an insurmountable weight pressing against his ribs. His eyes drifted to the figures clawing their way back onto broken legs. Their bodies were twisted, broken in ways that should have kept them on the ground, yet still they rose, answering the command of death.

  He scanned their faces, or what remained of them.

  There was Erith, slumped forward, half her armor sheared away. Beside her stood the Sunforged Commander, helm cracked, eyes vacant and hollow. Others from Aeor's talon rose with them, trembling with stolen life. His gaze moved from one broken form to the next, and then it caught on a figure that made his heart stutter.

  Vaireth.

  The Sovereign of Sol'Karenth stood among the risen, head bowed, thin coils of black mist flickering over a body that had no right to move.

  All sound began to thin around Aeor, peeling away layer by layer until only the thunder of his heartbeat remained. It pounded in his ears, deep and ragged, drowning the world.

  Someone tugged at his arm.

  A voice reached him through the haze, faint and distant, as if shouted from the far end of a collapsing tunnel.

  "Aeor... we have to..."

  The tone was familiar. The urgency was real.

  He ignored both.

  His heartbeat climbed to a fevered crescendo, each pulse a blow against his ribs. Desperation clawed up his throat as he stared at Vaireth and the others.

  He invoked Threadgaze.

  Deceased. Deceased. Deceased.

  The Archive whispered its verdict again and again, each word striking like a hammer. Aeor stood amid the rising dead, their lifeless eyes turning toward him, and the truth pressed down until something inside him finally cracked.

  Rorick seized Aeor by the arm and yanked him around, forcing their eyes to meet.

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  He opened his mouth to repeat his warning, but the words died. His face went still, eyes widening as he truly saw Aeor.

  "Your eyes, Aeor... they are burning."

  Aeor stared through him, breath shallow. When he finally spoke, his voice was flat and emptied of emotion.

  "I failed them, Rorick."

  He swallowed. "It's never enough. No matter what I do... it's never enough."

  "Aeor, please." Rorick's voice wavered, desperate. "We have to leave. Now."

  But Aeor's gaze was no longer on him.

  The world blurred at the edges, sounds fading into a dull hum. His heartbeat slowed, then hammered once, hard, echoing through his ribs like a strike against stone. Something inside him stirred.

  Rose.

  A whisper unfurled from the hollow within him, soft and ancient.

  Let go.

  Aeor went still.

  For a breath, he fought it, clinging to the fraying edges of himself, trying to hold the shape of who he was.

  That moment stretched.

  Then snapped.

  His heartbeat settled into a slow, deliberate rhythm, each pulse carrying the weight of something vast awakening within him.

  When he spoke, his voice was a quiet verdict.

  "Scion's Requiem."

  Cold indifference settled over him.

  He remembered this feeling, the same silence that had seized him in the ruins when he faced Morvaketh.

  Yet this time, something shifted. He felt more of himself still present beneath the rising tide, as if the primordial pull no longer drowned him but moved with him. And around that stillness, the faint touch of the Archives lingered, watching, almost urging him onward.

  A faint tremor ran through the air as a soft violet mist drifted from his skin, unraveling outward in quiet ribbons. It spread across the broken stone, a pale, devouring haze that dimmed the light around him.

  Naeysar's fully risen form shifted, black fire threading through the cracks in her bronze-scaled hide. Her head turned toward Aeor. For a breath, they simply stared, her hollow, ash-lit eyes fixed on him, his violet-lit gaze meeting hers without flinching.

  The moment stretched.

  Then Naeysar opened her jaws and loosed a roar that was no longer hers. Warped and guttural, it carried none of the warmth or majesty she once held. The sound tore through the crater, rattling stone and bone alike.

  She beat her wings once.

  The ground shook as she heaved into the sky with a broken fury, the air buckling under the force of her ascent. Survivors and risen alike were driven back, some flung across the stone by the violent burst of her rising wings. Dust and shards of molten glass tore outward in a savage gust.

  Aeor did not move.

  Violet mist coiled around him, anchoring him to the trembling earth as Naeysar climbed to rejoin the battle, her allegiance warped toward Vaelkar. Her wrath turned on the remnants of her kin and on Zorvaketh.

  Aeor lifted his gaze.

  Vaelkar tore through the clouds like a living cataclysm, his army of dead tightening into a spiraling noose around Zorvaketh and the few living dragons still fighting. Even without Naeysar rising to join them, Aeor knew how this would end. The living were being drowned beneath the weight of the dead.

  He lowered his eyes and turned toward Rorick.

  "Go."

  The word carried farther than its volume should have. Half the survivors snapped from their stunned reverence, the sight of their fallen goddess lifting into the crimson sky still etched across their faces. The others moved at the sight of Aeor, drawn by the violet mist curling from his skin and the ancient fire burning in his eyes.

  They fled, scraping through gaps between the risen, stumbling over shattered stone as they fought toward the distant line of the mountains. Every few steps a dead hand clawed at an ankle or a shoulder, turning their retreat into a frantic struggle for breath.

  Only Rorick lingered.

  His feet held fast, his eyes fixed on Aeor.

  "She is hurt... The princess." Rorick's voice trembled. "Lord Alvereth got her out, but she is not waking. We do not know if she can survive a shattered bond."

  He swallowed, fighting for breath.

  "We have lost Lady Naeysar... and the Sovereign. The dragons are falling from the sky, and the dead will not stay down."

  His eyes flicked to the rising corpses around them, then back to Aeor.

  "This battle is over."

  Aeor tore his gaze from Rorick and turned toward the shattered remains of the fortress. Through the drifting ash he saw Kalvaxus, standing atop the rubble, his bronze-scripted gaze locked on Aeor with cold recognition.

  Movement closed in.

  Two dead soldiers lurched toward Aeor, armor scraping stone. He did not look at them. He only raised his hand.

  Violet flame stirred along his arm, coiling upward like a living thread. It leapt from his fingertips in a silent arc, clinging to the risen soldiers. The moment the flame touched them, their bodies buckled. Essence and flesh unraveled together, collapsing into drifting ash before they even reached him.

  Aeor lowered his hand.

  "My part in this is not done."

  He knew he should flee. Every instinct told him to follow the living, to run for the mountains, to survive.

  But how could he?

  Beneath his impassive calm, something fierce was taking shape. A fury that smoldered low and cold. A hunger to burn and consume, to tear down everything that death had claimed and everything it had twisted.

  Death demanded its toll.

  And he would be its arbiter.

  Aeor rose from the ground without effort, as if the air itself bent to lift him. The violet flames in his eyes burned brighter, sharpening into two cold, unwavering points of light. Around him, the mist thickened, spiraling upward in slow, deliberate coils that bruised the air with their presence.

  His lance drank in that radiance.

  The weapon's dark metal pulsed once, then again, as the violet fire crawled along its length like living veins, devouring the leftover embers clinging to its surface. What remained was a weapon wrapped in the same hungry Essence that poured from Aeor's skin, its edge humming with quiet, terrible purpose.

  "Aeor..." Rorick began, then faltered. His shoulders sagged. "Just... be safe."

  From the corner of his eye, Aeor saw Rorick turn and run, weaving through rubble and rising dead as he fled toward the mountains with the survivors. Aeor let the sight slip from his mind. The world narrowed to the figure standing on the ruins ahead.

  He fixed his gaze on Kalvaxus.

  And he moved.

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