The first thing I noticed when I woke was the silence.
No ringing in my ears. No shuddering rubble falling around me. Just silence—thick, suffocating, almost heavy enough to press my chest closed. My eyes blinked open to a roof that wasn't the cathedral's broken ribs of stone, but the infinite, star-streaked night sky. The ruins had stilled; the shards that once pulsed like fractured lightning now flickered faintly, scattering weak sparks like dying embers drifting in a gentle wind.
Relief should have washed over me, but instead, I felt the hollow first. The yawning emptiness inside me, a vacuum where memory should have been. Like waking up with a piece of yourself missing—my mother's face, gone. My brother's laugh, gone. Even the sound of my own voice before the Cataclysm… vanished, as if it had never existed.
Lysander sat beside me, back against what remained of a shattered wall. His new blade lay across his lap, silver fire coiling faintly around the steel, a faint glow tinged with black veins creeping along its edge. He didn't look at the weapon. His gaze was fixed on me. Alive. Whole. Watching like he'd been waiting for me to draw breath again.
I tried to breathe, but every inhale felt like dragging through coarse sand. I swallowed hard, throat raw, tongue thick. The bond thrummed in my chest, iron-strong, binding us tighter than ever, but inside me, there were gaps I couldn't fill. Places in my mind where memories had been—obliterated, scattered.
I tried to remember.
My mother's face… blank.
The village I grew up in… nothing.
Why I kept walking, what I wanted, what I'd dreamed of… gone, slipping through my fingers like smoke.
The bond pulsed sharply. Lysander's voice broke the silence, steady but with an edge, like metal scraping against stone.
"You're awake."
I swallowed again. "…Yeah." My voice cracked, rasping against the dry, ash-laden air.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, silver hair falling into his eyes. The faint glow from his firelight flickered across his features, shadowing the sharp angles of his face. "What's the last thing you remember?" His words were deliberate, careful, slicing at the edges of my consciousness.
I froze. Because before that moment—it was black. Nothing. An endless, hollow void.
"I… I don't—" My chest tightened, the emptiness pressing down like lead.
His hand shot out, gripping my wrist—not cruelly, but with desperate insistence. The bond roared between us, alive, hot and burning, each pulse a reminder of everything we'd endured. His silver eyes locked on mine, fierce, unrelenting.
"You gave it up," he said, voice trembling though his grip did not. "You gave yourself away to drag me back. I told you never to do that again."
I could barely respond. The fire inside me flickered. I shook my head, lips parting, but no excuse came. He was right. I had nothing left inside me—just hollow space and the bond between us.
"You should've let me die."
The words tore out of him like embers from a funeral pyre, smoldering and bitter. His jaw was tight, shoulders tense, voice cracking at the last word.
I flinched, but my hand stayed firm around his wrist. "Don't say that. Don't you dare."
The bond burned between us, raw, undeniable. I felt the truth of his fear: how the thought of my erasure was worse to him than his own death. Beneath it, though, there was something darker, whispering faintly in the edges of his aura. And then I realized—the ichor wasn't gone. Not entirely.
It was in him.
The silver fire around him flickered faintly with black veins, like tiny spiderwebs crawling along the light. His wounds had healed, yes, but the infection had burrowed deeper, hiding in the cracks of his soul. I felt it in the bond now, a faint, coiled thread of rot, patient, waiting. Not overwhelming… not yet.
He saw it in my eyes before I could hide it. His grip loosened, slow, cautious, his expression unreadable for a fleeting heartbeat. Then he leaned back, letting the blade rest across his lap again, eyes fixed on the star-strewn sky.
"It's still in me," he said quietly.
The silence after that was unbearable.
I couldn't lie, not to him, not to the bond. My fingers curled into fists, nails biting into palms that already stung with the effort to survive.
"We'll fix it," I whispered, fierce, though the hollow inside me screamed otherwise. "We'll burn it out. Together."
Lysander's laugh was soft, bitter, like iron scraping stone. "You gave away pieces of yourself for me. And now I'm tainted. Do you see the cruelty of it?"
I swallowed hard, letting the fire in me push back against his despair. "Then we'll fight it. Both of us. I don't care how much it takes."
He finally met my gaze, eyes stormy, burning with fury, grief, longing, guilt. The bond pulsed heavy between us, each emotion crashing against mine until it was hard to breathe.
"You don't even know who you were anymore," he said, voice rough. "And still you say that."
The hollow inside me ached, yawning wider. But I held his gaze. "Then let who I am now be this: the one who doesn't let you fall."
The bond flared between us, searing, binding, an oath of fire and ash.
And yet… beneath it all, the ichor pulsed faintly in him, a shadow biding its time. Neither of us spoke it aloud, but we knew. This was only the beginning.
The cathedral was gone. Kade was dead. But the war he carried—the stain he left behind—now lived inside Lysander.
A chill wind stirred through the ruin, carrying whispers from the shadows. I shivered, not from cold, but from the weight of what was coming.
We were alive.
But were we ready?
The world changed the instant we stepped through the Rift.
Darkness swallowed us whole, thick and viscous, pressing against my chest like molten tar. My boots sank slightly with each step, the ground slick and pulsing beneath us, almost alive. I could feel the faint tremor of something breathing in the shadows—something old.
Lysander moved ahead, blade in hand, silver fire coiling faintly along its edge. But even that light was tainted now, the black veins of ichor threading through it like cracks in ice. He didn't look at me. He didn't need to. The bond throbbed between us, hot, urgent, vibrating with his anger, his fear, his stubborn refusal to let the corruption claim him.
I swallowed, the hollow inside me buzzing, a faint warning I couldn't ignore. My hands flexed around my weapon, shards trembling faintly, as though aware of the darkness we were stepping into.
The Rift was a wound in the world.
Black ichor bled upward from cracks in the ground, twisting toward the ceiling in jagged veins that pulsed like veins in a living body. The air was thick, metallic, stinking faintly of decay. A low hum vibrated through the floor, up my spine, into the bond, into my chest. The walls twisted unnaturally, curling inward, dripping thick black fluid that hissed where it struck the pulsing stone.
I pressed a hand against Lysander's arm, stopping him for a split second. "Lysander—"
He didn't look at me. His jaw tightened, muscles coiled, silver fire flaring sharp. "I need this," he said, voice low, edge honed to a blade. "I need to cut it out."
The hollow inside me tightened. I swallowed down the fear clawing at my throat. Because I wasn't sure if he meant the Rift… or the corruption inside himself.
The bond thrummed violently, crashing against mine with warning and urgency. I had no choice but to follow.
The Rift pulsed around us, alive. Shadows twisted in impossible angles, walls breathing faintly as if inhaling. Each step we took echoed louder than it should, swallowed and reshaped by the darkness, carrying a weight that pressed into my chest. My heart hammered, breath shallow.
Then came the whisper—low, serpentine, curling around my thoughts like smoke.
He carries the mark.
I froze. Lysander stiffened beside me, blade raised. The black veins in his silver fire pulsed violently, slamming against the bond like a second heartbeat.
The whisper came again, this time clearer, closer, as if the Rift itself had a tongue.
The fire burns, but the stain is deeper. You cannot cut it out, little flame. You are ours.
Lysander's body jerked violently. Fire flared uncontrolled around him, licking his arms, shoulders, chest. The ichor inside him responded to the Rift like a tethered animal, snapping, thrashing. I grabbed his wrist, nails digging into skin already slick with sweat.
"Stay with me!" I rasped, voice raw, teeth gritted.
The bond roared. My fire surged, colliding with his storm, trying to cage the ichor back. But it hissed and whispered, promising power, promising freedom in exchange for surrender.
"Let go," it hissed through him, words sharp and intimate. "He is not yours to save. He is ours to claim."
His head jerked, wild, but then his blade arced upward, slicing into the darkness. Silver fire screamed, flaring outward, cutting the black veins clinging to the walls. His voice tore free, ragged but his own:
"I'm not yours!"
The Rift responded, howling. Shadows boiled and twisted. The ground cracked further, black ichor oozing into the fissures. Shapes began to crawl from the darkness, grotesque and malformed—limbs too many, eyes too many, bodies slick with black fire. They moved with impossible angles, tierless yet infinite.
I drew my shard-blade instinctively, veins burning with fire and hunger, pressing my back against Lysander's. The bond flared violently, our flames intertwining, a counter to the darkness pressing in from all sides.
This Rift was not just a place. It was a mirror, reflecting the corruption inside him, amplifying it, feeding on it. If he lost, we'd both be consumed.
I pressed closer, hand gripping the bond, feeling him, feeling the pulse of his struggle inside my own chest. His fire flared again, black threads recoiling, but the struggle had only begun.
The first of the Tier 1 creatures slithered out of the shadows, and I felt the chill of their gaze, the weight of their awareness pressing against my mind. This was only the beginning.
And deep down, I knew it. The ichor in Lysander, the Rift itself, the creatures that waited in the darkness—they were all one. And if we faltered, we would become nothing but another stain in the world.