The silence that followed Brann and Fenrir's fall was even more suffocating than the chaos that had preceded it. The entire cavern seemed suspended in a breathless freeze, unwilling to acknowledge what had just occurred.
No whisper. No wind. Just the gaping void below, dark and endless, where Brann had stood.
Gaël, Maera, Kaien, and Rai stood frozen, their ragged breaths swallowed by the abyss.
Brann was gone. With him, the shadow of the Wolf… and the Light-Drainer.
Gaël's sword hung loosely in his hand. Useless. Powerless. There was no victory in him, no sense of relief. Only a biting cold, an unbearable emptiness, as if something vital had been torn from him the moment Brann vanished.
"It's over," Maera whispered, eyes fixed on the darkness below. "All of this… for nothing."
The words hit Gaël like a blade. Anger welled up inside him, silent, rising, impossible to stop. Kaien stepped away from the edge, slowly, sheathing his saber with a weary motion.
"What a joke," he muttered. "What a waste of time… In the end, what did we actually accomplish?"
"You!" Gaël exploded. "You brought him here! If you hadn't come after him...!"
"Stop right there," Kaien cut in, voice sharp. "You may be a swordbrother… but you're still just a kid. A novice. Brann was still breathing when he fell. Don't bury him too fast."
Maera ran a nervous hand through her soaked hair, her frustration boiling over.
"I was supposed to bring the Light-Drainer back to Valérian... And now? Nothing. Just a damned empty chasm. He's going to crush me for this failure. I need proof. A fragment. Anything!"
Every word hit Gaël like another blow. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword. His gaze never left the abyss.
"Brann fell," he said at last, voice cracked and hollow.
"So what?" Maera snapped, her tone as cold as stone. "That's the risk of the job."
"So what?!" Gaël roared, turning on her. "That's all you have to say? He could already be dead!"
"He knew what he was walking into," Kaien said, arms crossed. "He came here to settle an old grudge. He made his choices."
"That doesn't make it right!" Gaël shouted. "I should have understood his teachings. I should've helped him. But I didn't cut anything, not what mattered!"
His knees buckled slightly. He stayed upright on pride alone, shaking with impotent fury.
His sword hadn't been enough. His will, no more. He hadn't touched the heart of the Severance. He hadn't protected anything.
Brann was gone... And only the void remained.
No more sword lessons. No more steel-grey gaze watching his form. No more brutal training sessions he both hated and cherished. No more deep voice, always quiet, always heavy with unspoken regret.
He had never been officially his apprentice. But to Gaël, Brann had always been a master. Maybe even the older brother he never had. A lighthouse in the storm... And now, that lighthouse had gone dark.
A low, sinister rumble suddenly rose from the depths, making the entire cavern tremble. The rock itself seemed to vibrate, as if the earth feared what was awakening below. A cold shiver ran up Gaël's spine. His instincts were screaming.
It was over.
Rai, always composed, gazed calmly into the abyss. His brows furrowed, just slightly.
"The darkness below is impenetrable. No ordinary human would survive long. We can't go any deeper. We have to go back up."
He turned to Gaël. "Your gear should have what we need to climb. Let me see."
Gaël stared at him, disbelieving. He gestured toward the crushed pack lying several meters away... Then turned his eyes to Fenrir, Brann's sword, still embedded in the now-lifeless eye on the wall.
"And Fenrir?" he asked, voice tight with emotion.
Kaien shrugged. "Forget it. It's served its purpose."
Gaël hesitated.
Then, without warning, he dashed forward.
With a cry of effort, he ripped the blade free from the wall.
The act unleashed a burst of shadow and dying light. A searing surge of dark energy shot through his arm, biting, merciless, like eternal winter. But Gaël gritted his teeth and held on.
"What are you doing?!" Maera cried, stunned.
"I can't leave it behind," he muttered through clenched teeth. "Not her."
Then, driven by a sudden, unshakable instinct, he stepped inside the pierced eye. It was worse than he'd imagined.
He had come looking for what Brann sometimes brought back from the innards of the abominations he cut down... And there it was: The core.
That pulsing shard of Umbra, like a corrupted heart, lurking at the center of every major horror.
His breath slowed as he recognized it for what it truly was: A pure shard of Umbra.
The black nucleus where pain, corruption, and rage coalesced. A legacy of the Unnamable, hurled across the cosmos to destroy their moon and poison their world.
But this shard was different, far denser than anything he'd ever faced. Not like the ones buried in Infested… or even Altered.
A voice inside urged him to step back, to flee before the corruption consumed him. But something deeper, older, called to him.
This was his trial. His next step along the path of the Severance.
He took a deep breath... And reached out.
"Gaël, no!" Kaien shouted, but it was too late.
The instant his fingers touched the Umbra shard, a wave of darkness surged around him, crushing all light, all sound, all thought.
The void poured into his mind, flooding him with nightmarish visions and insidious whispers.
"You want to understand the Severance?" whispered a voice, familiar, cold, alluring. "Then gaze into the deepest dark."
Gaël felt his soul buckle beneath the brutal assault of this corruption, slipping toward the edge, until a vibration rose from within him.
A sharpened ripple of will.
And like a blade, it cut through the stain.
The darkness was severed, defeated.
The legacy of the swordbrother did not suffer corruption.
Gaël gasped for breath, like a drowning man breaking the surface after too long underwater.
He slowly descended back toward the others, who stared at him with a mix of astonishment and concern.
"You're… alright?" Rai asked, his voice uncertain, caught between relief and disbelief.
Gaël nodded.
His hands were still trembling, but his eyes were steady and clear.
"I'm fine," he replied firmly, pushing the last wisps of darkness from his mind. I cut it… before it could take me.
Rai stepped closer, still stunned.
"Normally, only Ardent of the shining light can even brush a pure shard like that without succumbing…"
Kaien, arms crossed, his gaze caught between wariness and something like respect, muttered: "Swordbrothers… you really are built different."
"We underestimated the Severance," Rai added, almost thoughtfully. From his pocket, he drew a fine golden mesh, woven from threads of light, delicate but precise. "You can't carry that thing bare-handed. Wrap it in this."
Gaël took the net.
The moment the blend of hemp and Lumen touched the shard, a deep pulse echoed, like a sigh from some ancient time. A dying light flickered within… and was smothered. The energy of the Umbra, now contained, trembled like a caged beast. And yet, resting in Gaël's palms, there was… peace. A strange calm, pure, crystalline, almost reverent. He had walked through the night… and returned without losing himself.
"Let's go," Maera declared, impatient. "I'd rather face enemies made of flesh than sit around waiting for the shadows to swallow us."
But Gaël didn't move. He walked to the edge of the chasm, where Brann had vanished.
"I can't leave my master without his sword," he whispered, lifting Fenrir above the abyss.
His arm tensed, ready to let go... When a sudden hand caught his wrist.
Maera.
"No," she breathed, her eyes burning with sudden hunger. "Give it to me."
Gaël blinked, stunned.
"What?"
"Isn't that how it works?" she pressed. "The Brothers pass down their legacy through the blade… I want to walk that path too. I want the Severance."
"You can't..." Gaël began, but he didn't get to finish.
Like a striking serpent, Maera grabbed the hilt, her hand sliding over his.
And then, everything shattered.
Gaël felt his mind ripped from his body, like a leaf snatched by a cyclone. The power of the Severance tore through him, blinding, absolute.
It wasn't a blade.
It was a judgment.
He'd felt it once before, back in Kernéval, when he'd first touched the wooden sword. Now again...But here, it was Excalibur's echo, pure and wild, untouched by time.
Maera was gone.
The chasm, the cavern... gone.