Among them, there is but one who takes pride in madness. It was never granted to bring solace, though seldom does it wound with intent. Its deeds are a riddle to mortal eyes, its heart a secret no mind can fathom. In the bravest of souls, it awakens fear not by the strength of its hand, but by the abyss of its lunacy. Where it treads, silence perishes, and the world forgets its order. It is not a creature, but a movement of mindless destruction—a gale of chaos that knows neither purpose nor bounds. And though none have seen it bear a mark, all who beheld its shadow knew they were gazing upon a herald of the end.
The Second Iron Tome
The Second Scribe
Dorian
At times, he pondered inevitability. That if he could turn back time – return to being whole, unscarred, and unburdened by doubt – yet keep the knowledge he carried now… would he act any differently? Likely not. He would crawl into the same Madness, only without the excuse of fate, the mask of a victim, or the disfavor of the gods. There would be nothing left but himself. His own foolishness and that eternal struggle between love and hatred.
The same struggle that accompanied him even now.
How many years had passed? Four? Perhaps five? It was then he realized that his wife was a monster. From that moment began the cycle of hatred. Dreams where he once held her in his arms and the world itself ceased to exist had yielded to others… even more radiant. There were nights when he saw himself beating her head until nothing remained but a bloody pulp. Sometimes he dreamt it was their daughter who fulfilled the vengeance she had long awaited, while he stood nearby, clapping and offering praise. He had never thought he could wake from what once he would have called a nightmare… with a smile on his lips.
Then he would rise, and reality would return. He slipped back into the role of observer of a battle invisible to all but them. He watched as memories of old happiness flickered in his mind, joy that had lasted long enough to take root in him like scars. He thought of loss, of what he might have done differently, though he knew the answers had long since ceased to matter. And then he only sighed.
Another day. Another time he had to watch his daughter consumed by ambition, driven by anger and pain that never found release. He saw her mother, performing unshakable strength before the world, though inside she had long ago crumbled to dust. He looked into the mirror and saw himself, yet could not tell who he was. A tangle of contradictions? An afterthought? The only reason they had not yet tried to kill each other? Or merely a fool, playing the part of a sage, when in truth, of the three of them, he was the most lost?
SSSSSWIP!
He flinched. He was a step away from losing his balance.
Cursed woman.
He hadn't even lifted his gaze when Iris flashed past him. A gleam like torn air, a shadow slicing through space, the outline of her figure, a lingering trace of scent, the rush of a passing wind… and she was gone. Vanished among the trees with the same ease with which she had appeared. Behind her lingered only the sound of carefree, almost childlike laughter.
Kinetic magic was among the most dangerous, and thus, inevitably, among the most delightful to wield. It demanded focus, precision, and courage, but it granted a freedom unlike anything else. The Wolfwood seemed made for such travel. Above Dorian rose immense crowns of trees, their foliage so dense it barely allowed a sliver of light to pierce through. He could already see his next target before his feet struck the surface. The branches were thick and strong, offering solid footing and a balm for frayed nerves. The wind whistling in his ears, the chips of bark flying all around, it all worked on him in a strange, almost soothing way. Only the dizzying speed itself might have driven any greenhorn into a panic.
Iris was overjoyed with her newly learned trick. Though she was no stranger to kinetic magic, this particular technique had been shown to her only a few hours earlier. The standard taught in most magical schools was to rebound off the ground, frog-like. Far safer, since it required only half the calculations for flight trajectory, but it had its drawbacks. With soil this soft, one had to be careful upon landing, for at higher speeds a person might sink up to their knees in the earth. That was the lucky alternative. Far more often it ended with a broken leg. Thus, a magus had to settle for smaller, slower leaps. Had they chosen that approach, their journey would have stretched to at least three times its length. This time, instead of clinging to the safety of the familiar ground, they had chosen to bound among the trees like frenzied squirrels.
With some reluctance, he had shown her his technique. Genius in its simplicity. Just before impact, he formed a thin bubble of compressed air beneath his feet, which in the blink of an eye absorbed the entire force of the strike and dispersed it sideways. The principle was simple: minimal compression, followed by an instant release – like a micro-explosion redirecting the vector of force into the horizontal, not the vertical. The consequence was only a short hiss – sstt! – as if someone had torn open an overstrained vessel. With such a weave at hand, a fall from any height ceased to be a problem. Nor was a collision with tree bark at the speed of a fired projectile.
Iris couldn't help but give him a look when he once again mentioned knowledge he had kept to himself until now. Yet she quickly decided sulking would lead nowhere. They had gone through this very conversation so many times in the past that she limited herself to nothing more than meaningful glances. Dorian was who he was. Proud of his secrets.
He curled his lips in distaste at her complete lack of refinement. The truth was, she was far more powerful than he. And he didn't think she flaunted it. Someone as Talented as she was simply had no need to spare every fragment of strength. With each leap she shredded the bark of trees as if it were paper, leaving behind a cloud of splinters and dust. The wildlife nearby must have long ago taken her for an apocalyptic omen. His own jumps were far more subtle. Each landing echoed with a heavy thud, but the damage was slight. Not explosions, just traces of presence. A dull stomp, perhaps a flake of bark torn away. Never a crater. Never a mark one could mistake for an axe's strike.
He knew she simply didn't have to worry. It wasn't just that she was powerful – she was instinctively brilliant. She needed no technique – she had a gift. What had taken him months, she grasped in an hour. What he had perfected through dozens of failures, bruised ribs, and aching joints, she had mastered by her third fall. He remembered every humiliation: the ground denying him mercy, the air tearing at his lungs. Iris had fallen three times. Three. And he knew – had that cursed certainty – that it would never happen to her again.
That damned, wondrously gifted woman. She loved, unconsciously, to remind him why he had fallen for her so many times.
Long ago. In different life.
He watched the flickering shape in the distance with silent awe. He could not catch her. Of course, she could slow down. Match his pace. Stop and wait, as one did for a companion on the road.
Instead, she circled around him, playing like a child given a strange toy for the very first time. She leapt so high she could reach for the birds darting beneath the canopy, then dove downward with such speed it was as though she meant to seize Death itself by the ankle and mock it. She tested the limits and crossed them without a blink.
He wiped the smile from his face, the one that had slipped on without warning. He could not deny it was a glorious sight. Iris, already past her fortieth year, and yet still carrying within her that spark that seemed never to dim. Laughing with her whole voice, dancing with the wind, as though she had forgotten his presence. As though he did not exist. And he followed her with his eyes, forcing himself not to stumble into that old, familiar misstep – falling for her all over again.
He had met Iris only a few days after her Awakening. Then, he had been a general in Brenor's army. The king – not yet an emperor – had presented her with pride, with freshly kindled hope. Here was their new weapon. A magess so powerful she had singlehandedly turned the tide at Laris. Born of blood no rain could wash away, and of fire that burned for seven days. And yet… even then, she had not wept. She had no tears left. Only fury. Pure, burned down to its very core. She possessed Talent that had erupted from grief, but grief itself she had crushed, buried, and locked away with iron bars. Even then, she was no longer human. She was a sword. A living, burning sword, forged for vengeance alone.
To the king, she was a miracle. To the army, a symbol. To Dorian, she was a beginning.
He did not yet know. He did not recognize that he was looking at the woman who would change his life forever. He did not know he would love her without measure. That he would dream of her every night, even when she lay beside him. That every decision, every choice, would somehow be bound to her. He did not know she would give him a daughter – the only person he would ever love as fiercely as he loved her.
But that is an old story.
Dorian realized after a moment that something had changed. He released the weaves and landed. Something was wrong.
Silence. An unnatural silence.
This part of the forest seemed dead. He halted. The only sound he could recognize was the familiar rhythm of Iris's leaps. No chirping of birds. No crack of branches. Even the wind seemed afraid to breathe here. The air was too heavy. Too quiet.
A shiver ran down his neck.
Iris landed gracefully beside him. Seeing the confusion on his face, she too glanced around.
"Hm," she muttered. "Was I too loud?"
"I don't think it's us," Dorian replied, scanning the surroundings. Aside from the spine-chilling silence, everything seemed in its place. "I think it would be wiser to continue on foot. Since we've crossed the river, Cassardis should be close."
Cassardis was a small village. Hardly more than a speck on the map, an unassuming destination for their day's journey. Neither of them suspected what truly awaited them there. It had all begun with an old man, half-conscious, mumbling about "the wrath of the gods falling upon Cassardis." It had been difficult to drag anything coherent out of him, but when fate placed two magi of no small renown near such a tale, ignoring it would have bordered on recklessness. Now Dorian had no doubt. In the words of the old man lay something more than mere drunken rambling.
"What do you think it is?" Iris asked, leaping over a branch lying across the path.
Her excitement did not surprise him. He knew it all too well. It was like the tension in the air before a storm. Pure, wild anticipation.
Cursed, fearless Daughter of Flame. In a sense, he was glad it was her who stood at his side. He had no doubt she was the finest companion in battle one could wish for – on this side of the continent or any other.
"You know, I was there not long ago," Iris went on when he didn't answer. "Quite a charming little place. Nothing happened," she added with a shrug. "That was a few days ago. Everything looked normal. A village like any other. You don't think I accidentally caused something, do you?"
He didn't answer at once. Truth be told, he didn't know. He had seen the way people looked at her when she walked down the street. Heroine of a dozen songs, darling of bards and sculptors, forever the center of attention. He had witnessed family quarrels over which of the brothers she had favored with the longer glance.
"I don't think so," he said at last, weary resignation in his voice. "Look around. No signs of civilization. We're in the middle of the forest, and here" he swept his hand wide "silence. No animals. Not even birds. Not even ants."
Iris fixed her gaze on some point in the distance.
"Not a beast, most likely…" she murmured. "Never heard of any humanoid creature that could scare the wildlife this badly… A failed binding of a familiar, maybe? Some stray undead?"
Her eyes lit up suddenly. She looked at Dorian, a roguish smile playing on her lips.
"Now that's just what I needed! Remember Gholam? Ah, nothing lifts the spirits quite like blasting a horde of walking bones to pieces."
She put on an innocent face and began stretching as if warming up for morning exercise.
Dorian snorted softly, but without amusement. With anyone else, he might have agreed. Only once in his life had he fought an army of skeletons, and indeed, there had been something primitively satisfying about it. Those unmistakable cracks – CRUNCH! – as rotted skulls shattered into shards, bones spilling like dried branches. In those moments, one felt as if they were mending the world. Severing it from the remnants of the long-dead, dragged back by some fool or madman. As if thanks to it, some great-grandchild of an ancient corpse could sleep peacefully, never fearing their forebear might rise from the grave to steal life from the living.
But this was the Daughter of Flame. The undead were not even a shadow of what she had destroyed in her path. Thousands of people – not beasts, not monsters – mothers, fathers, and children alike, entangled in fire that never asked who was guilty. Flame made no exceptions. He remembered their screams. Especially the children. Their cries sounded like nothing else in this world. They soaked into the air, sank beneath the skin, lodged themselves in the skull, and refused to leave.
Sometimes he asked himself: what had she felt then? What went through her mind as an entire village turned to torchlight? Did she hear those voices at all? Or was there nothing but her own triumph?
The Daughter of Flame. A monster above monsters.
"Something's there," Iris pulled him from his thoughts, pointing a finger at the road ahead.
Indeed, it looked as though the forest was ending. Yet instead of rooftops, they saw… nothing. Their steady march slowed until it turned into a cautious, almost ritual tread. With every step they drew nearer, but there was no sign of the village that should have stood here. Only a vast, circular, lifeless space.
They froze a few meters from the cliff's edge. There was no other word for it. Before them stretched an immense rift of nothingness. It looked alien. Not like a basin carved by centuries of nature's work. Not like a natural hollow. Not like some forgotten valley.
Simply a piece of the world cut out of reality.
Dorian could think of no other way to explain it. The earth at the edges was fresh, barely settled, like wounds too violently laid open. In places it was still muddy, as though it hadn't yet dried after something had torn the life from it. The vegetation hadn't merely vanished – it had been erased. So thoroughly that even the roots looked as if they had never been there at all. Below, on the slopes of the chasm, small landslides of dirt slid down, as though the crater was not yet ready to become part of the world.
Whatever had happened here, it had taken place no more than an hour or two ago. The silence around them felt like more than an unnatural stillness. The hiss of the wind, the crunch of soil beneath their feet – it all sounded distant, muffled, like echoes trapped inside a sealed jar.
He looked at Iris. All her confidence seemed to have vanished. She glanced about frantically at the unnatural scene. Likely the same way he was. Desperately searching for a sensible answer. Nothing could soothe them now more than a fragment of logic in this madness.
Dorian swallowed hard. The best image that came to his mind – and the one he immediately banished – was that of a giant, tall enough to scrape the heavens, kneeling where the village once stood and cutting out a perfect piece of land, as though seeking a place for his private latrine. Absurd. And yet… the only thing that held any sense.
Not long ago they had laughed at that old man, even mocked his supposed delusions. But now both of them stood here and saw it with their own eyes. They had both traveled far and wide. They had done and witnessed things most people could never dream of, and yet this was…
Madness. The very Depth of Madness.
There was no ruin. No destruction. No trace.
Every explosion – magical or not – always left an echo. Stone could be shattered, wood burned, marble cracked from within. But there was always some remnant: ash, splinters, debris, memory of matter. The world knew no such thing as nothing.
And yet here… there was exactly that. Nothing.
Dorian scanned the crater's edge. Where the rift seemed to end, the trees were split vertically. Those that had somehow survived looked as though they had always grown with only half their being. And in a way that mocked all laws of physics – no splinters, no jagged edges. As though they had never existed whole. As though, in some childish game, someone had molded a forest of clay and then with a single sweep of a finger had scraped away a part of it. The same with rocks, the same with the turf covering the ground.
He began to walk along the rim, a few meters from the edge. Animals avoided the place entirely. Not even by accident did they come near. He was certain that whatever had happened here had driven the local wildlife away for a long time. On one of the slopes he came upon a fox, or rather half of one. The carcass was fresh, a thin stream of blood seeping from it. But its hind part… did not exist. Not torn. Not cut. Simply gone. As if erased from being with a single, soundless stroke.
Instinctively he reached for the weaves, but he already knew the result. Nothing. No traces of mana, no ripples of residual energy, no disturbance. The air was dead. This was not merely the absence of magic. This was antimagic. A void so absolute it was blasphemous. So pure it allowed nothing to exist.
He looked at Iris. She stood at the very edge, so still she seemed a part of the landscape. She was staring downward, as though time itself had ceased to flow for her. After a moment she turned toward him, and her gaze was so intense that – had he still possessed hair – it would have stood on end.
Iris… afraid?
Her eyes – so wide they looked unnatural – were spread in silent shock, her lips moving soundlessly as though she had, for a heartbeat, lost all contact with reality. She stood there like a ghost, as if unable to believe what she was seeing. Dorian had seen her in fury. In the ecstasy of victory. In the blind frenzy of battle. But never… never like this.
All that remained was to look down. He stepped up beside Iris and leaned over the edge.
At the bottom lay a figure. Curled in a fetal position, like a child in the womb. Wrapped only in its own arms. In other circumstances, he would not have considered it extraordinary, yet the figure was undeniably the epicenter of the entire event. Not a monster. Not some beast from another dimension. Not something of tentacles and chaos. No claws, no fangs, no horn, no glow. Nothing that could possibly match the scale of the crater surrounding them.
There was nothing… except her.
The marks in the earth did not resemble an explosion. Nor did they suggest an escape. All of them converged upon her. Furrows beginning wide, like gaping jaws, narrowing toward the epicenter. As though the world had collapsed into a single point. As though here had been sown a seed of pain, from which this void had grown.
"We need to kill it," Iris said at last. "No collateral damage. Concentrated fire, straight into the center" she pointed with two fingers at the figure, still lying motionless.
We need to kill IT.
"Is killing always the first thing that comes to your mind?" he snapped at her, genuine frustration in his voice.
"And do you have a better idea?" she hissed through clenched teeth, jabbing her finger at the center of the crater, as though it wasn't already impossible to look anywhere else. "Damn it, Dorian, you always do this. This isn't ordinary magic, and you know it. This is something… evil." She swallowed hard. "You want to just leave it? To unleash upon the world something that… that…"
Had devoured Cassardis. Without leaving even a single brick behind.
"That's a person. Just like you or me. We don't even know if they have anything to do with what happened here. Maybe they're only a victim? Maybe someone who arrived after the catastrophe. And most importantly, maybe they have information. This could be the last person who knows what really happened here."
Iris opened her mouth to retort, but he raised a finger.
"I'm going down there, Iris. If something goes wrong, you can roast me along with them."
And he jumped. He didn't even wait for an answer, because he knew it would lead nowhere. If he let her talk a moment longer, she would have convinced herself that the stranger was better turned to ash without asking anyone's opinion. He had to be faster. Now that he was down there as well, Iris wouldn't do it.
Probably.
When he reached the bottom, he wove again, shaping a thin bubble of air beneath his feet. The cushion worked, but he hadn't expected the ground to be so mercilessly hard. Only then did he realize how far he had fallen. Beneath his feet was no longer soil but bare gray stone, smooth and unbroken, stretching in every direction. Around him rose vertical walls of rock and earth, like the walls of a colossal prison. He was an ant dropped into a bucket – with smooth, unreachable sides and a narrow band of sky far above.
And he was not alone.
With steady steps he advanced toward the center. With every meter he lost a fragment of confidence, but it was already too late to turn back. He looked over his shoulder and glanced upward. Iris was watching him closely. He waved at her cheerfully, though he could not tell whether the gesture was meant to reassure her, or himself.
The closer he came, the heavier the air grew. Every breath felt like climbing to the peak of a high mountain. His chest tightened painfully, his throat scraped raw with dryness. By halfway he was already gasping, as though each breath had to be torn out by force from the resistance of an invisible weight. The nearer he drew, the more details he could make out.
The figure was not dead. Not even still. She shook in a way that resembled convulsions more than life. Almost seizures. It was a girl, perhaps twenty years old. So pitiful in her suffering that Dorian's heart nearly burst from his chest.
One glance at her face was enough for Dorian to understand: she had been crying. And not the ordinary kind. Not like someone whose heart had been broken. She wept as only those do whose entire world has shattered. Her eyes, now empty and clouded, seemed not to register reality. She gave no response to his presence. Not even to the shadow that fell across her skin when he stood right beside her. The skin beneath her eyes was faintly swollen, dark circles giving her face the look of sleeplessness and helplessness. Her lips – corners dragged down in pain – were bitten until they bled. Her hair, once surely beautiful, fiery red, now hung in ragged strands, partly matted together. She wore a simple yellow dress that reached her ankles. A plain pattern of daffodils – so bright and innocent – stood in grotesque contrast to the dried bloodstains scattered across the fabric.
She did not look wounded. More like a witness to a very, very clumsy surgery.
So ordinary, and yet the heart of the catastrophe.
Dorian slowly stepped toward the girl and reached out his hand, forcing something like a smile onto his face.
"It's all right now. I came to help you."
"Help?" she echoed dully, as though tasting the word on her tongue and finding herself unable to swallow it. "Help…?"
Before he could pull back, her fingers clenched around his collar, yanking him forward. Their faces were so close he could feel her breath. He flinched when she looked straight into his eyes.
"Kill me…" she whispered. "Please… kill me!"
They stood like that for a long moment. She – on the verge of tears – was shaking him, while Dorian stared at her in mute dread. How was he supposed to answer that? He knew something terrible had happened. Something that had burned her hollow and left a scar that would never fade. The girl had endured a trauma that would follow her for the rest of her life, whatever that life might be.
And yet… to kill her? That would be wrong. Evil. Even as she begged him to end her life, he could not.
"I can't grant your wish," he answered in a hushed voice, "but I can promise you we'll find whoever did this. They will pay for everything."
He knew the words meant little, but they were meant as comfort. They did not work. She began pounding his chest with her fists. At first weakly, then with growing fury. The sobs that had choked her throat broke free at last. Harsh, trembling, unstoppable.
"It was me!" she screamed. "Me! They all died because of me!"