Pure, unbridled fury mixed with an overwhelming primal pressure tore through the entire mining area as Tunde stopped in his tracks, eyes wide.

  Stepping into the final room that led straight to what had been the underground base level of the destroyed stronghold, he found himself face to face with another Corespawn.

  This one, however, carried the raw presence of something so powerful that he had to force his body to keep moving rather than lock up entirely.

  Cycling his Ethra continuously, he watched as the black feline Corespawn drew itself to full height from its crouch, breathing heavily, glowing yellow eyes turning to regard him.

  Early-tier adept.

  Tunde could feel it, the raw power of a recently advanced ranker filling the air with its weight. Instinct warned him that a single wrong movement would see the creature spring from where it stood, inky black wisps of aura oozing from its body.

  It stared at its paw-like hands, tipped with razor-sharp claws Tunde wanted no contact with. His words caught in his throat as the feline turned to face him completely.

  "You are the one who killed Kurl and Uslog, correct?" it asked, its voice as deep as it was deadly to the ears.

  Tunde squeezed his fists, crouching slowly into a stance, sweat beading his forehead. To face an adept on equal footing was madness. Yet the thought of retreating tasted like ash, not when he had come this far.

  "I know no Uslog," he responded.

  The feline nodded, whiskers twitching.

  "Then there's an adept after all," it said.

  Cracking its neck, the feline pointed one clawed finger at him.

  "Then Kurl died by your hands, correct?" it said again.

  Resonance filled his body, steadily draining what was slowly becoming the last of the rift energy swirling within him. Tunde was acutely aware he was on his final spree of resonance-based attacks.

  He had been relying on it and the relic blade form continuously. He couldn't draw the weapon now. Doing so would drain what remained of the rift energy and leave him at its mercy as it began drinking from his Ethra as well.

  "I had no choice, I—" Tunde said, freezing as his eyes went wide.

  Inky blackness swallowed the entire area, wiping everything around him into perpetual darkness.

  The feeling of the ground beneath his feet was his only assurance that he was still where he had stood. His Ethra sight blazed to life in the dark, revealing nothing but shadow and the outline of the Corespawn walking calmly toward him.

  "Interesting. You can see me," the Corespawn said.

  Tunde adjusted to every movement it made.

  "What makes a disciple like you special enough to bring down a Terahudon? Kurl was the strongest of his kind," it continued.

  Tunde tested the darkness, throwing one punch as the Corespawn sidestepped easily, a loud explosion tearing across the room. The next second the creature was behind him, gripping his shoulders as sharp claws tore into his arm.

  He screamed before he was flung into a wall, cracking it as he slid to the ground. A dominion technique. The Corespawn was overlaying the space around them with its affinity, turning the area into a fragment of its own reality.

  Tunde hadn't paid nearly enough attention to that technique, it being the exclusive domain of adepts and above, and now he was paying for it.

  His Ethra sight struggled to track the Corespawn's shape even as it kicked him into another wall.

  "Uslog, Kurl, my kin. Your adept and you, insignificant worm, killed them all. Perhaps I should deliver your severed head to whoever sent you," the Corespawn mused.

  Struggling to his feet with a wince, wiping the liquid from his lips that he was certain was blood, Tunde spoke.

  "He doesn't care much for me, I assure you," he said.

  "Then your death will be in vain," the Corespawn growled and moved.

  Lightning struck the area and shattered the dominion technique entirely.

  The sharp burst of light stung his eyes and filled his nose with the sharp, ozone scent of rain as Tunde was slammed backward by the raw force of the discharge.

  He shielded his face too late, blinking away the aftereffects to find rubble around them, the room's earthen ceiling blown away completely, burning sunlight flooding the underground area.

  Tunde pulled himself from the debris, coughing and wiping sand from his face, to see the Corespawn staring at a figure standing atop a single pillar of rock that had somehow escaped the destruction.

  Elder Moros, one of the three great adepts and foremost powers of Clan Verdan, stared down at both Tunde and the Corespawn with his most commonly worn expression: disgust.

  Tunde didn't find it unusual.

  Though the particular shade of disappointment aimed at his continued existence after that bolt of lightning made it clear enough that the elder had known exactly where he was when he fired.

  "Vermin that belong to the wastelands should stay in the wastelands," he said.

  Tunde had the distinct feeling he was not speaking exclusively to the Corespawn.

  The Corespawn turned to the elder. A roar tore from its throat as it unleashed its aura, inky blackness nearly identical to Tunde's own raging out and billowing in all directions, lashing toward Elder Moros.

  The elder snorted, his body immediately sheathed in lightning and a crackling blue aura, his eyes lighting up as the skies above him darkened and the rumblings of thunder echoed from the clouds.

  Raw auras clashed. Tunde dug his feet into the ground as both adepts seemed to rip the area apart, flashing toward each other in tectonic bursts of raw Ethra.

  The blade rings of Elder Moros flowed around him, whipping toward the Corespawn from multiple angles simultaneously, only for the feline's lithe, graceful movements to carry him past the majority of the strikes, his large frame threading between blades with impossible elegance.

  Tunde's Ethra sight stung whenever he looked too long at either combatant, their techniques blazing to life with blinding power, their speed staggering even to observe.

  Elder Moros's imbuement turned him into a living avatar of lightning, his body crackling like a human beacon of a storm, the same energy imbued into his blade rings.

  Lightning lashed continuously at the elusive Corespawn, and from the sizzling in the air, it was connecting intermittently.

  Tunde shook his head, feeling what remained of his rift energy settle into his body as simply his own, and scrambled toward the spot where the rift entrance had been.

  He stared at the inscriptions etched into the stone, activating his Ethra sight as he studied the fading traces of the Ethra that had been used.

  "Undeath," he thought grimly.

  He whipped his gaze back to where Elder Moros had retreated, pained, from what looked to have been a devastating clash.

  The elder pulled back a good distance from the Corespawn as both parties displayed terrible injuries, healing them nearly as rapidly as they inflicted new ones, except the Corespawn healed faster.

  The elder panted softly, his wounds leaking green fluid mixed with blood as his body fought against the invasive undeath Ethra that was hampering his attacks.

  Tunde found himself wondering why the elder hadn't deployed his dominion. With the amount of lightning at his disposal, he could level the entire area.

  He glanced at the one hand the elder now cradled, rings clashing with the Corespawn as it tried to engulf the elder in its shadow Ethra, the affinity seeming to let it flicker from one spot to another without transition.

  A stalemate, but one that was shifting.

  The remnants of the Corespawn forces and the rift creatures were edging closer to their position despite tearing at each other, drawn by the powerful Ethra techniques the two adepts continued to exchange.

  His body still healing, the undeath Ethra from the Corespawn's earlier attack now consumed by the relic, Tunde got to his feet with several realizations in mind.

  It took regular rankers far longer to heal from invasive Ethras like undeath. He shuddered to think what would have happened had the Corespawn reached Isolde or Draven. Speaking of which, he hadn't seen them anywhere near the elder either.

  Terror gripped his heart at the thought that they hadn't made it out, a distinct possibility.

  But with no signs of them and Elder Moros continuing to tear into his surroundings with bolt after bolt of lightning, even shaping them into almost lifelike forms to hold back the Corespawn whose body bore numerous charred marks from the elder's attacks, there was nothing to be done about it now.

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  He gathered his Ethra and shot toward the creatures descending on the perimeter, crashing into them with fists and legs, tearing them apart with his raw imbuement technique and saving his resonance for stronger targets.

  He was a one-man devastation, his body coated in the vital fluids of rift creatures as they burned away on contact, stinging lightly. He immersed himself in the work, Ethra sight picking out those closest to himself and, by extension, the elder.

  He couldn't afford to care whether the elder was irritated by his presence.

  Gathering the stones he had stored in his void ring, he imbued them with resonance and fired them in bursts across the field, the projection techniques tearing through both rift creatures and Corespawn alike and ending them quickly.

  Turning back toward the elder, he watched as the Corespawn began to mutate. His eyes went wide. The elder stumbled backward as the Corespawn grew larger, then larger still, as though reacting catastrophically to something within its own body.

  "You betrayed me!" the Corespawn managed to croak.

  And then it exploded.

  A terrible release of shadow and undeath Ethra devoured the space around them. Elder Moros shouted, dragging his usable hand through the air in a sharp gesture as the skies above flashed.

  A torrent of lightning rained down in a cocoon of pure power, shielding the elder and, to Tunde's surprise, himself as well.

  He felt the malevolence in the air even through the barrier, something that told him he should be dead, another near miss from the hands always reaching for him.

  When he opened his eyes, he stared at the elder standing ahead of him, and the bone blade that protruded from his back. Eyes wide, he scrambled to his feet, stepping around the elder to stare at the abomination the Corespawn had become.

  ****

  In the distance, a fourth rift had opened discreetly, further into Clan Verdan territory, on a small patch of dry brown grass overlooking the mines.

  The area had once served as a base of operations for the clan during its early rise before being abandoned, left as a memorial to the founding members who had been buried there.

  Over time, it had accumulated enough death Ethra to serve as a conduit, and the moment the incursion had opened, that Ethra had been tainted by undeath.

  It was enough for Adept Kenji of the revenants to step through, surveying the area and feeling the pure undeath Ethra emanating from the recently turned Necroshade, a mindless creature of undeath whose only purpose was to consume life and propagate the Ethra of decay.

  Kenji frowned, arms folded, gaze turning toward the incoming forces of Clan Verdan and the lord whose presence he could already feel.

  Despite hiding his own aura and presence, he knew it was only a matter of time before the lord found him. He wasn't about to waste his rare lord-tier defensive constructs on a losing battle.

  If only the high lord had listened to him. He would have savored the feeling of his plans growing to fruition. But first, he needed to understand who that disciple was.

  The only seekers left belonged to the infuriating members of the Cult of Astradriel, and they were continents away.

  Besides, that weapon's presence was the opposite of what the balance seekers carried. So who had given a single disciple a weapon that exuded the same inquisitive yet deadly nature as the arms of Astradriel's rankers?

  His spirit screamed a warning before his mind registered it. Kenji turned, broadsword in hand and flooded with undeath Ethra, clashing with the attack that fluttered his robes. His eyes went wide at the figure before him.

  "An actual adept of undeath? Do my eyes deceive me?" the figure said, landing with effortless poise.

  Kenji wondered silently how such power had managed to approach him undetected, his eyes flicking to the figure's feet. Not a silence path, given the footwear. And yet he leveled his sword at the blindfolded man.

  "It was foolishness to attempt facing me alone, adept rank or not," he said.

  The blindfolded man smiled and waved one hand.

  "Really? Now I'm curious," he responded, and flicked a finger.

  Kenji felt the power behind the attack, felt the traces of a second affinity layered seamlessly over the first.

  He imbued himself with his Ethra in response, his skin hardening from within, extra flesh saturating his frame.

  The density of it was such that not even an imbued Ethra blade should have found purchase.

  What he felt instead was his bones shaking and ribs snapping. He stared, wide-eyed, before bringing his blade crashing down on the figure.

  Except the figure was no longer there, already reading Kenji's movements and stepping clear in the time it took to swing.

  This adept was at peak rank, able to layer two affinities seamlessly without a core.

  "I wonder why you all call undeath an affinity. We both know it's a concept, isn't that right?" the figure said.

  Kenji wiped black blood from his lips, studying the man. He hadn't taken the adept seriously, and he wouldn't begin now, but he would salvage his dignity.

  "Who are you?" he asked calmly.

  The adept moved again. Kenji smiled faintly.

  "Sound and vibration. Quite the rare fusion," he noted.

  The figure smiled.

  "Where are my manners? I am Adept Joran of Clan Verdan. And you are?" he asked.

  "Dead men don't ask questions," Kenji replied, raising one finger.

  The air began to boil. Joran's face paled slightly as he brought his palms together hard. The force of sound Ethra layered with vibration tore through the air in tiny sequential explosions, ripping toward Kenji, who nodded appreciatively as it closed on him.

  The difficulty with novel affinities such as this was always the defense. Yet Kenji weathered the attack, prepared now, and would not be caught off guard again.

  Pressing through the invisible barrier between them, he raised his blade again, imbuing it fully with undeath Ethra, the tiny sentience he had been nurturing within the weapon screaming to life.

  Joran stretched both arms wide, then brought them down onto the bare earth.

  Kenji's instincts screamed at him to move, and he did, but the aftereffects found him regardless. His ears ruptured. His reinforced bones strained against shattering as he threw his dominion outward.

  Seizing control of the area around Joran, the very ground became a flesh pit that began to pull the elder into its depths, Kenji intent on either suffocating him or converting him to the path of a revenant.

  And yet, the adept smiled.

  "Death amuses you?" Kenji asked.

  "Not mine," Joran replied.

  Every defensive construct on Kenji's body activated from the proximity of the attack that followed. He threw himself sideways and tore the rift open again, pushing through, when an aura seized his form mid-air and half his body was sheared away.

  Kenji cursed himself for his negligence. Of course the lord had been coming. Had he grown so engrossed in the fight that he had failed to sense such a presence again?

  The lord stared at him, frowning. With a single snap, he shattered Kenji's dominion. Joran vibrated rapidly, phasing out of the ground and dusting off his robes with mild interest. He turned toward the ruins of the stronghold.

  "Moros doesn't look to be in a good state," he said.

  Kenji struggled uselessly against the lord's aura, which held him in its grip like iron.

  "A revenant, on Bloodfire?" Alaric said.

  Before Kenji could speak, he felt the presence of another lord, this one from the other side of the rift. He allowed himself a small smile.

  "All shall fall to the might of undeath," he said, as the presence reached through and seized him, dispelling the aura of the Verdan lord, who moved just as quickly.

  A blade met a whip that cracked from within the rift, both weapons clashing once before the force of it shattered the entire area around them, and Kenji was dragged through and to safety.

  The lord turned to find Joran already gone, cutting toward Moros and his student. Alaric raised one hand toward the incoming fleet as the adepts aboard readied themselves, bodies boiling with Ethra, waiting to be unleashed. They stilled.

  What had brought them to the mines had been the incursion, and it was closed, either by Moros or the disciple. Joran's only task now was clear: save Moros.

  The student's mission was still his own to complete. Whatever that skeletal, inscription-covered abomination was, it was still the disciple's duty to end it, tier 3 or not.

  Besides, Alaric had the lingering sense that Joran would have had it no other way.

  He had to admit, he was curious as well. The scattered and torn bodies visible from here were not Moros's work. The lightning adept left nothing but charred ash. This was something different.

  This was the work of a creature that had torn through the hordes with nothing but its bare hands, mindlessly and with total abandon.

  This was the work of the disciple.

  Expanding his aura subtly in every direction except toward the fight, he sensed two disciples hidden beneath what appeared to be carefully arranged rubble, positioned to look like an ordinary collapse.

  He nodded to himself. Sensible. Two early-tier disciples had no business in the middle of that madness. Only insane rankers fought this far above their tier.

  Then again, he glanced toward where Joran had landed and took in the expression on the face of Tunde. Cold fury. Precise calculation.

  Only the insane ones ever advanced. He should know.

  ****

  Tunde watched the elder pull away from the skeletal figure that revolted him down to his very core.

  Lightheaded, with the urge to vomit rolling through him, he gathered his Ethra and cycled continuously, struggling to hold himself steady as he stared at the creature.

  Where there had once been black sleek flesh and singed fur, there was now nothing but decaying flesh and bone, the skeleton glowing with tiny green inscriptions across every surface of its frame and a core humming within the open cavity of its chest.

  A rift core, judging by the energy radiating from it, consuming the Ethra around it as fast as either the elder or Tunde could produce any.

  A half-skeletal, half-putrid feline abomination stood before them.

  The green light bleeding from the sockets where baleful yellow eyes had once regarded them with cunning now revealed nothing but mindless insanity.

  The fingers on both hands had become bare bone, sharpened to pierce and tear. A mouth filled with bone-white canines glowed at their tips with undeath Ethra, and the tail, sharp and rigid, was dark green along its upper half and bone-white below.

  It loosed a shrill scream, a grating noise that ate at Tunde from the inside, making him shudder with revulsion as his body instinctively sought to put distance between them.

  Elder Moros's blade rings flashed and clashed with the creature, which now moved with unnatural speed, faster than anything it had shown before, so fast that even his Ethra sight strained to track it. It went on the offensive.

  Then a sense of calm settled over the area. The creature crashed to its knees as though an unseen weight had descended on it from above.

  Tunde could see the force, a rippling in the Ethra around them as reality itself seemed to go briefly fluid, before the creature's head exploded violently, throwing both Moros and himself backward from the shockwave.

  Shaking his head, vision swimming, he found Elder Joran in front of him, a wide smile on his face, extending a hand.

  "Up you go. That's right," the elder said with a chuckle, pulling him to his feet.

  "Tier 3," Tunde gasped, blinking rapidly.

  "Not entirely. Only with that rift core embedded in its chest. Worth a small fortune if you can retrieve it," the elder said.

  "Retrieve it?" Tunde asked, confused, before realization arrived.

  "It's not dead?" he asked, alarmed.

  The bones rattled and began to glow. Elder Joran chuckled softly.

  "I wish. Necroshades are notoriously difficult to kill. But you can do it, can't you?" the elder asked.

  "No. It's an undead creature. Tier 3," Tunde whispered, eyeing the thing.

  Elder Joran frowned at the Necroshade, which was already beginning to rise. With a flick of one finger, he shattered its legs, dropping it to the ground again.

  "Then you're of no use to yourself or to me. See to it, or return to the clan as a failure. You don't want that," Joran said, gathering the limp form of Moros who growled weakly at him.

  "Besides, you fought your way through the entire horde of rift creatures and spawns. If you want to advance, you take risks. And that," Joran said, pointing at the creature beginning to reassemble itself,

  "Is a risk. You have two options, student of mine. You either die, or it dies. Choose wisely," he finished, and shot off into the distance.

  Tunde watched him go, then registered the large skyships of the clan visible in the distance, and the figure standing at the fore of it all that turned him white.

  The lord was here. And staring directly at him. Rhyn was visible too, shaking his head slowly.

  Tunde opened his void ring, swallowing elixirs and pushing tier 2 meats into his mouth as the creature began to reassemble itself.

  He chewed and forced himself to swallow, staring down the Necroshade as it clawed its way back upright.

  The elder placed unnecessary pressure on him. A voice somewhere deep down told him the pressure was exactly what was needed.

  That he would face moments like this over and over if he was to advance. And yet he couldn't help thinking it was unfair.

  He almost laughed at himself. Since when had fairness ever been a factor? Where was the fairness when his family had been killed?

  When he had been left for dead, fighting for his life as a completely oblivious man in the wastelands? Where was the fairness in being scheduled to fight a peak disciple within the next week or two?

  He felt the elixirs and meat burn rapidly through his body, swelling him with Ethra that he cycled completely, not a single drop wasted, sending the excess to his fists and priming his resonance. He stared down the Necroshade, Ethra sight mapping the lines running through its reassembled body.

  "We have no options, you and I," he said.

  "I die, or you die. I apologize, but it isn't my time just yet," he completed, and went all out against the creature.