Floor 1: Chapter Twenty Three - Commander

The ground hit my boots harder than expected, too hard, too fast, but there was no stopping now. I hit the stone floor below the slide, racing just behind Val, Dent, Bram, Kael, and Tovin. The rest not far off. All ten of us slid down the slick slope in solidarity, not missing a beat in our all-out sprint to the far end.

I could see it clearly now, just as Nico described. Hundreds of undead lined the edges of this circular chamber, all tattered clothes, glittering rot, and browned bones. A mass of tendrils hung in the center, stretching from floor to roof, and at the opposing end, a narrow tunnel loomed like salvation, some two hundred yards away. Lantern light flicked, encasing each corpse in molten light.

We made a clean break for the center, dread mounting as the horde began to twitch in eerie unison. Not like beasts or soldiers but like a singular thought stretching across a thousand rotting spines.

They turned as one, heads snapping, jaws yawning, feet scraping in cohesion, already rushing in to circle and cut us off before we could reach the other side.

“We’ll have to fight our way through!” Eshlyn’s voice was nearly swallowed by the rising chorus of shrieks approaching from all directions.

“Don't slow down!” I called out before the first few made contact with our front.

Val surged forward with Bram, Kael, and Tovin at his side, weapons out, cleaving the first to approach into bits before they could form up against our advance. Dent let out a sound between a war cry and an unhinged laugh, shifting into his usual bear form, and barreling through with teeth and claws. Nico and I loosed quick arrows at each flank that threatened our path forward, keeping the pursuit centered on the front.

We’d made it about halfway before the stretch ahead veered into a tidal wave of rotten flesh. Beyond the mass of stretching tendrils, the horde surged, too fast, too many, too close. Skeletal figures bounded towards us, so tightly packed that they surged forward in a blur of movement. The same wave that chased Val, Eshlyn, and me so long ago.

“Now!” I shouted before my brain even finished forming the thought. “Sierra, Eshlyn. Now!”

Our sprint slowed as the current of rot approached rapidly. Eshlyn and Sierra perched up in the front, closed their eyes for a quick moment. Then, all at once, the temperature plummeted.

Eshlyn exhaled, sending frost rushing outward in a rolling arc, skating over stone and bone alike. The horde screeched and faltered as their limbs stiffened mid-motion, their feet locking in place just as Sierra raised her arms, palms stretched out.

“Burn in hell,” she snapped as a roar ignited the dark. Flame met ice in a collision that ripped the air apart. The entire forward mass of the undead vanished in a blast of pressure, shattering to shards and pieces so small they glittered through the air like ash caught in starlight.

“Move!” Kael called out, signaling our sprint through the gap. Eshlyn stumbled, catching herself on one knee, but I picked her up, pushing her forward before she could fall behind. Sierra’s hands trembled, thin trails of smoke curling from her fingertips, but she kept the pace.

We pushed forward through the ruin like an ocean parted, tide rushing in to fill the gaps. Bone fragments crunched beneath our feet. The corridor was close. So close, but the undead flowed in quickly, threatening to engulf us from both sides, faster than we could run.

“Form a wedge!” Kael barked, already angling his blade toward the narrowest path forward.

Dent lunged into the center with a roar, his bear hide slamming through bone and flesh like a living battering ram. Tovin right behind him, flanked by Val, Kael, and Bram. The rest of us kept pace in the middle, thinning the herd from a distance. I called out targets through the rotting chorus. Aether rippled in response. Arrows whistled. Spells flared with lightning and flame. The smell of burning flesh clung to the air as Sierra scorched a press of bodies trying to sweep in.

Ahead of us, the wedge hit the horde like a blade, clean, fast, decisive, but not deep enough to punch through. We slowed, minute but noticeable. Sprint turned to a run, then a jog. I felt more than saw the shift, two crashing flanks pressing in, density growing in the one tight lane ahead. If we didn’t get through now, we’d be swallowed.

We were nearly twenty feet from the corridor when it became increasingly obvious we weren’t going to make it. The flanks were collapsing. The dead were faster than they had any right to be, climbing over their own, surging toward us like waves intent on dragging us under.

“Tovin now!” I barked.

He didn’t blink. His staff immediately lit with an aetheric pulse, snapping a translucent barrier into place, encasing our formation in a dome of shimmering light like a shell. The press of the horde slammed against it instantly, bodies contorting, teeth gnashing, claws scraping with a sound like knives on glass.

The air inside turned still, muted like a bubble beneath stormwater.

“Almost there!” Kael shouted as we inched forward, cutting like a dull knife into the ocean of bodies encasing us.

Tovin's expression turned to grit as cracks began spidering through the shield, but Lyssa rushed to his back, channeling healing light into his core without a word. Kael and Bram lifted him as he staggered, but our momentum kept through the narrow mouth of the tunnel.

“Form up!” Kael snapped as we hit the threshold, turning as if about to give a speech. “This is where we hold them. As soon as the barrier comes down, we need ice on the roof and walls. Keep them on the ground, staggered, just like we practiced.” Each of us peered at each other for just a beat. Kael, Bram, Tovin, Dent, and Val braced up at the front. Nico and I nocked arrows, stationed at Sierra and Eshlyn’s side. Lyssa in the center. He turned then, nodding to me and then Tovin. “Let's show these fuckers what we’re made of.”

And just like that, the bubble dropped, and hell poured in.

The sound was immediately deafening, claws scraping stone, bones cracking beneath steel, snarls and shrieks crashing in waves. The undead slammed into our front line like a flood against a seawall.

Kael anchored the center, halberd sweeping in wide, vicious arcs, cleaving three bodies with every rotation. Tovin just behind, summoning barriers to block any attacks that got through. Bram danced on his right, fists clad in gleaming gauntlets, slamming skulls into the stone. Dent on his left, towering in his bear form, roared and rampaged, flinging broken corpses into the air like ragdolls. Val next to him, dual blades flashing like silver wind.

Behind them, Sierra and Eshlyn worked in tandem, Eshlyn icing the floor, walls, and ceiling to keep the dead off-balance and on the ground, while Sierra launched balls of fire through the bottleneck in controlled, explosive bursts.

We’d wiped out over half the corpses that once lined the chamber, progress. But more came into view. Reinforcements surfaced from beneath the central mass of writhing tendrils. Disturbing, but manageable. Our formation would hold. We had a rhythm.

Until a sharp whistle cut through the air and pain erupted in my shoulder, sudden, searing. I spun, gasping and breathless. A black-fletched arrow lodged just beneath my collarbone.

“Contact…” I choked, but another scream pierced the chaos.

Lyssa.

She tackled Eshlyn a split-second before another arrow screamed past, this one punching deep into her gut. She crumpled, bright blood soaking the cloth under her armor.

“Contact rear!” I bellowed, snapping the arrow in my shoulder and yanking it free with a hiss as I lunged to Lyssa’s side.

Eshlyn didn’t hesitate, uncorked a healing tincture, and dropped it into my hands just before another projectile cracked against the small aether shield she’d thrown up. Nico was already turning, bow raised. They loosed an arrow through the tunnel, and it landed with a thud. That's when we saw them, five figures emerging from the far side of the tunnel, silhouettes cut in flame.

Two robed casters with necrotic energy curling at their hands.

Two rangers flanking them, bows already drawn.

And leading the pack, a plate-armored brute, dragging a blackened battleaxe. Nico’s arrow, embedded in its shield.

Tovin pivoted to cover the rear. Leaving a small but manageable gap in the front line. Too slow. Another arrow hissed past Sierra’s head, slicing a lock of hair as she launched a roaring fireball into the horde, scorching bone and air alike. Necrotic cold began building as the skeletal casters held their palms facing our formation.

“Tovin, we need that barrier!” I yelled, then tore the arrow free from Lyssa and flooded the wound with tincture. She screamed, high and hoarse, but it was enough. The flesh began to close. Her color returned slightly, but the fatigue stayed. Poison. I could feel it in both of us.

“Dammit,” Lyssa muttered, breath shallow and rapid. She held a hand to both of our chests, glowing orange first, then white. The fatigue faded slowly, my breath finally returning fully.

Tovin slammed his staff into the ground and summoned a glassy aetheric barrier, sealing off the rear flank with one big shield. Just in time. Two orbs of necrotic aether slammed into it with deafening force, shattering against the dome like lightning on glass.

The shield held, but Tovin collapsed to one knee, sweat already beading at his temple.

The horde at our front began shifting again, smarter this time. Rows formed. The front sprinted into the bottleneck as the others held back, leaving perfect spacing between waves. Sierra and Eshlyn crumbled them with spells, but the spread left them hitting less than before. They’d beat us in a battle of attrition.

“That’s not good!” Val shouted, cutting down two more that slipped through. Sierra burned the wave, but the next came faster. Eshlyn followed with a fork of lightning, stunning just enough for Sierra to nuke the next.

“I’m burning up!” Sierra barked, eyes bloodshot and nose beginning to bleed. The strain was catching up to her.

More necrotic blasts crashed against Tovin’s shield, cracks forming.

“They’re trying to wear us out!” I shouted, losing an arrow through a gap in the front. “And it’s working!”

“Just keep up!” Kael snarled. “There’s nowhere else to go!”

The armored brute paced back and forth on the other end of Tovin’s glass-like barrier. Like a beast waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Then the rain came. The undead horde started throwing jagged bones, rusted metal, bricks, and debris. Everything that wasn’t nailed down became a weapon, crashing against our formation like a storm.

“Incoming!” I cried as the first rock smashed into Val’s jaw, splitting his lip. Dent grunted as bone fragments buried in his hide. Too many to dodge. Too sharp to ignore.

Lyssa answered by pulsing her healing green light outward like a solar flare, washing over the group. Cuts sealed and bruises faded. But I saw her hands tremble as she spat blood and staggered, nearly collapsing after only a few pulses.

“We can’t keep this up!” Eshlyn shouted, unleashing a jet of water past our frontline, electrifying it in the next breath. A whole line of undead buckled like a puppet cut from its strings, but Eshlyn fell to one knee. Blood dripping from her eyes and down her cheeks.

I could feel it looming, clear as day, the sensation of impending doom stretching into my bones. Lyssa would pass out under the strain of healing everyone. Sierra and Eshlyn had maybe ten more large blasts in them before they’d too, collapse under the weight of fatigue. The jagged hail would disorient us. The supporting pillars of our formation would snap; it was only a matter of time. Even now, Tovin’s shield remained the only thing keeping all of us from being broken up and overrun.

Then I saw it, the threads in motion, like a domino about to fall.

Across the shattered corridor, the two robed husks began weaving with both hands, building aether too slowly for mere projectile spells. No, this was going to be something bigger. Something that could crack us wide open.

Beside them, the brute stepped forward, lowering his massive shoulders into a charging stance. Muscles bulged, bones creaked, feet dug grooves into the stone like it was ready to break the line itself.

They were syncing, timing it. A massive hit to bring down Tovin’s barrier and shatter our formation all at once.

They’ll target who they think the threat is.

I didn’t think. Didn’t wait. I grabbed the nearest anchor of aether and yanked, just raw, reckless power gathering around my limbs, seeping into my core. My skin sparked with pressure. Pain pricked like needles in my skull. I could hear Lawrence’s voice like it had only been a day ago.

“Easy. You glow like a lighthouse.”

Good. Let them look.

“Tovin, drop the barrier on my mark, then switch to the front. Kael, brace your halberd into the ground behind him. Don’t make it obvious.” I cast no spell, but my voice cracked like thunder. “All of you hold the line. Kael, Nico, and I will distract the ascender husks for as long as possible.”

“You can't be serious?” Tovin questioned.

“It's coming down one way or another. Drop it as soon as those spells hit and jump out of the way.”

Kael was already moving, planting his halberd like a pike in the ground, feet set.

“That brute will crash into us!” Tovin's jaw was tight, sweat pouring.

I placed a hand on his shoulder. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

Eshlyn cut in, panting against the strain. “A single spell from those casters will be devastating!”

“Just do what I say!” I snapped. No time to argue.

This wasn’t courage. It was desperation wearing a mask.

Tovin held my gaze for a moment, then nodded, sweat trailing down his brow. The brute began its sprint. Shield in front. Battleaxe raised high. The spells came first, two coiling masses of sickly green and black flame hurtling straight for us. The impact shook the entire corridor, stone broke, the air screamed. Tovin’s barrier held up but only barely. He went down to one knee, blood in his teeth.

“Now, Tovin. Now!”

The barrier dropped, and he threw himself sideways, rolling clear just as the brute barreled forward with full force, expecting the resistance that was no longer there. Too fast to stop. Too heavy to turn. Its shield dipped in confusion, too late.

It stumbled mid-stride, off-balance, and ran straight into Kael’s halberd. The brute impaled itself with a sickening crunch, momentum carrying it halfway down the shaft, the tip bursting clean through its back. A mammoth on a pike.

It reeled, legs buckling. Nico and I loosed two arrows in the same breath, point-blank into its skull. The brute sagged. Dropped the axe and went limp.

Kael snarled as he kicked it off the halberd’s length, then brought the blade down, severing its head with a single, brutal cut, unnecessary, but final.

“Good call.” Kael breathed. “One down.”

“Hell yeah!” Nico grinned, lifting a fist, then froze. Their eyes widened, too late. They moved before I registered the threat. Pushing me down as two black-fletched arrows whipped through the air, meant for me.

Each struck true, one low in their ribcage, the other higher, at their sternum.
The victory cry became a gurgle as blood pooled in their mouth, running down their face as they dropped like a stone into my arms, bleeding and choking for breath.

No. No. No.

“Lyssa!” I shouted, but she was already moving, green light flaring as she dove over him, a shield of sunfire and desperation. “I got them!”

“You’re gonna be okay,” I promised, just before Kael tackled both me and Lyssa out of the way of two more arrows.

“They're aiming for you!” Kael's voice broke the trance. “Let's use it.”

“Hold the line,” I called out to everyone, anger and grief flaring as I stood, reluctantly letting them go before turning towards Kael. “You're with me.”

Kael and I charged through the long hallway, the screech and wail of the horde growing farther off. Four enemies waited, two skeletal mages, their fingertips lit with writhing tendrils of sickly green aether, and two lean, bone-thin rangers in leather armor. They didn’t speak. Didn’t posture. Just unleashed. Moving further into the corridor as we neared.

I lined up a shot at the first mage. Lodging an arrow into the creature's core, but it hardly flinched.

“Down!” Kael barked, forcing me low as he deflected a shot with the haft of his halberd. Another hissed past my ear, embedding into the wall with a crack.

We continued the assault, Kael lining up in front of me, deflecting arrows with a spinning motion as we got closer. I leaned over his shoulder, firing another arrow into the same mage as before. This one pierced through its chest cavity, but again, it didn’t slow.

“We’re hardly making a dent!”

“Just keep firing, it's all we have right now!” Kael split another black-fletched arrow aimed at me.

All the while, I kept pulling the aether to me like a current, hot, unstable, screaming in silence. It burned like pin-needles with nowhere to go, but I held onto it anyway.

We charged them, but the hallway was narrow. Two orbs of necrotic energy, slow and pulsing like heartbeats of decay, lit the corridor in sickly green. We dodged one by jumping right. It cratered the stone in a hiss that lingered to block our path.

The second exploded against Kael’s halberd, and the sound split the world. It sent him flying, a ripple of force distorting the air. I caught him by reflex, but his skin smoked on contact, acid seeping into his armor.

His jaw clenched. One hand twitched like he couldn’t feel it. The magic wasn’t done with him; it was burrowing deeper, under the surface. I could smell it. Rot.

I lined up another shot. This time lodging into the neck of the mage. Finally, it went limp, collapsing with a sound like a bag of bones tossed onto stone. When I reached for another arrow, I came up empty.

“I’m out!”

“Duck!” Kael yanked me behind a pillar just as two arrows screamed past. Too slow. One slid up my arm, cutting a path of searing pain until it reached my shoulder. The other grazed his thigh as he leapt, superficial but still troubling.

We gritted our teeth in unison, fatigue hitting like a wave of nausea.

Kael’s frustration bled through in a grunt. “No arrows, and we can’t fucking reach them.”

“There’s too much ground to cover,” I muttered, ducking another bolt of sickly flame as it burst on the stone by my leg. He shielded me with his arm as it exploded, acid again, the hiss crawling over us like glue. “We’ll get shredded just trying.”

“We can't stay here,” I warned, watching the necrotic energy shimmer in his veins like cracks beneath the skin.

“We can’t beat them in the hallway either.” He dodged an arrow that bounced off the pillar. “We’re outmatched and out-ranged.”

The archers wouldn’t stay still. They repositioned after every shot, using broken rubble and slivers of wall to disappear, reappear, fire again. Perfect distance. Perfect rhythm. No openings. Each arrow skidding closer, every explosion showering us in necrotic rot.

“We did what we came to do.” Kael sighed. “That's what matters.”

“What are you getting at?” I ducked as another arrow bounced off the stone beside me, closer this time.

“Distract them for as long as possible.” He propped himself up on his halberd, standing. “That’s what you ordered.”

“It hasn’t been long enough.” I pulled him closer behind cover. “And don’t get any dumb ideas.”
Another bead burst on the stone. Kael leaned over me, catching the brunt of the mist.
“Allow me to buy us more time, your grace.”

I yanked him back, hard. “Absolutely not.”

He stared a moment longer. Both of us felt the shift in the air, the pressure, the rise. The skeletal mage at the far end was gathering something big.

“Forgive me,” he whispered, then broke cover in a sprint. Halberd raised.
Straight toward the caster.

An arrow pinged off the haft of his weapon. Another sank into his shoulder. But he didn’t falter.

“Kael!” I chased, heart in my throat, but he didn’t look back.
Like he’d already made peace with what came next.

The caster launched the spell. A wave of rot, slow and inevitable, like the hand of death itself.
No way to dodge. Nowhere to hide.

“Not you,” I hissed, and reached.

No spell. No formation. Just instinct and intent, forged by fear.
The aether I’d been dragging snapped inward, bending against itself like a closing fist.

I caught up to him and all at once…

The world folded.

One second, I was running to reach him.
The next, we were somewhere else entirely.

We crashed into the stone across the hall.
Not graceful. Not clean.
I hit first, air torn from my lungs.
Kael slammed down beside me, skidding on impact, gasping, bleeding, but alive.

Behind us, the spell hit.
It tore through where we’d been, cleaving the corridor, spraying rot and ruin.
If we’d stayed there, we’d be gone.

I rolled, coughing, hands trembling from backlash.
Pain laced my arms, veins glowing, skin reeling like cracked glass

Lawrence’s voice echoed through my skull:
Mages impose their will on the aether. But some elements resist.
Time. Space. Life. Death.

The rangers were already repositioning, bows drawn.
The fight wasn’t over.

Kael groaned, pushing himself upright on his halberd. “What the hell was that?”

“No idea,” I wheezed, still pulling aether like breath through a straw. “But I think I can do it again.”

Kael didn’t hesitate. He set his stance, halberd arched, blood running down his arm.
“Then get me to those rangers.”

I nodded. Once. Then vanished with him again. We blinked back into existence barely two paces behind the first ranger.

Kael didn’t miss a beat. He swung low, sweeping the halberd behind the creature’s knees, shattering its bone. The ranger flung to its back, barely reacting before the spike end of the weapon reversed and drove straight through its skull.

One down.

I gasped, knees buckling. Vision blurred. Bile and blood mixing in my throat.

“Next!” he growled.

I grabbed hold of the current of aether; my insides screaming in protest. No time to slowly build. I needed it now. It poured into me like molten lava, and we vanished again.

We reappeared mid-spin, behind the second ranger just as it turned to loose a shot at our previous position.

Too slow.

Kael’s halberd came down like a guillotine, severing bow and arm in one motion. He kicked the staggered corpse off its feet and plunged the blade down, finishing it with a heavy crunch.

Two.

My bones felt like they were breaking from the inside. Blood poured from my nose and eyes, hands shook with violent tremors. Something within twisted like a knife.

“Remy,” Kael said, voice tight. “There!”

I turned. Vision barely focusing. One of the mages was already mid-cast, both arms raised, energy pulsing in crackling coils of green and black.

I grabbed Kael's wrist for the third jump, but this one wasn’t clean.

We snapped sideways through space, landing hard near the caster’s flank. Kael stumbled, but not before throwing his halberd in a spin. The blade carved through the caster’s ribs, then back again as Kael followed, gripping the shaft and slamming the butt into the creature’s jaw.

A ripple of energy exploded from the half-finished spell, wild and unfocused necrotic energy torrenting outward in an explosion. It blew Kael back into me, both of us crashing into the stone wall.

My lungs refused to fill. My limbs went numb. Like I was ripping my body apart, and it was fighting back with everything it had, but the world went quiet. I called out into the haze. “Kael!”

“I’m here.” His voice was broken. Weak. Just a few paces away, muffled as if I were underwater.

I crawled toward the sound. He was slumped against a chunk of rubble, chestplate caved in where the spell had hit. A thick wound teeming with necrotic energy lay just underneath. One arm hung limp. Blood seeped from too many places to count, soaking into the dust around him. And still, he smiled when he saw me. “Got ‘em,” he said, voice rasping.

I dropped beside him. “Don’t talk. I’ve got you. I’m getting you out of here.”

He shook his head faintly, the movement barely registering. “I know… You're the best of us. I always knew.”

“No.” I grabbed his hand, already drawing on the scraps of focus I had left. His fingers closed around mine, gentle but unrelenting. “Remy…”

“Don't!” I leaned into him. “Don't you dare.”

He smiled, still soft, still warm. But I wasn’t wasting time. I screamed and pulled, dragging raw aether into me like before. Blood poured from my mouth, but I didn’t care.

The world folded again. Kael and I reappeared at the mouth of the formation like a stone hurled from the dark, crashing into blood-slicked stone behind the frontline. The noise came back in a flood, screams, steel, the endless roar of the dead, but it was all muffled, like I was hearing it through layers of cloth. “Lyssa!!” I shouted, barely able to tell if my voice even reached.

“Remy.” He breathed, voice raw.

“Don’t say it,” I begged, trying desperately to swallow the lump in my throat.

His forehead pressed into me as tears began forming under my eyes. “You’ve taught me what it means to be a leader.”

“No… “ I breathed, “I was mean to you.”

He choked a laugh, “Yeah.”

“No.” I pleaded, staring into his eyes. “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.” Then pulled for aether, but it cracked through my body like a whip. No power answered, just searing pain. I tried again. Roaring with the agony it brought.

“Stop Remy!” Kael pulled my forehead to his. “Just stop… please.”

“Gods!” I shouted into the storm, helpless. “Someone, please. Help. Me.”

“It’s okay,” Kael said, brushing my cheek with his thumb.

My hearing returned in fragments, voices calling my name, chaotic and broken. Eshlyn appeared like a robed shadow, pouring a healing tincture into his mouth. “It’s the last one.” She said. Each syllable scraping at the edge of understanding, familiar but distant, like a dream half-remembered.

Then his grip tightened, and with that same reckless strength he always fought with, he pulled me in. Crashing his mouth to mine.

Warm liquid slid down my throat, herbs and honey, thick and sharp. The tincture. He’d forced it down mid-kiss… his final defiance. I tried to spit it out, to shove it back, anything, but he held me until he was sure I’d swallowed.

“You idiot,” My voice trembled as I pulled away, grief and fury crashing in my chest, “How could you?”

He sagged back to the ground, a smile forming on his lips, peaceful. Honest.. “It’s been an honor. Your grace.”

Then nothing. His breath stilled. His chest didn’t rise. His eyes stayed open, unmoving, still shining like he was proud of me.

My chest caved as I clutched his hand. “Please don't go.” Then closed my own eyes and reached into the weave. Searching for that singular thread. The one that doesn’t hum.

And I found it. The thread of life, severed. Broken clean. He was gone. And for a moment, everything else was, too.

No screams. No parasite. No war.
Just the echo of his final breath, caught in the silence like it didn’t know where else to go.

A single heartbeat. Then the world came roaring back.

“Remy! We’re dying here!”

It crashed in like a landslide.
Screams. Steel on bone. The thunder of collapsing magic and shattering will.
The corridor ahead exploded in a blur of fire and blood, shadows flickering against the stone as another spell detonated just ahead of the fractured frontline.

Lyssa lay unconscious beside Nico, whose hand trembled as they struggled to stay upright, one arm braced against the corridor wall, barely present.
Tovin had raised a barrier to block the worst of the debris, but now he was slumped on all fours, coughing into a pool of his own blood.

Sierra and Eshlyn were both kneeling, faces pale, lips streaked with red.
Eshlyn’s veins glowed like fractured glass, her face twitching as she tried to rise but failed.
Sierra didn’t even try.

Only three were still fully upright: Bram, Val, and Dent.
Pinned far enough back that the ice wouldn’t help. Blades flashing. Teeth clenched. A line closing fast on collapse.

It was a slaughter.
And it was mine.

My feet barely found the floor beneath me.
My body screamed, hollowed out from the backlash. From Kael. From everything.

I took a step, but my knees buckled.

This is my fault.

The thought hit harder than any blow could.
I didn’t even know if I was breathing, but the words repeated, louder than the chaos.

I brought them here.
I led them into this.

I convinced them.

My legs staggered forward again, past Kael’s body, vision smeared with blood and static.
My eyes wouldn’t focus. My hands wouldn’t lift.
The aether-strain crackled across my skin like a dying fire.

I can’t save them.
Never could.

My body finally gave out.
I collapsed to my knees, the stone beneath me slick with blood.
My hands hung limp at my sides, still cracking with energy, but useless.

Everything was slipping.
Everyone was falling.
And I had nothing left to give.

All I could see was Kael’s face. His final smile.
All I could hear was his words.

Your Grace.

And then…
Something in me cracked. Not in rage, vengeance, or anything recognizable. No aether rose to my aid. There were only threads. Reality flexed around me like a woven web of will. Deeper even than what Lawrence had shown.

Lines, thin and luminous, stretched across the entire chamber.
Strings of aether, warped and blackened, snaked from every corpse.
Every creature. Each thread anchoring them like marionettes on tangled twine.

Moved by a mind not their own. Its command throbbed through the tethers with a cadence that didn’t belong. Not to life or death. A perversion. Withholding their natural state like a miser with a coin.

“Their will is stolen,” I whispered, voice raw and trembling.

A sharp pain lanced through my head like something or someone didn’t want me peering further, but I kept looking, searching, watching.

The web trembled. One of the corpses jerked. Another staggered forward.
Bram shouted. Val cursed. Eshlyn screamed something I couldn’t hear.

But I didn’t move, just reached with something deep.

Not to destroy, kill, or save, but to claim. Overwriting the feed of will with my own.

“You have no right,” I whispered, not to the horde, but to the force that held them. The command that dared stand in my place, perverting the natural order.

“One more spell,” I said, unable to see them, but knowing they were there. Eshlyn and Sierra. “One last frostfire.”

My will rippled through the web like a new current claiming old roots. Bending the tide with a new command. The corpses froze mid-motion, bones still. Hundreds of skeletal heads twisted toward me. Empty sockets staring. Waiting. Listening.

The threads still hummed in my mind, stretched, resonant, trembling in unnatural silence. I screamed. Maybe out loud. Maybe only in spirit, but the power shredded its way through me.

My bones trembled. My ribs creaked.
The aether boiled and screamed in my blood.

Still, I commanded the horde.

“Gather.”

The undead, now mine, responded without hesitation.

They clustered together like birds folding to the wind.
Bones grinding like a silent, obedient mass.

For a beat, there was nothing. Not pain, noise, or even thought. Only threads and will, but the moment I let go, my body went with it. I collapsed, vision flickering. The world tilted sideways as I reached for breath but found none.

Black dots swarmed in. Numbness radiated before; finally, there was nothing but darkness and silence.

---

                                                                                 ...

I found myself in soft grass, wildflowers brushing at my knees. The warm glow of spring hung in the air; floor six, the woods I used to haunt when I wanted to disappear. The only place that had ever felt like mine.

Kael leaned against a tree, casual in dark leggings and a white tunic, eyes softer than I’d ever seen them. No wounds. No blood. No war.

“Where are we?” My voice carried like an echo in the wind.

“You don’t know?” He tilted his head, following a butterfly as if the world were no heavier than that.

“I do.” My throat tightened. “I just… didn’t expect to be here again.”

He smiled faintly, but didn’t answer.

A chuckle choked out, “I guess we both didn’t make it.”

He glanced back at me, silver-blue eyes catching the light. “If death could rest, would they be at peace?”

“You're not real.” My head shook. “Just my subconscious speaking in riddles.”

I tried to step closer, but the ground stretched between us. My vision blurred, and when I blinked, a second figure sat cross-legged in the flowers.

Dent. Quiet. Watching me.

My breath caught. “No.” My voice broke. “You’re not…”

“I’m not,” Dent said softly. His hand flexed against his knee. “Not yet.”

The air turned thick, a weight in my chest. “I can’t lose you both.”

Dent’s smile was faint, tired. “That’s not your choice to make.”

I stumbled forward, dropping to my knees between them. “I’ll find a way… I’ll… ”

“You already did the impossible,” Kael said, cutting me off gently. “But you can’t stop the world from turning. You can’t hold every thread together with your bare hands.”

The image drifted into a texture like grain. “What am I supposed to do?”

“You don’t have to keep proving yourself.” Kael looked at Dent, then placed a hand on my shoulder. “You can rest.”

Dent reached out, his hand brushing mine, warm but faint, like touching sunlight through water. “And when it’s my time,” he whispered, “let me go, too.”

“No.” The word tore from me, fierce, broken. “You know I won’t.”

But the forest wind stirred, and they both began to fade. Kael with that steady smile. Dent with quiet acceptance. And when I was left alone in the sun-lit silence. The flowers withered, stretching outward like spilled ink.

“Someone, please. Help. Me.” My own voice, thin, breaking.

The air shattered like a pane of glass. Voices stretched in and out.

“What’s happening with her!?” Eshlyn’s, sharp, close, but muffled, as if through water.

“She’s crashing,” Lyssa whispered, fear threading her words.

“Why now?” Val’s voice rose, raw and panicked.

“I don’t know!” A ragged edge. “Her body’s shutting down.”

A pause. Shuffling. Hands pressing against me. A presence I knew but couldn’t feel.

“Can’t you do something!?” Eshlyn again, voice cracking.

“I’m trying!” Lyssa’s voice broke, raw with exhaustion. “Gods, I’m trying!”

The forest collapsed into blackness. A darkness like peace washed over me. Weightless. Free. Final. “I can rest,” I whispered into the void. “Rest.”

But then, another voice tore through, jagged and pleading. “Remy, please!” Eshlyn’s cry cracked like splintering glass. “I can’t do this without you!”

A hand pressed against mine, fevered, trembling, real. “Dammit, Remy,” Val’s voice, low and desperate, burned in my ear. “Whatever this is, you have to fight. Please. Fight.”

“Don’t make me.” My voice was gone, just thought carried into the dark. “I don’t want to anymore.”

“Remy!” Dent’s voice cut through like it belonged to me. Clear. Absolute. “I still need you.”

The darkness wavered. The forest blinked back into place, blurred, distant, swaying like a mirage. “What?” My chest clenched.

“That did something!” Lyssa shouted, voice trembling.

“You’re my sister,” Dent said, steady, as if nothing else mattered. “And I need you. You have to hang on, for me.”

The wildflowers surged again, brittle and dying at my knees.

“…Okay.”

---

                                                                                 ...

The space floated around me. Not dark, not light, only nothing.
No ground beneath, no sky above. A lone spark hovering in a vast, weightless expanse. Something stirred at the edges. Faint as whispers through water. Shadows moved in the distance, blurred figures pacing a horizon that wasn’t there. I couldn’t reach them. Couldn’t see them. But their voices bled into the void…

…

“I didn’t know that was possible with necromancy,” Bram muttered, rough as gravel.

“That wasn’t necromancy,” Eshlyn fired back, sharp, immediate.

“Then what was it?”

“I don’t know.” A steel edge in her tone. “But necromancers can only command what they tether, and never that many at once.”

…

The voices drifted, layered, tangled like wind through leaves.

…

Sierra muttered, voice sharp. “Even advanced casters can't touch the four pillars.”

“You don’t have to explain things to me,” Eshlyn argued. “And Remy is hardly a mage.”

“Then how’d she do it?”

“We’ll have to ask when she wakes up. For now, I’d like to keep it a secret.”

“Too late for that.”

…

“We can’t sit on our hands,” Bram snapped, blunt and bitter. “She’d want us to keep moving. So would Kael.”

A silence stretched, heavy. Then Lyssa again, quieter: “Nico and Sierra won’t go without her. Not after what happened.”

…

“She should be awake by now.” Val’s voice, taut with frustration.

“She’s still here.” Lyssa, gentle, though frayed with exhaustion. “Take solace in that.”

…

The words lingered, etched like faint light in the dark, but the darkness pressed in again.