Chapter 68 – The Chains of the Obelisk
The wind screamed as the storm consumed the horizon.
The closer Kael and his vanguard approached, the more the world itself seemed to unravel. Sand no longer shifted naturally—it rippled, convulsed, reacting to every pulse of energy from the towering obelisk that dominated the wasteland's center.
Each strike of lightning from the storm was not random—it struck in rhythm. A pattern.
A heartbeat.
Kael crouched on a ridge of fused glass, the shard at his chest glowing faintly beneath his armor. From here, the full magnitude of the structure revealed itself—an obelisk of black crystal rising nearly a hundred meters high, surrounded by spiraling chains of silver fragment energy that disappeared into the earth. The Dominion forces encircled it like ants worshipping their queen, their banners whipped by impossible winds.
Selene's eyes gleamed faintly, her voice low and trembling. "Those aren't mere chains. They're binding sigils—anchoring the storm itself. If they snap, the energy release could tear open the desert."
Aric snorted. "Or whatever's under it."
Kael's gaze narrowed. "Then we cut the Dominion loose before they finish their ritual."
Mira, crouched beside him with her bow drawn, whispered, "There's too many. We can't take them all head-on."
Kael's response was quiet, deliberate. "We don't need to. We strike their anchors—their conduits—and let the storm turn against them."
He turned to Selene. "Can you sense the pattern of the bindings?"
Her eyes closed. Fragment light pulsed through her veins, matching the obelisk's rhythm. "There are six main anchors, buried around the base. Break even three, and the chain network destabilizes. But we'll have minutes—maybe less—before the whole storm collapses inward."
"Then we make those minutes count."
The First Anchor
Under cover of distortion caused by the storm, the vanguard split into three units. Kael led the first, Aric the second, Mira the third. Each aimed for a different anchor point where glowing sigils flared like molten veins beneath the sand.
Kael and his team descended the ridge, using bursts of fragment energy to mask their movement. The air thickened with static as Dominion sentinels patrolled the perimeter—soldiers bearing fragment rifles and cloaked mages sustaining the ritual.
Lightning tore across the sky as Kael's shard flared.
Now.
He surged forward, blade igniting with a resonance hum, cleaving through the first guard in silence. Selene's fragment pulse spread outward, distorting light itself, cloaking their movement. They reached the first anchor—a crystalline spire half-buried in the sand, humming violently.
"Selene," Kael said, voice steady, "disrupt the sequence."
She knelt, placing her palms upon the sigil. Fragment symbols spiraled around her fingers, the energy building like pressure beneath the skin. "It's layered—a Dominion pattern combined with something older. This isn't just containment—it's suppression."
"Then break it."
Selene's eyes flared violet. She whispered an ancient resonance command, and the ground split open, the spire cracking with a deafening shriek.
Energy erupted upward—raw, blinding, uncontrolled.
Dominion soldiers turned, shouting. Arrows flew.
Kael stepped between Selene and the storm of projectiles, blade spinning in arcs of refracted light. The shard pulsed violently, resonating with the unleashed energy, and in a moment of furious brilliance, the first anchor shattered.
The shockwave swept outward, tearing through the Dominion camp like a tidal wave. Dozens were hurled to the ground; others simply vanished within the storm's distortion.
Kael grabbed Selene by the wrist and pulled her clear of the collapsing spire.
"One down."
Aric's Path
At the opposite flank, Aric led his team straight into the chaos. Unlike Kael's precision, Aric thrived on brute disruption. His fragment—a relic of the War of Wills—fed on adrenaline and rage, turning his strikes into earthquakes.
"Get clear!" he roared, slamming his gauntlet into the sand.
The second anchor exploded upward in shards of glass and energy. Dominion soldiers screamed as the blast ripped through their lines.
Mira's scouts unleashed volleys from the dunes, cutting down survivors who tried to regroup. The storm howled louder now, feeding on the imbalance between the remaining anchors.
Aric looked skyward, watching as chains of light flickered. "That's two!" he shouted over the roar. "One more and your storm breaks, Kael!"
But the storm answered back. Lightning forked down in pillars of silver flame, striking dangerously close. The Dominion mages had adapted—they were diverting the chain energy, accelerating the ritual before the attackers could stop them.
Aric grit his teeth, fragment veins burning crimson. "Damn it—they're trying to force it open!"
The Third Anchor
Kael and Selene regrouped with Mira's strike team near the third anchor, which pulsed brighter than the others—its energy threads leading directly into the heart of the obelisk.
Selene's voice was tense. "This one connects to the central seal. Destroying it could destabilize the entire obelisk. If we break it wrong, we might unleash what they're trying to summon."
Kael met her gaze. "Then we do it right."
He stepped forward, placing his palm on the sigil. The shard at his chest blazed with light as he synchronized with the anchor's pulse. For a moment, his vision flooded with flashes—memories, echoes of the past, of hands crafting these very sigils long before the Dominion existed.
Ancient voices whispered through the resonance:
We bound it not to protect ourselves, but to protect the world.
Kael's breath caught. "This wasn't a Dominion creation. It's older. They found it and hijacked it."
Selene's eyes widened. "Then whatever is beneath it—"
"—was never meant to awaken."
Before they could react further, the ground split open as Dominion champions descended upon them—three fragment bearers, their armor etched with crimson glyphs.
"Defilers!" one roared, raising a spear crackling with violet energy. "You meddle with what you cannot comprehend!"
Kael's sword ignited in answer, shard harmonizing perfectly with the storm. The battlefield erupted in light and fury.
The Battle Beneath the Chains
Aric crashed into the fray from the opposite flank, hammering through one of the champions with brute force, the impact sending waves of sand spiraling upward. Mira's arrows sang through the storm, cutting through soldiers that flanked them.
Selene chanted rapidly, weaving counter-runes that bent the Dominion's spellcraft back upon them. For a moment, the air shimmered—and the third anchor's pattern became visible in full: a hexagonal lattice of energy wrapping deep into the earth.
Kael leapt into the heart of it, blade flashing. "Selene—now!"
She struck the final glyph. The lattice fractured, screaming in resonance.
The obelisk pulsed violently, beams of black light surging skyward as the storm's spiral twisted into chaos.
"Fall back!" Kael shouted.
But before they could retreat, the ground convulsed. A massive chain erupted from beneath, thicker than a tree trunk, glowing white-hot with fragment energy. It writhed upward like a serpent, then snapped.
The sound was unlike thunder—it was a scream.
A sound of something ancient awakening after endless sleep.
The storm intensified instantly. Winds tore at flesh, lightning fell in sheets, and the obelisk itself began to fracture.
The Awakening
Kael staggered to his feet, shielding Selene from flying debris. "What did we do?"
Selene's voice was faint, almost drowned by the storm. "We broke the seal… but not completely. It's bleeding."
From the shattered base of the obelisk, light poured upward—blinding, violent, alive. Within that radiance, a shape began to form. Gigantic. Humanoid—but wrong. Fragment patterns rippled across its translucent form like constellations, its eyes burning with the light of the storm.
Aric stared in disbelief. "That's not a creature. That's a fragment given form."
Kael felt his shard pulse in answer, struggling between attraction and repulsion. It knew the entity—recognized it.
Selene's voice trembled. "The Dominion didn't create this storm. They found it. This… is the storm's source."
The Dominion forces broke ranks, many falling to their knees in worship or terror. The entity's gaze shifted downward, scanning them like one would regard insects.
Kael felt words—no, intent—pressing into his mind.
You unbound what they could not contain.
Now you will witness the consequence.
The shard flared, resisting the invasion. Kael gritted his teeth, shouting, "Selene! The anchors—can you reseal them?"
She shook her head violently. "Not in time!"
Aric roared, swinging his hammer at the entity's reaching limb of light. The impact shattered the sand beneath him but did nothing to the being itself.
Kael lunged forward, blade blazing, and struck the base of the obelisk. The shard at his chest pulsed violently, synchronizing with the obelisk's dying resonance.
"Then we contain it another way," Kael growled, "through me."
Containment
Selene's eyes widened in horror. "Kael, no! You can't channel that kind of energy—your shard will rupture!"
"It already is!" he shouted, voice breaking against the storm's roar. "Better me than the world!"
He pressed both palms against the fractured surface.
The shard erupted—no longer a crystal, but a blazing core of pure fragment energy.
Lightning converged around him, chains reformed in spectral outlines, spiraling inward.
Selene screamed his name.
The entity bellowed, reaching toward him—but its form flickered, destabilizing as Kael's resonance collided with its essence.
"Back!" Kael roared. "All of you!"
Aric grabbed Selene and dragged her from the collapsing crater. The storm folded inward, light twisting like liquid as Kael's figure blurred.
For a heartbeat, everything stopped.
Then came silence—an endless, deafening silence as the storm imploded.
Aftermath
When the winds died, the obelisk was gone.
Only a crater remained, rimmed with molten glass and black sand. The Dominion army was in ruins—those who survived had fled into the dunes.
Selene stood at the crater's edge, her robes scorched, hair matted with dust. Her eyes were hollow, searching desperately.
"Kael…"
There was no body. Only the faint shimmer of fragment energy lingering in the air—a heartbeat that wasn't entirely gone, but not wholly there either.
Aric's hand fell on her shoulder. "He bought us time. Maybe bought the world more than that."
Selene closed her eyes, whispering, "No. He's not gone. The shard's still resonating. I can feel him. Somewhere inside the storm's echoes."
The horizon was still burning faintly, but the skies above the desert had cleared for the first time in weeks.
As dawn broke, Selene turned from the crater, her expression no longer grief, but purpose.
"We rebuild again," she said softly. "And we find him."