The doors to the main war chamber burst open with a thud.
Arasha looked up from the tactician's desk she had been pouring over with Sir Garran. The runner who stood panting before them wore the black crest of the underground trade guild—her great aunt's faction.
Her eyes narrowed. "Speak."
The runner didn't waste a second. "A rift opened. In the deep mines of Blackvein Hollow. Your great aunt is still trying to evacuate everyone but...all communication cease after she arrived there."
Silence seized the chamber.
"How long ago?" Seraphine asked.
"Three hours. Her final communication said she was rushing to help ones that were trapped with a small personal guard—some of them trained for riftspawn. We've lost contact since."
Sir Garran stepped forward. "Commander, we can dispatch a retrieval squad—"
Arasha shook her head. "Every squad is deployed on critical stabilization missions. I even sent Kaelen to supervise the awakened to check on rifts that show signs of reopening. Missions, I personally assigned." Her voice held a rare edge of frustration.
Sir Garran looked up at her, brows furrowed. "So what will you do?"
She was already rising, pulling her cloak from the back of the chair and strapping her belt of relics around her waist.
"I go. Alone."
Sir Garran, visibly tense. "I can go in your stead."
"No. Great aunt Valmira took too many risks, from shielding me in the old courts and providing resources such as the mines, and she even provided manpower to build necessary facilities. Without her, I wouldn't be here. I owe her."
"But Commander—"
She fixed him with a steady gaze. "I've walked into worse. And I won't let one of the only nobles who didn't turn her back on me and the people, die alone in the dark."
Sir Garran urged with great plea. "Let me at least accompany you."
But Arasha was already moving, glancing back with a half-smile.
"Someone has to keep the fortress running. And you—you're the only one I trust to do that right now."
Sir Garran looked as though he wanted to argue—but the conviction in her eyes stopped him.
****
The wind howled as Arasha urged her steed forward, her cloak whipping behind her like a banner of defiance. The distant sky was already burning with an eerie, unnatural glow—the rift had opened.
She had no time to wait for reinforcements.
She could not afford hesitation.
And yet—
"Never go alone."
Kael's voice rang sharply in her mind, a ghost of a warning that sent an unwelcome shiver down her spine. She clenched her jaw, shaking the thought away.
"Sorry, Kael."
She whispered the apology in her mind, but her hands never loosened from the reins.
She had made her decision.
The moment she reached the outskirts of the mines, the sheer wrongness of the air made her stomach twist. The sky above the rift churned like a storm, black cracks of energy streaking across the heavens. The earth trembled beneath her horse's hooves, the unnatural shift in reality making the beast rear in fright.
Arasha dismounted swiftly, drawing her sword as she strode forward.
Blackvein Hollow loomed before her like a wound in the earth, jagged and humming with corrupted energy. The rift had warped the landscape, collapsing several mine shafts and fusing veins of ore into jagged crystalline spires.
Arasha stood on the edge, drawing in a breath that burned her lungs with static.
She whispered beneath her breath—"Wait for me, Great aunt." And then descended into the depths.
The deeper she went, the worse it became. The faint trails of blood. The silence broken only by the groans of twisted metal. And eventually, the shivering echoes of something not quite human crawling within the hollow's heart.
Riftspawns skittered and snarled in the dark, their jagged forms weaving between collapsed beams and shattered carts.
Amidst the chaos, Valmira Steelhart—her long coat torn, her braid soaked with dust and blood—moved like a ghost of steel, giving curt, precise commands.
"Down the left tunnel—ignore the main shaft! Beren, hold the beam! Seril, light the path with your sigil stones!"
Her voice was hoarse but sharp, cutting through the fear of the miners and her guards. She was bleeding from her thigh, her side, her shoulder—but she held her blade with the grace of a seasoned duelist.
She turned, lashing her sword through a screeching riftspawn that had broken through the rear flank. Her guards scrambled behind her, keeping pace.
They were almost to the extraction point—almost free.
Then the air shifted.
A pulse of wrongness flooded the chamber, a weight pressing down on every bone.
"No…" Valmira whispered.
From the rift's core, something emerged.
It towered, obsidian-scaled and with eyes that shimmered like moons fractured by madness. A crest of shifting bone crowned its skull, and its hands—no, its claws—dripped with lingering voidfire.
A Prime Riftspawn.
It didn't roar.
It simply moved, blurring through the cavern in a blink—straight toward Valmira and the evacuees.
Then came the sound like thunder splitting stone—
"Great Aunt!!"
A burst of golden-blue light slammed into the spawn, sending it crashing through a wall of rock and crystal.
Arasha stood where it had just been, arm outstretched, eyes ablaze with divine light and raw fury. Her coat billowed behind her, soaked from the rift's acrid wind. Her blade hummed with purifying runes, and her breath steamed in the cold, poisoned air.
Valmira's eyes widened. "Arasha—what are you doing here?!"
"Making sure you don't die."
But even as she stood firm, her eyes flicked to her aunt—she had been grazed. The wound oozed with corruption, spreading too fast.
"No!" Arasha growled, and without hesitation, yanked the silver talisman Kael gave her from beneath her collar. She whispered the activation phrase in the old tongue—"Sevalar."
A shimmering seal expanded beneath Valmira and her group, golden sigils wrapping around her body like arms.
Valmira's eyes went wild. "No—Arasha, don't you dare—!!"
The light surged.
"You're more useful alive," Arasha said with a smile, gentle but firm.
"ARASHA!"
The teleportation finished, and Virelle and her group vanished—replaced by a gust of warm air.
Alone now, Arasha turned to the wall the riftspawn had crashed into.
"Alone, huh?" she muttered under her breath, the weight of the moment pressing on her.
Smoke curled from the rubble.
Then came a low, rumbling laugh—not guttural like a beast's, but disturbingly intelligent. The riftspawn stepped forward, bones cracking back into place.
"You reek of divinity, little commander. But I wonder—how deep does that light go? Shall we find your breaking point?"
The creature's voice slithered into her ears, brushing against her thoughts like a silk thread dipped in venom. It whispered fears. Doubts. Flashes of her father's death. Of the lives she couldn't save. Of the people who only saw her as a pawn, a weapon.
"You fight for insects. You burn your soul for them. And in the end… you will die forgotten."
She gritted her teeth. "Get out of my head."
Her blade shimmered with amplified force, reacting to her rage. "I've faced worse than your whispering lies."
And with a sharp war cry, she lunged.
The clash that followed was nothing short of cataclysmic—light against void, will against madness.
The Prime Riftspawn shrieked, its form unraveling midair as Arasha's blade, Everlasting Luxfire—brimming with divine resonance—plunged into its core. A thunderous crack tore through the cavern as energy burst from the creature's body, crumbling crystal pillars and throwing waves of black fog into the air.
Arasha dropped to one knee as the creature disintegrated, her breaths jagged, sword trembling in her hand. Her hair clung to her face, damp with blood and sweat. Her armor cracked in several places, glowing faintly from overexerted enchantments.
"It's done…" she gasped, staring down at the steaming remains.
She barely had time to feel relief.
The air shifted again.
Chittering echoes rose from every tunnel. Dozens. Then hundreds.
The darkness shivered—and the horde came.
A tidal wave of lesser riftspawn.
Sickly pale, spider-limbed, leaping from shadow to shadow, screeching in unnatural pitches. They scrambled over rubble and corpses alike, eyes gleaming with hatred.
Arasha slowly stood, sword raised once more.
"Of course. Of course you wouldn't stop at one."
She didn't scream. She didn't weep. She moved.
Her blade danced.
Bolts of light arced from her palm, spearing the nearest beasts. With every swing, another fell. But they kept coming—crawling over their dead like a sea of rot and hunger.
Her legs grew heavy.
Her wounds burned, fresh ones opening beneath shattered armor. Every muscle screamed. Her left arm hung limp, nearly useless. Her vision blurred, blood pouring from a gash above her brow.
"Keep going…" she muttered. "They need you to keep going…"
A claw raked across her back. She staggered but retaliated instantly, severing three more riftspawn in a vicious spin.
"Kael…"
Her mind drifted to him. His furrowed brow when she told him to stay behind. Her words to Kael echoes in her mind.
"Believe in me,"
Now those very words used to comfort Kael, haunted her.
And now… she regretted that she can't keep her word.
"I'm sorry, Kael…"
Another screech. Another explosion of pain.
"I'm sorry to all of you…"
A tear traced down her dirt-streaked cheek. She could no longer tell if the warmth on her hands was her own blood or someone else's.
"I'm sorry I keep breaking my promises…"
Her knees buckled. Her blade dragged against stone.
And yet—she kept fighting.
Even when the sky seemed to dim. Even when the rift pulsed behind her, threatening to erupt again. Even when her legs gave out and she dropped to her knees, still swinging.
She whispered the words her father spoke to her when she just started practicing the sword under her breath. Again. And again.
"Protect even if the world forgets you. Rise even when broken. Shine until the last star falls."
As she repeated it over and over, a snip of memory—her father picking her up after she plop down on the ground tired from swinging her sword said "I know it's hard my darling star but know that every time you fall, Papa will be there to pick you and Mama will kiss your pain away!"
With that memory, she smiled faintly, even as the next wave surged forward.
Arasha's blade tore through the monstrosities with practiced precision, their shrieks echoing through the shattered landscape. She had long stopped counting how many she had slain—the battlefield was a blur of blood, ichor, and exhaustion. Her breath was ragged, her body screaming for respite, yet she fought on.
Then, a voice cut through the chaos.
"Enter the rift."
The words echoed inside her skull, not spoken but imprinted in her very being.
Arasha's eyes widened, her grip tightening around her weapon.
Enter the rift? Now?
"Inside lies the key to ending them."
The god's voice was distant, yet commanding. She had known when she made the deal that she might one day be called upon to act. And now, that moment had come.
Arasha exhaled sharply, the battlefield around her seemingly vanishing in her mind. Her great aunt was safe. The people were safe. Now was her chance.
"Damn it all," she muttered under her breath, before diving headfirst into the rift.
The moment she crossed the threshold, her body seized—as if the very fabric of reality rejected her presence.
She landed hard on what she could barely call ground, a shifting void of black and crimson stretching endlessly around her. A deafening silence surrounded her, pressing against her skull like a weight she couldn't shake.
Then, she saw it.
The cocoon.
Suspended in the air, pulsating like a massive heart, it radiated an ominous power. This was what the god spoke of. This was what she needed to destroy.
"Use every bit of your lifeforce to burn it down."
Arasha gritted her teeth. The god's voice was growing fainter, as if even he could not reach into this abyss for long.
Her hands trembled as she raised them, summoning every ounce of power she had left.
And then—she burned.
Fire erupted from her palms, golden and searing, hotter than anything she had ever wielded before. It consumed her, devouring the last reserves of her strength as she funneled every bit of her essence into the inferno.
The cocoon shuddered.
Then—it cracked.
An ear-splitting screech tore through the void as the monstrous cocoon imploded, the darkness around it unraveling.
Arasha felt something deep in her soul snap.
The rifts—**all of them—**they would cease to exist.
She had won.
But the victory came with a price.
Her vision blurred. Her limbs felt weightless. The last embers of her lifeforce were fading.
Arasha plummeted.
Through the collapsing rift, through the remnants of the battle, through the sky itself.
She had seen this before.
In her dreams.
The world tilted, her consciousness slipping. Then—arms caught her.
Kael.
He fell to his knees, holding her crumpled body against him, his face contorted with anguish.
Tears spilled freely from his eyes, landing on her cheeks.
His lips moved, whispering the same words over and over again—but she couldn't understand them.
Arasha tried to smile, to reassure him, but she couldn't even lift a finger.
The last thing she saw before darkness claimed her was Kael's broken expression