Chapter 46: The Anomaly of Death

  Aeor swept through the air like a falling star, violet mist spiraling in his wake as he closed the distance. The ancestral seat lay gutted before him, its highest ruin crowned by a solitary figure.

  Kalvaxus stood there, broken yet unbowed, one arm hanging dead at his side while black ichor traced thin lines across his chest. With his remaining hand he summoned the scripts. They ignited one by one, shaping themselves into a shield of twisting bronze light as the Scion of Death bore down upon him.

  Violet fire ran along the lance as Aeor crossed the last stretch of air between them. Kalvaxus braced, his lone working hand pressed to the script-formed shield.

  Aeor struck.

  Lance met shield in a single ringing impact that tore the air apart. A shockwave rippled across the shattered fortress, sending debris skittering over the stone in widening circles. For a heartbeat, the world held in perfect stillness, lance and shield locked, neither giving way.

  Violet mist spilled from the weapon in hungry coils, reaching for the scripts, trying to consume them as it devoured all else. Yet the shield endured. The bronze runes flared brighter, holding the mist at bay, refusing to be unmade.

  Aeor did not withdraw.

  He twisted his grip, and the Essence around him deepened. Mist thickened, darkening into a denser, colder shroud that pulsed with primeval force.

  The lance surged.

  The scripts faltered.

  The shield broke.

  It cracked like glass under a hammer, splintering in a burst of bronze light before shattering completely. The blast hurled Kalvaxus backward, his body flung across the ruined fortress. He struck a broken wall, stone collapsing under the impact, and tumbled into the wreckage of the ancestral seat.

  Aeor did not slow.

  He cut through the settling dust to where Kalvaxus lay slumped against the broken wall, his body slack and unresponsive.

  For a moment, his gaze was empty.

  Then his eyes lifted to Aeor.

  Crimson light flooded them without warning, sharp and unnatural, burning like a shard of the night sky pressed into his skull.

  A pulse of heat rolled across the stone.

  Aeor felt it before he saw it, a rising burn that pressed against his skin through the violet flame that clung to him. Instinct snapped through him. He veered aside just as the ground split open and a column of fire roared upward, searing the air in a blinding surge.

  Even wrapped in death's Essence, the heat bit into him. The pillar devoured the space he had occupied a heartbeat earlier, flames twisting skyward in a torrent that scorched the ash from the surrounding stone.

  Aeor steadied himself in the air and fixed his gaze on Kalvaxus.

  Movement closed in fast.

  Risen and Ozarians burst from the drifting ash, sprinting toward the broken wall with unnatural speed, limbs jerking yet purposeful. They converged on Kalvaxus in a rush, forms blurring through dust and heat.

  Among them was Erith, moving with the same relentless momentum as the rest.

  They closed in around Kalvaxus, forming a tight ring. One knelt beside him, braced his good arm, and hauled him upright against the shattered wall.

  Aeor hovered above the ruined stone, violet mist curling in slow spirals around him.

  "Your command over death is false," Aeor said.

  Kalvaxus bared his teeth in something that was almost a smile. His breath rasped. Black ichor still marked his chest.

  "I never claimed it was," he answered, voice hoarse. "I am only borrowing what was left unattended."

  "And yet, I can still sense a connection," Aeor said.

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  For a heartbeat, something flickered behind Kalvaxus's eyes. Surprise. Annoyance. Then amusement smoothed it away.

  "Of course you can," he murmured. "You are the thread knotted where it should not exist. The anomaly I have waited for."

  "Anomaly? What do you—"

  The rest burned away in light.

  The dead mages around Kalvaxus raised what remained of their hands as one. A wall of fire erupted outward, brilliant and blinding, roaring toward Aeor in a single consuming wave.

  Aeor rose higher as the fire surged beneath him, heat clawing at his legs. He cleared the crest only for more attacks to streak upward from the ruins below.

  Bolts of searing flame spiraled toward him in rapid succession.

  He swept his lance through the first. Violet Essence split the fire cleanly, devouring its core before it could bloom. The next burst struck his mist, only to gutter out as the shroud consumed it. A third flared brighter than the others, a half-formed inferno hurled with far greater force.

  Aeor thrust forward.

  The lance pierced the spell, ripping it open. Flame scattered into harmless embers, swallowed by the violet haze that coiled across his path.

  He burst through the remnants of dying fire, violet mist streaming behind him like a trailing comet. The dead mages rallied in desperation, raising walls of flame that climbed in violent arcs. They did not matter. The primeval fire clinging to Aeor swallowed each barrier in an instant, devouring the blaze as he carved a straight path toward their master.

  Kalvaxus waited for him.

  He crouched low, body broken but eyes burning, and only when the lance was a breath from his skull did he move. He slipped beneath the strike with impossible speed, scripts flaring to life around his shin as he pivoted and drove a kick into Aeor's side.

  Aeor absorbed the blow.

  The impact thundered through his ribs, a shock that might have folded another man. Yet he did not yield. He drove into the momentum instead, seizing Kalvaxus's leg with his free hand and wrenching him sideways. The violet mist surged. The lance came down, angled for Kalvaxus's heart.

  A blur broke the line.

  An Ozarion hurled himself between them, body offered without hesitation. The lance pierced him cleanly, violet flame erupting through his chest as he fell away in drifting ash.

  The opening was gone.

  Kalvaxus tore free of Aeor's grip, stumbling back across the shattered stone, scripts burning furiously around him as he fought to stay on his feet.

  The dead mages gathered again, reforming their circle around Kalvaxus. Aeor drifted toward them, violet mist curling at his heels.

  There he saw Erith again.

  Her armor hung from her in shattered pieces. Her movements were puppeted, hollow, her eyes lit with that same dead crimson. He had not known her long. Yet something twisted inside him at the sight. A faint ache. This was not the fate she had earned.

  Guilt brushed his chest.

  Only for a moment.

  Aeor knew what had to be done.

  He lunged toward her. Erith and the dead flanking her moved in the same instant, jerking forward in a coordinated rush. Their timing was perfect, but Aeor was already searching for something deeper.

  A feeling.

  The one he had grasped in the Duskwight's cave. The one that had surfaced again in the still morning when he crossed blades with Velora.

  The moment he disrupted death.

  He found it.

  A silent anchor inside him, cold and immovable. Aeor let it settle behind his heartbeat, and the violet mist around him pulsed outward in a single sweeping surge.

  It washed over the dead.

  The crimson light in their eyes flickered. Only for a heartbeat. Only the smallest stutter in the command that bound them.

  But it was enough.

  Aeor hurled his lance.

  The weapon struck Erith in the chest, pinning her through shattered stone as violet fire consumed her Essence. She slumped without a sound, the glow in her eyes extinguished before she hit the ground.

  Aeor landed among the rest.

  The mist tightened around him. Each motion was a single, final stroke.

  A raised hand became drifting ash.

  A spell forming on dead lips dissolved as violet fire consumed it.

  A body rushing him was split open by a sweep of his palm, its Essence unmade before it could reach him.

  One by one, the mages collapsed into stillness, their reanimated flesh dissolving as the Scion's power stripped the death that held them upright.

  When the haze cleared, Aeor stood atop the burning remains of the dead. The mist quieted, settling around him in slow, fading coils. He glanced down and found Erith pinned beneath his lance, her outline already breaking apart into drifting ash.

  He freed the weapon with a single pull.

  For a moment, he did not move.

  The rage inside him rose to a sharp, silent peak, filling his chest until it felt as if something might split. Yet his face held still, carved into calm that did not match the storm beneath it.

  "I am sorry," Aeor whispered.

  The last remnants of Erith's face crumbled under the violet fire, fading into nothing.

  Kalvaxus straightened as the last embers faded around Aeor.

  "Impressive," he said, voice scraped thin. "Your hold over—"

  "DIE!"

  Aeor's roar tore from him as he launched forward, lance aimed for Kalvaxus's heart. This time he gave no warning, no measured advance, only raw, violent intent. The violet mist surged with him, fire curling along the weapon's length as he closed the distance in a breath.

  Kalvaxus did not move to defend.

  He only smiled, a thin curl of triumph twisting across his ruined mouth, and lifted one trembling hand.

  The tip of Aeor's spear struck Kalvaxus's finger.

  And Aeor stopped.

  Not slowed. Not staggered.

  Stopped.

  Frozen in place as if the world itself had locked around him.

  Bronze scripts spilled from Kalvaxus's fingertip.

  They raced along Aeor's lance in a rush of curling light, coiling up the metal before leaping onto his skin. Sigils crawled across his arms and chest, then over his throat and face, binding him in a lattice of searing radiance. Aeor's thoughts lurched. His breath hitched. His limbs refused him entirely.

  He reached inward.

  He called to the primeval death beneath his ribs, commanded it to burn, to break, to consume the chains that held him.

  The violet flames clinging to his body guttered, struggling against the scripts, but the sigils held firm. They immobilized him where he hovered, suspended above the ruins while the world still tore itself apart. The sky writhed with dragons and dead gods. Below, scattered clashes still burned across the shattered city.

  Kalvaxus regarded him with quiet amusement.

  "As I was saying," he murmured, pacing to the side as Aeor hung motionless, "your hold over death is quite astonishing."

  New scripts blossomed along Kalvaxus's arms and across the ruin of his torso. Where they passed, his shredded flesh pulled tight. Broken ribs reformed. Torn muscles knit themselves together. The wounds did not heal. They rewound, undone as though they had never been dealt.

  Kalvaxus's gaze lingered on the scripts binding Aeor.

  "But the connection you felt was not death," he said. "I do not command it. What you felt was the Aspect of Time."

  White flames erupted from his body, rising in a blinding crown that illuminated the shattered ruins. He lifted his hand, studying the light as it curled around his fingers.

  "It is curious," he continued. "For an age, only Time and Existence bore the weight of the core pillars of the Primordial Aspects. I searched again and again for the missing two. For Death. For Life. I found only echoes."

  He stepped closer to the suspended Scion, each footfall sending a faint tremor through the binding sigils.

  "I believed Vaelkar to be the last remnant of Death. The key to the old order." His eyes sharpened. "But you proved otherwise. The Archives placed you here. Their answer to a question older than Sol'Karenth itself."

  Kalvaxus smiled, faint and cold.

  "A true wielder of the Aspect of Death. True death, not the hollow imitation that grips Vaelkar."

  The white fire gathered at his fingertips.

  "The Archives always move in balance. If there is Death, there must be Life."

  Scripts spiraled into his palm, folding in on themselves until they shaped a blade of blinding light.

  Kalvaxus raised it toward Aeor.

  "Be unmade, child."

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