Sael stood in the center of the courtyard, eyes closed, breathing steady.

  He'd healed the last of the injured about twenty minutes ago and confirmed there were no more Corrupted. The mine compound had settled into an exhausted quiet. People moved around him with careful steps, giving him a wide berth that was part respect, part fear, and part simple uncertainty about what to do with a mage who'd killed twenty-five corrupted individuals in the span of maybe ten minutes.

  He ignored them.

  His attention was turned inward, gathering mana from his core in quantities that would have made most mages pass out from the strain. The spell he was about to cast wasn't particularly complex, but it required range. A lot of range. And range meant power, which meant mana, which meant this was going to be slightly unpleasant for about thirty seconds.

  [Advanced Analyze].

  The mana erupted from him in a perfect sphere.

  It started small, maybe the size of a fist, a translucent white bubble that shimmered faintly in the afternoon light. Then it expanded. Fast. The sphere grew outward in all directions like water filling a container, passing through walls and people and stone as if none of it existed.

  Because to the spell, none of it did. [Advanced Analyze] didn't care about physical matter. It cared about magical phenomena, about the fabric of reality itself, and the places where that fabric had been torn or twisted or corrupted.

  The bubble swelled to encompass the courtyard. The barracks. The mine entrance. The administrative buildings. It kept going, spreading out across the compound.

  Sael could feel it all. Every inch of space the spell touched fed information back to him in a constant stream that his mind parsed automatically, sorting through the noise for what he was looking for.

  Normal space felt like... well, normal space. Neutral and stable. The magical equivalent of white noise. But tears in reality had a signature. They felt wrong, like a discordant note in an otherwise harmonious piece of music.

  The bubble reached the mining tunnels and poured into them, filling every shaft and chamber and cramped passage with that translucent white light. Above ground, people were starting to notice.

  "What in the—"

  "Is that him? Is he doing that?"

  "What kind of spell is that? I've never seen anything that big."

  "Should we be worried? That feels like we should be worried."

  The spell kept expanding.

  It passed beyond the mine compound entirely, spreading out across the rocky terrain surrounding the operation. A quarter mile. Half a mile. The bubble was enormous now, a dome of white light that covered everything for what had to be close to a full mile in radius, and all the information flooding back to Sael.

  Most of it was useless. Rock. Air. Dirt. The faint magical signatures of enchanted equipment scattered throughout the compound. The lingering traces of the corrupted mages he'd killed, their tainted mana slowly dissipating now that the source was gone.

  And then—

  There.

  Deep underground, maybe three hundred feet below the surface, in one of the older mining tunnels. A wrongness that made his teeth ache even through the spell's sensory translation. A tear in reality, maybe six feet tall and four feet wide, pulsing with that familiar sickly energy.

  Found it.

  Sael opened his eyes and released the spell. The bubble collapsed inward instantly, all that mana rushing back into him in a way that felt like being punched in the sternum by a particularly aggressive boulder. It was manageable though.

  Around him, people were staring.

  "Apologies for the disturbance," Sael said to no one in particular. "I needed to locate something."

  He started walking toward the mine entrance.

  Captain Dernwell appeared at his side within seconds, slightly out of breath as if he'd jogged over. "Sir? What was that spell? And did you... did you find what you were looking for?"

  "Yes."

  "And what were you looking for, if I may ask?"

  "The source of the Corruption."

  The captain's expression went through several complicated transitions before settling on something resembling dread. "You found it? You can close it?"

  "That's the intention."

  They reached the mine entrance. Sael didn't slow down. The captain followed, and after a moment's hesitation, so did several of the soldiers who'd been standing guard. Sael didn't tell them not to. If they wanted to follow him into the depths to watch him seal a tear in reality, that was their choice.

  The tunnel system was extensive. Sael navigated it with certainty as he'd already mapped every inch through magical means, turning left where the tunnel branched, continuing straight where another passage split off, descending deeper with each intersection.

  They passed the chamber where he'd killed the three mages. The bodies were gone—moved by the soldiers during their sweep—but the bloodstains remained, dark patches on ancient stone that no one had bothered to clean yet.

  The tunnel narrowed past that point. The ceiling dropped lower. The walls showed signs of older excavation work.

  Sael had to duck to avoid hitting his head on a support beam. The captain and the soldiers following him muttered complaints about the tight space, but no one turned back.

  The wrongness grew stronger as they descended. Not Corruption, not exactly, but the presence of something that shouldn't be here. A hole in the world. The air itself felt heavier, charged with energy that made the hair on Sael's arms stand up.

  Finally, the tunnel opened into a small natural cavern.

  And there it was.

  The tear hung in the air about three feet off the ground, suspended in space like someone had taken a knife to reality and simply cut. The edges rippled faintly, distorting the air around them in ways that hurt to look at directly. Through the opening, Sael could see... elsewhere.

  A sky, if you could call it that. Purple, lightless, stretching away into infinite distance. There was no sun or clouds. Just that sickly purple expanse dotted with many stars. They didn't twinkle the way normal stars did. They pulsed, each one beating with its own rhythm like a diseased heart.

  This was Corruption's domain. The place it came from. The space between spaces where it lived and grew and waited for opportunities exactly like this one.

  Energy seeped through the tear in a slow, steady flow. Not a flood—if it had been a flood, the entire mine would have been consumed months ago—but a constant trickle of tainted mana that spilled out into the world and infected everything it touched.

  Behind him, someone made a sound that might have been a prayer.

  "Stone Father preserve us," Captain Dernwell whispered. "What is that?"

  "A tear in reality," Sael said, stepping closer to examine it. "A wound in the fabric of our world that connects to... somewhere else."

  "The Corruption came from there?"

  "Yes."

  Sael studied the tear carefully, noting the way the edges pulsed, the pattern of the energy flow, the stability of the breach. This wasn't a fresh wound. It had been here for a while. Years, definitely. Long enough to establish itself, to settle into a stable configuration that would persist until someone deliberately closed it.

  His theory formed as he looked at it.

  This had started as an accident. A random occurrence, the kind of extremely unlikely event that happened sometimes when you had an entire universe of magical energy pressing against the boundaries of reality. Then a weakness in the fabric, a momentary thinning, and then—crack. A tear. Small at first, barely noticeable, leaking just enough Corruption to affect someone who spent a lot of time near it.

  Someone like a researcher. A professor, perhaps, conducting experiments in the old mining tunnels where no one would disturb him.

  Aldric Eryndor had found this. Or it had found him. Either way, he'd been exposed to the Corruption long enough for it to take root, to twist his mind and finally make him see opportunity instead of danger.

  And then he'd deliberately shown it to others. Carth, back at Orlys. Moss and his researchers. All of them exposed, infected and becoming vectors for further spread.

  This was where it had all started. A random tear in a forgotten corner of an old mine, and one corrupted professor who'd seen it as a resource instead of a catastrophe.

  Sael reached out toward the tear, not quite touching it, feeling the way the energy moved.

  "Can you close it?" the captain asked.

  "Yes," Sael said. "Though it won't be pleasant."

  He stepped back, considering the best approach. Behind him, the soldiers watched in silence, their faces lit by the purple glow seeping from the tear.

  Time to get to work.

  Sael reached into his coat and withdrew a knife. It was small, around six inches long with the blade extended. Said blade didn't look like steel or iron or any mundane metal. The handle was wrapped in leather so old it had gone black, worn smooth by hands that were dust now.

  He hadn't used Severance in four hundred years.

  The last time had been after the Battle of Yrsult, when he'd spent months combing through the wreckage looking for any lingering traces of Corruption.

  He turned the knife over in his hand, feeling the familiar weight. Eon had forged this. His master, the last of the Braldurin—the ancestors of the dwarves, the way the high elves had been ancestors to the modern elven peoples. Eon had been old even by the standards of his own ancient race, and he'd spent his final years teaching Sael things the world had mostly forgotten.

  Like how to forge a blade that could cut through the fabric of reality itself.

  Severance was a named artifact, the same as Eld, the staff Sael still carried. Though Eld had been mostly Sael's work, with Eon supervising and offering suggestions and occasionally saving him from accidentally exploding when the manawork got complicated. Severance had been all Eon, forged in the deep places of the world where the boundaries between planes grew thin.

  Behind him, one of the soldiers made a sound.

  "Is that—what is that?" Captain Dernwell asked.

  Sael glanced back. All of them were staring at the knife with expressions that ranged from confused to deeply unsettled. The way Severance caught the light had that effect on people. Looking at it too long made your eyes hurt.

  "A tool," Sael said. "For closing tears like this one."

  "I've never seen anything like it."

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  "You wouldn't have. There are maybe three of these in existence, and I know where two of them are."

  He considered the situation. The soldiers were here, watching. They'd followed him down into the depths, and they deserved to understand what they were seeing. More importantly, they deserved to understand what to do if they ever encountered something like this again.

  Educational moment, then.

  "When you see tears in reality like this one," Sael said, turning to face them fully, "and you will likely never see one in your entire lives—even an elf with five thousand years would hardly encounter them—but if you do, you don't approach it. You don't try to study it. You don't stick your hand through to see what's on the other side."

  "Why not?" one of the younger soldiers asked, then looked embarrassed for asking.

  "Because tears like this one are what provoked the Age of Ash."

  That got their attention.

  "This specific tear connects to the domain of the Primordial of Corruption," Sael continued. "If it had grown large enough, or if enough people had been exposed to what came through it, then..."

  He stopped.

  Three of the soldiers were staring at the tear with expressions that had gone distant. Their eyes reflected that pulsing purple light, and their mouths had fallen slightly open.

  The Corruption was talking to them.

  Sael snapped his fingers.

  The sound cracked through the cavern like a whip, sharp enough to make everyone flinch. The three soldiers jerked, blinking rapidly, and the vacant look drained from their faces. They looked around as if they'd just woken up, confused and vaguely horrified.

  "Don't listen to it," Sael said, his voice harder now. "Whatever it says, whatever it promises, it's lying. The Corruption doesn't want to help you. It wants to use you, and when it's done, there won't be enough left of you to bury."

  The soldiers nodded, several of them taking a step back from the tear. One of them was shaking.

  "You should probably move further back," Sael added. "This next part is going to be unpleasant."

  They retreated to the tunnel entrance without argument, putting as much distance between themselves and the tear as the space allowed. Captain Dernwell hesitated, clearly torn between his duty to witness what happened and his survival instinct, but eventually he followed his men.

  Sael turned back to the tear.

  He raised Severance, lining the blade up with the rippling edge of the wound. The knife seemed to hum in his hand, responding to the presence of the dimensional breach the way a tuning fork responded to the right frequency.

  "Cover your ears," he called back to the soldiers.

  He didn't wait to see if they complied.

  Sael pressed the tip of Severance against the top edge of the tear and began to drag it downward, following the line of the wound as if he were sealing a seam. The blade cut through the fabric of reality with a resistance that felt like pressing a knife through cold butter, smooth but requiring constant pressure.

  The sound started immediately.

  It was glass screeching against glass, except the glass was somehow also screaming. High-pitched and wrong and so profoundly unpleasant that Sael's teeth ached from it. Behind him, someone made a whimper sound.

  Sael kept going, dragging Severance down the length of the tear. The opening tried to resist, reality pushing back against being sealed, but Eon had forged this blade specifically to overcome that resistance. The edges of the wound pulled together behind the knife's passage, knitting closed the way skin sealed over a cut.

  The last inch sealed with a sound like a scream being cut off mid-breath, and then—

  Silence.

  The tear was gone. The purple light vanished, leaving the cavern lit only by the faint glow of the soldiers' lanterns. The wrongness in the air disappeared so completely that the absence of it felt like a physical relief.

  Sael lowered Severance and took a breath.

  Behind him, someone was definitely crying. Another soldier was sitting on the ground, looking like he'd just survived a natural disaster. Captain Dernwell had his hands pressed against his ears so hard his knuckles had gone white.

  "It's done," Sael said.

  He wiped Severance clean on his coat—the blade didn't actually have anything on it, but the gesture felt appropriate—and returned it to the inner pocket where he kept it.

  The cavern felt normal now. Just a space carved into stone, unremarkable except for the faint bloodstains on the floor and the traumatized soldiers trying to remember how breathing worked.

  Sael turned to face them.

  "The source of the Corruption in these mines has been sealed," he said. "The energy that infected the mages and researchers came from that tear, and now it's gone. There may be lingering effects in people who were exposed—you'll want to monitor anyone who worked closely with Moss or spent significant time in these tunnels—but no new infections will occur."

  Captain Dernwell lowered his hands from his ears slowly, as if afraid the sound would start again. "Is it... is it really gone?"

  "Yes."

  "What was that sound?"

  "Reality objecting to being cut," Sael said. "Among other things."

  The captain stared at him for a long moment, then shook his head. "I'm not going to pretend I understood any of what just happened, but thank you. For... for fixing it."

  Sael nodded. "You're welcome."

  He started walking toward the tunnel exit, and after a moment, the soldiers fell in behind him. No one spoke. The only sounds were footsteps on stone and the occasional sniffle from the soldier who'd been crying.

  Sael stopped and turned around.

  The young soldier froze mid-sniffle. His eyes went wide. The other soldiers took a careful step away from him, the way people did when they wanted to make it clear they weren't associated with whatever was about to happen.

  Sael reached into his coat and withdrew the napkin Margaret had given him and held it out. The soldier stared at it like Sael had just offered him a live snake.

  "Take it," Sael said.

  "I—sir, I'm fine, I don't need—"

  "You're crying."

  "I'm not—" The soldier's voice cracked. He was definitely crying. "It's just the dust in the air, sir, from the tunnel, it's—"

  "Take the napkin."

  The soldier took the napkin. His hand shook slightly as he did.

  "There's nothing wrong with crying," Sael said. "What you just heard was reality being cut. Some people faint when they hear it. Others vomit. I've seen trained soldiers piss themselves. One person had a seizure. Crying is, comparatively, a very reasonable response."

  He'd meant it to be encouraging.

  The soldier's face went through several rapid color changes, settling on a deep crimson. Behind him, one of the other soldiers suppressed their laughs.

  "I didn't—I wasn't going to—" The young soldier looked mortified. "Sir, I would never—"

  "I'm not saying you did," Sael said, realizing too late that he'd somehow made this worse. "I'm saying you could have. And it would have been fine. Understandable, even."

  The soldier looked like he wanted the ground to open up and swallow him.

  Captain Dernwell cleared his throat. "I think what he means is that you handled the experience well, Torris."

  "Yes," Sael said, latching onto that. "That."

  Torris clutched the napkin like a lifeline and nodded mutely.

  "Right," Sael said. "Good talk."

  He turned back around and kept walking.

  Behind him, after a moment of stunned silence, the soldiers fell in step again. The sniffling had stopped, though Sael was almost certain that had more to do with mortification than the napkin actually helping.

  Well. He'd tried.

  So... what now?

  The question formed in his mind immediately after dealing with this immediate crisis. The tear was sealed. The corrupted mages were dead. The mine compound was secure.

  But Aldric Eryndor was still out there.

  Sael had come here first because the situation had demanded it. Corrupted individuals actively spreading the infection, a tear pumping tainted energy into the world, that was the sort of problem that needed immediate attention. You didn't let a fire burn while you hunted for the arsonist.

  But the arsonist was still running.

  Carth's memories had confirmed it beyond any doubt. Aldric had been the source. He'd found the tear—or it had found him—and instead of reporting it, instead of seeking help, he'd let the Corruption take root. Then he'd spread it.

  How many others?

  The longer Aldric remained free, the more people risked exposure. Every day he stayed on the run was another opportunity for him to infect someone new, to create another vector, to plant another seed that would grow into something like what had happened here.

  Sael needed to find him. Soon.

  The most efficient approach would be localization magic. Get something that had been part of Aldric's body—a hair, a fingernail clipping, a drop of blood—and finding him would be trivial. Sael could track him across continents if he had to.

  But that option was almost certainly off the table.

  Mages knew about localization magic. It was fundamental theory, taught to first-year students at any competent academy. And Aldric wasn't just any mage. He was a professor. He'd spent decades teaching magical theory to students.

  The man would have taken precautions. He wouldn't have left his hair lying around his office at Orlys. He wouldn't have discarded nail clippings in a waste bin. Anything that could be used to track him would have been destroyed, burned, dissolved in acid, or scattered to the winds.

  Still.

  There would be a way. There was always a way.

  Sael just needed to think about it. After he dealt with everything else.

  Which brought him to the second item on his mental list.

  Little Margaret.

  The research on the rejuvenation spell had been gathering dust for... how long now? Two hundred years? Maybe more? He'd stopped working on it after Rendall, an apprentice of his, died.

  But Margaret was still alive.

  And Sael was going to save her. He was going to give her back the youth she'd never gotten to live. That much he'd promised himself, standing in front of Bran's resting place.

  It felt good to have agency. A clear goal. Something concrete to accomplish.

  Sael had always functioned better when he had a specific task in front of him. The centuries where he'd just... existed, drifting from place to place without purpose, had been the worst ones. Give him a problem to solve and he was fine. Leave him to his own devices and he got maudlin.

  Of course, the prevention of Corruption meant he needed resources. Which meant Pointbreak would have to be revived.

  The guild was, first and foremost, a signal to the world that what was happening was serious enough to act. If an organization of Pointbreak's stature came back from the dead, kingdoms would pay attention. They'd facilitate investigations into Corruption. They'd help eradicate it. They'd provide resources, manpower, access to restricted information.

  They'd take the threat seriously instead of dismissing it as isolated incidents and help locate Aldric Eryndor, wherever he would be.

  But reviving Pointbreak meant Sael had to officially declare his existence to the world.

  That idea didn't please him.

  He wasn't unhappy with people thinking he was dead. The last hundred years had been remarkably peaceful, relatively speaking. No one asking him to solve their mundane, and often ego-related problems; no aspiring students with suspiciously detailed plans to overthrow local governments, no desperate romantics begging for love potions despite his explanations about consent and ethics, no requests for wealth that inevitably turned into weapons against anyone weaker.

  The War of Plenty had been the final straw: a kingdom suffering from famine, Sael stepping in to help, using magic to ensure their harvests grew abundant and plentiful, only for the king to sell everything to a neighboring kingdom for profit while his own people starved, leading to a civil war that killed thousands. After that he'd retreated to his cloud and stayed there. It had been quiet. Peaceful. He'd liked it that way.

  But time wasn't subject to his personal preferences.

  The Corruption was back. People were at risk. And if Sael wanted to stop it—if he wanted to save Margaret, find Aldric, prevent another Age of Ash—then he needed to stop being dead.

  The tunnel opened up ahead, spilling into the bright afternoon sunlight.

  Sael stepped out into the courtyard and immediately became aware of the people staring at him.

  There were more than there had been before. The entire compound seemed to have gathered, miners and guards and administrative staff all clustered in loose groups, talking in low voices that cut off when they noticed him emerge from the mine entrance.

  "—really him?"

  "Has to be. Did you see that spell? The white bubble?"

  "Sael the Great? That's who this is?"

  "I thought he was dead."

  "Apparently not."

  Sael kept his expression neutral and walked toward the center of the courtyard. The crowd parted around him automatically, people stepping back to give him space.

  This was actually a good opportunity.

  Sael turned to Captain Dernwell.

  The man was still pale from the mine but he was standing straight, watching Sael with an expression that was respectful without being obsequious.

  "Captain," Sael said.

  "Sir."

  "I need to ask a favor."

  Dernwell straightened further, if that was possible. "I'm listening."

  "Let the news spread," Sael said. "Tell your men about what they saw down there. Who they saw. Tell them to tell others."

  The captain blinked. "Sir?"

  "The activities at the mines can resume," Sael continued, "but give the people a few days. Let them go. Let them tell the tale." He paused. "Tell them Sael the Great is back."

  Dernwell stared at him for a long moment. Then understanding dawned across his face.

  "Consider it done, sir." The captain said firmly. "The men will talk. I'll make sure of it. And I'll send runners to the nearest towns myself if you'd like."

  "That won't be necessary. Your men will be sufficient."

  The captain nodded, then hesitated. "If I may ask, sir... why?"

  "Because," Sael said, "there are people out there dealing with Corruption. They need to know someone is working to stop it."

  That seemed to satisfy Dernwell. He saluted, an odd gesture directed at Sael, who wasn't military and never had been, but the intent was clear.

  Sael turned away from him and faced the courtyard.

  The crowd was larger now. Maybe a hundred people, maybe more.

  He could give a speech. That would be the traditional thing to do. Stand in front of them, explain what had happened, reassure them that the danger had passed, inspire confidence in the future. Paint himself as a hero returned from the grave to save them all from the encroaching darkness.

  It would be effective. People liked speeches. They liked grand declarations and stirring words.

  But Sael had never been particularly good at speeches. The few times he'd tried, back during the wars, they'd come out stilted and awkward. He tended to focus too much on accuracy and not enough on emotional resonance. The result was usually something that sounded more like a technical lecture than a rallying cry.

  Besides, this way was more efficient.

  Rumors spread faster than that. They mutated and grew and reached places official channels never could. By the time Sael made any formal declaration, half the continent would already know he was back. The people dealing with Corruption—the city guards investigating strange deaths, the town councils trying to contain outbreaks, the mages studying the phenomenon—they'd hear the whispers long before any official statement reached them.

  And whispers would give them hope. The knowledge that someone was working on it. That it wasn't hopeless.

  That would have to be enough.

  Sael pulled mana from his core and cast [Float] and rose above the courtyard. The air grew colder as he climbed, but the chill didn't bother him.

  Orlys.

  That's where he needed to go. The Academy would have records. Information. Resources. And more importantly, it's where he might find a trail leading to Aldric.

  He could bring Ilsa and Orion with him. The girl had potential, and the boy had proven himself knowledgeable. They could help with the search. And if he was going to be hunting for Aldric anyway, traveling with companions wouldn't slow him down significantly.

  Besides, while he searched for Aldric, he could also work on the rejuvenation spell. Research took time, but it didn't require his full attention. He could do both simultaneously. Find the professor, save Margaret, prevent another catastrophe.

  Multi-tasking. Efficient.

  Sael glanced down.

  The compound had grown small beneath him, the buildings reduced to toys, the people to dots. But he could still make out individuals. There was Bulma, standing near the medical tent with her arms crossed, watching him rise. Erris next to her, one hand shading her eyes against the sun. Captain Dernwell in the courtyard's center, standing at attention like he was watching a superior officer depart. Thane near the mine entrance, leaning against the wall.

  Sael nodded to them, knowing they probably couldn't see the gesture from this distance but doing it anyway.

  Then he turned and started flying. The wind picked up as he gained altitude, cold and sharp against his face. He had work to do.

  And the thought was almost comforting.