The sound of the spine snapping was just the beginning.

  When Vauhl’s body hit the magma, the Maw of Godfire choked on his remains. The white fire turned a bruised, necrotic purple, then spiralled into a vortex of absolute black.

  The chains holding the Altar groaned—a sound like a dying whale—and then one of the main Star-Steel links shattered.

  CRACK-BOOM.

  The platform dropped three metres in an instant.

  Elias was thrown to his knees. Thorne scrambled for purchase, her boots sliding on the tilting stone. Oaken slammed his stone fist into the ground to anchor himself, grabbing Briar by the back of her armour to keep her from sliding into the abyss.

  [REALM EVENT: CATASTROPHIC FAILURE] [STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY: 15% ... DROPPING] [TIME TO EXIT: 05:00]

  "The glyph is broken!" Solari screamed, her voice distorted by the magical feedback tearing the room apart. "The anchor is gone! The Bastion is rejecting its foundation!"

  "Move!" Elias roared, hauling Thorne to her feet. "To the bridge!"

  They scrambled up the slanted floor of the Altar. The bridge connecting them to the Cathedral entrance was twisting, the stone masonry cracking under the torsional forces.

  Chunks of the vaulted ceiling—blocks of red stone the size of carriages—began to rain down.

  SMASH.

  A piece of debris obliterated the spot where Vauhl had stood moments ago.

  "Go! Go!"

  Veyra took point, leaping over a widening fissure in the floor. Cindersnarl followed, whining as the heat from the Maw surged upward. Oaken lumbered behind, using his massive stone shoulder to deflect falling masonry, shielding Briar.

  They reached the bridge running.

  It was swaying violently. The chains supporting it were snapping one by one, whipping through the air like lethal iron snakes.

  "The elevator!" Thorne yelled, pointing to the golden cage at the far end of the nave. "If the shaft collapses, we're trapped!"

  "It’s too far!" Elias gauged the distance. The floor of the Cathedral was buckling, heaving upwards like a wave. "The shockwave is going to hit before we get there!"

  A wave of black fire erupted from the pit behind them: a literal Unmaking, dissolving the Altar platform instantly.

  "Don't look back!" Elias ordered.

  He activated [Bullwark]. He grabbed Thorne’s arm and hurled her forward, boosting her speed.

  "Run, damn it!"

  They reached the solid ground of the nave just as the bridge behind them sheared off and fell into the abyss.

  They sprinted through the Cathedral. The stained-glass windows were exploding inward, showering the floor with shards of coloured razor-glass.

  The "Divine History" murals peeled from the walls, the cracking stone beneath revealing the volcano's magma veins.

  They reached the elevator.

  Elias slammed his fist on the call button. Nothing happened. The runic panel was dead.

  "Power’s out!" Thorne shouted. "The core is gone!"

  "We climb!" Veyra said, eyeing the chains suspending the cage. "The shaft is the only way up!"

  "Oaken can't climb a chain!" Elias yelled over the roar of the collapsing roof. "He weighs a ton!"

  He looked at the cage, stuck on the ground floor. A maintenance hatch was set into the roof.

  "Get in!" Elias ordered. "We ride the counterweight!"

  Oaken ripped the cage door off its hinges with one pull. They scrambled inside. Elias punched open the roof hatch.

  "Veyra, Thorne, get on the roof! Secure the Warg! Oaken, stay in the cage—you're the ballast!"

  They climbed up, Elias following.

  The shaft above was a dark throat, choked with dust. Far above, a square of dim light marked the Scourgeyard level.

  "How do we move it?" Thorne screamed.

  "We don't move the cage," Elias said, looking at the massive counterweight block hanging alongside them in the darkness. "We cut the brake!"

  He pointed to the heavy iron locking mechanism clamping the main cable.

  "If I cut that, the counterweight drops, and we shoot up like a cork!"

  "That’s not an elevator," Thorne yelled. "That’s a catapult!"

  "Better than a coffin!"

  [TIMER: 03:15]

  The floor of the Cathedral fell away into the Maw. The heat licked at the bottom of the cage.

  "Hold on to something!"

  Elias switched Dawnfall to Justice Stance. The blade glowed red.

  He swung at the brake cable.

  PING.

  The steel cable snapped.

  Gravity took over. The massive counterweight plummeted past them into the dark.

  The cage rocketed upwards.

  WHOOSH.

  The G-force slammed Elias onto the roof of the car. Cindersnarl howled, claws digging into the metal. Inside the cage, Oaken braced his stone limbs against the walls to avoid being crushed by the acceleration.

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  They shot past the Cleansing Veil level, past the Bastion foundations.

  "We're going too fast!" Veyra shouted, wind tearing at her mask. "We’ll smash into the winch at the top!"

  "Thorne!" Elias yelled, fighting the G-force. "The brake! You have to friction-weld it!"

  Thorne raised her hand. Her palm was raw, red, and new. She summoned a flame—it sputtered and died in the rushing wind.

  "I can't focus!" she screamed. "The mana is too chaotic!"

  "Use the [Blast Oil]! Grease the cable, then spark it! The expansion will jam the pulley!"

  It was insane logic, but it was all they had.

  Thorne grabbed a flask of oil from her belt with her good hand, bit the cork out, and smashed it against the racing cable.

  She pinned the flint striker against the cage wall and struck it.

  WHOOM.

  The oil ignited. The fire expanded rapidly in the confined pulley housing above. The gears seized.

  SCREEEEEECH.

  Sparks showered them. The cage shuddered, slowing violently.

  They slammed to a halt at the Scourgeyard landing, throwing them all against the safety railing. Oaken groaned from inside the box.[TIMER: 02:45]

  Elias kicked the shaft door open. "Out! Move!"

  They spilled out into the Scourgeyard.

  The fog had gone, burned away by the heat radiating from the ground. The earth was cracking, fissures opening up to reveal the magma beneath.

  The gravestones were sinking.

  "The gate!" Elias pointed to the archway leading to the outer wall. "Through the Bastion!"

  They ran.

  The path was disintegrating. A fissure opened up in front of Veyra. She didn't stop; she vaulted it, using her staff to pole-vault over the widening gap.

  "The statues!" Thorne warned. "The ones we didn't blow up!"

  The remaining Martyr Statues in the distance were destabilising. Without the ritual to contain them, their cores were going critical.

  BOOM. BOOM.

  Explosions rocked the courtyard, throwing debris into their path.

  "Shields up!" Elias roared.

  He activated the Null-Field. A falling chunk of masonry bounced off his shoulder, shattering. Oaken shielded Briar with his body, taking shrapnel to his stone back.

  They reached the Emberhold.

  The military district was a war zone. The surviving Flamebound Sentinels, cut off from the Commander’s will, were going berserk. They were attacking each other, attacking the walls, attacking the air.

  "Ignore them!" Elias shouted. "Don't engage! Just run!"

  A Sentinel lunged at Briar.

  Cindersnarl hit it like a freight train, knocking it into a burning building without breaking stride.

  They sprinted through the main thoroughfare. The Bellforge Tower to their left was leaning, its foundations melting.

  GONG.

  The great bells tolled one last time as the tower collapsed, crashing into the wall they needed to cross.

  Dust and fire billowed out.

  "Blocked!" Veyra yelled. "The gate is buried!"

  [TIMER: 01:20]

  Elias looked around frantically. The main gate was a pile of rubble. The walls were too high to climb.

  "The ramparts!" Elias pointed to a siege ramp leading up to the battlements. "We jump!"

  "Jump?" Thorne looked at the drop. "It’s a hundred feet down to the mountain path!"

  "Aim for the snow!" Elias said. "Or stay here and melt!"

  They scrambled up the ramp. The stones were hot enough to burn through leather soles.

  They reached the top of the wall.

  Below them, the mountain slope fell away—snow and scree. Behind them, the Crimson Bastion was imploding. The central spire of the Cathedral collapsed into the crater, sending a mushroom cloud of ash and fire into the sky.

  [TIMER: 00:30]

  "Together!" Elias yelled.

  He grabbed Thorne’s hand. Veyra grabbed Briar. Oaken grabbed Elias’s other arm, his grip like a vice. Cindersnarl bunched his muscles.

  "Jump!"

  They leaped into the void.

  They hit the slope hard.

  It wasn't a graceful landing. They tumbled, rolled and slid down the steep incline of Frostvein’s foothills.

  Snow sprayed. Rocks bruised.

  Elias dug his heels in, his Bastion-Breaker Plate acting like a sled, carving a furrow in the ice. He grabbed Thorne, pulling her close to protect her from the impact.

  Oaken rolled like a boulder, crashing through a small copse of frozen trees before coming to a stop in a snowdrift.

  They slid for what felt like forever, finally coming to a halt at the edge of the tree line.

  Silence.

  Cold, biting wind.

  Elias lay on his back, staring up at the sky.

  High above, the Crimson Bastion was gone, replaced by a pillar of smoke and a jagged, glowing scar in the mountain.

  [REALM COMPLETE: CRIMSON BASTION] [OBJECTIVE: ESCAPE — SUCCESS] [CHECKPOINT REACHED]

  He sat up, groaning. His armour was dented, scorched, and missing a pauldron.

  "Sound off," he croaked.

  "Alive," Thorne wheezed from the snowdrift next to him. She held up her hand—the brand was gone, replaced by raw, red skin. She flexed her fingers. A tiny spark danced across her knuckles. "It hurts, but I can feel it."

  "Alive," Veyra said, brushing snow from her bark-armour. She checked her staff; it was cracked but whole.

  "Stone holds," Oaken rumbled, pulling himself out of the drift. He helped Briar up; the small scout was shaking but nodded.

  Cindersnarl shook himself, sending a spray of snow everywhere. He barked, loud and clear.

  Solari drifted out of Elias’ shadow. She looked up at the ruin.

  "The chain is broken," she whispered. "The Child is... gone."

  "Sealed," Elias corrected, remembering the lore. "Not dead, sealed in the Eternal Flame. We couldn't get her out."

  "Not yet," Thorne said. She sat up, looking at the distant peak of Frostvein. "But we stopped them from using her."

  Elias looked at his HUD.

  [ACT 4 COMPLETE] [NEXT REALM: FROSTVEIN PEAK]

  He stood up, offering a hand to Thorne. She took it. Her grip was weak, but real.

  "We did it," Elias said. "We broke the Bastion."

  "And now," Veyra said, pointing to the north where the auroras danced over the ice caps, "we must climb the roof of the world."

  Elias nodded. He felt the weight of the 5 Ritual Fragments in his pouch. They were useless now, keys to a door that no longer existed, but they were proof.

  "Let’s go home," Elias said. "Harth owes us a drink."