Three intervening days had passed since Rinako's victory over the shadow titan, and the true indiscriminate devastation was slowly setting in.
The Great Plaza—a hub for commerce for at least a thousand years—was now a simple circle of molten-crater glass that had once been cobblestones. The grotesqueness of the act lay in its perfection. A mirror-smooth bowl of glass mirroring a shattering sky above-the place that had witnessed merchant stalls and ancient fountains welcoming visitors from all over the realm.
The eastern wing of the Zenkai dojo was gone, just an outline jagged from centuries of housing knowledge.
There were bodies strewn everywhere. Some were intact, held preserved by strange energies that had swept through the streets of the city. Others were reduced to essence-shadows set ablaze into walls and pavements-a sort of dark silhouette indicating where these people were having stood when the attack began.
The stench of death mingled with the smell of essence discharge, enough to make a seasoned warrior gag.
Kairo gingerly picked his way through what had been Memorial Park, now converted into a triage center. Around him lay the injured: neat rows arranged by severity. Some had physical wounds wrapped in essence-infused bandages glowing faintly; others suffered what the healers termed "essence shock," victims staring blankly at the sky while their souls tried to grapple with the energies far too great for mortal understanding.
Nearby, Maya worked to replay the final words of the dying for their families-a grim task, but necessary. Too many had disappeared without a trace.
"Thirty-seven thousand confirmed dead," Maya whispered as Kairo neared. Her hands trembled as she wove another echo out of existence-a merchant's voice telling his wife he loved her, preserved in sound as the merchant's body was consumed by shadow. "And that's just from the outer districts. They're digging in the noble quarter now."
The stomach of Kairo churned. Numbers of that scale were incomprehensible. He'd lived his entire life in Silverstone, a town of maybe five thousand. Even more than seven times that population had been wiped away in the capital city within one day.
"Any word on Rinako?" asked Maya, looking up with tired eyes.
"Still investigating the ward-stones with Takumi and Sayaka. They found something at the sixth site that made her go quiet. That's never a good sign."
From behind Kairo, a healer approached, her green robes spotted with blood and essence residue. "Maya, Section C needs you. We found a family trapped under the rubble for days. The daughter is asking for her parents, but we can't find them."
Maya nodded wearily; she already knew what she would find-another echo to preserve, another final message to bear to those left behind.
Kairo watched as she left, and then slowly he looked toward the city beyond. Smoke was still rising from a dozen locations. Rescue teams were working in shifts, pulling survivors from collapsed buildings, trying with a vengeance to stabilize the structures that no physicist could explain following exposure to the energies of the battle.
It had been getting difficult to pretend: Astralyn was no longer invincible.
In the upper levels of Cloudspire Tower, one of the few noble district buildings to have survived with relative integrity, the emergency council meeting was in session.
The chamber had become a cacophony of fear and barely controlled panic as representatives from every major house demanded answers no one seemed able to offer.
"One thousand years!" Lord Vextros of House Ironward slammed his fist on the table, sending ripples through its essence-infused surface. The sight of his ceremonial robes, ripped in places, told of his very own struggle in rescue operations. "One thousand years of perfect peace, and now this? Where were the warning systems? Where were the ward-monitors we've spent fortunes maintaining?"
A swell of murmurs of agreements proceeded from all present.
Lady Miraeth's voice floated above the din. "The ward-barriers held against the Tide Wars, the Essence Storms, even the fractures during the Great Convergence. Now you tell us they simply failed? Without warning? Without cause?"
Slowly, Master Jorik Vayne, commander of the city's defensive forces, wheeled himself away from his post beside the windows looking over the ruined capital. He was still garbed in battle-damaged armor from those previous three day's fighting against creatures that should not have existed.
His voice seated a crushing mantle of grief and hopeless anger of a man who had seen his careful defenses collapse into the abyss.
"The creatures didn't break the barrier; they found gaps. Spaces between the ward-lines that should have simply not been there: weaknesses, even, that present-day most intelligent detection systems failed to register. As if someone with intimate knowledge of our defenses had been involved in the preparations..."
The hour of silence stretched on, pregnant with unspoken insinuations.
Lord Chancellor Aldeus cleared his throat nervously while his age-spotted hands shook slightly.
"Master Vayne, are you implying sabotage? That someone's inside these very walls erecting this?"
"Those are facts: I don't lay the accusations." Vayne's eyes swept over the chamber, barely concealing the suspicion. "These ward-barriers had just a month ago been inspected by all the senior essence-architects. Master Kellan himself would have sworn they were perfect. Yet something found a weakness those greatest minds could not?"
Lady Syenna of House Dawnbreaker leaned in. "Then one of two things is being said: either our defenses were never as strong as we thought, or someone wanted them to fail."
The words settled like a curse, and more than one member of the council began to glance suspiciously at their neighbors. If the attack had been instigated from within, any one of them might have been indirectly involved.
Lord Vextros's face darkened: "If we have a traitor amongst us, I say we interrogate anyone who has had access to the ward-systems. Apply sight of truth, essence-probes, whatever."
"And rip apart what's left of our government?" Lady Miraeth spat. "We cannot govern on paranoia."
"We won't govern at all if we're all dead."
What followed was a crescendo of heated crossfire in the very accusations from dissenting voices the incident seemed set to heal. This was precisely the kind of fissure that would weaken them even more, and every member in attendance knew it.
While nobles furiously argued, elsewhere at the bottom of the Concordium, a vote was underway.
The sacred hall at the heart of Virelios where lies were impossible, and truth shines of its own accord. The walls pulsed with an ethereal glow that made lying physically painful.
The six Trueborn sat around in throne-like chairs carved from living starlight, not casting shadows by themselves. Hovering in the middle was a three-dimensional map of Astralyn, its surface just marked with thousands of tiny red flames, each representing a confirmed casualty.
Yunrei spoke first, his voice carrying harmonics that suggested vast temporal awareness.
"The synchronization was all too perfect: seven different points of breach, all activated within seconds of each other and hundreds of square kilometers apart. These simply were not random animals following instinct. They were very deliberately directed."
"By what?" Mizuko's hair rippled like water as she gestured toward the display. "I've tracked every possible essence flow through every stream and in every sea of our realm. What I haven't sensed is anything with enough intelligence to direct an assault of this magnitude."
"Nothing you've sensed that belongs to our space, at least," Tsuyari said, his eyes holding the kind of depths that swallow light. "We've always just assumed the Beyond is empty territory. But what if we were just wrong? What if there are intelligences outside it?"
Yureina leaned forward: "You're speaking of entities that exist beyond the boundaries of Vilaris. Intelligence from outside existence as we understand it."
"I'm speaking of what the evidence suggests." Shadows gathered around Tsuyari's feet, despite the presence of the truth-light. "We've been so focused on governing what we've built we haven't watched for what might be watching us."
Kurojin, sitting quietly until this moment, spoke in a voice that sounded like mountains grinding: "The timing troubles me more than the method. Why now? What has changed that made this moment favorable for it?"
Rinako gave the answer that chilled them all.
"Because something has been taken. Something they needed."
She turned to each Trueborn in turn.
Yunrei's temporal senses focused suddenly with laser sharpness. "There is something else. A disturbance in the timestream I've been tracking for months. Small at first, barely detectable. But growing stronger."
"What kind of disturbance?" Mizuko asked.
"Someone has been altering the past. Not major events-big enough to cause paradox cascades-but smaller changes. Subtle adjustments to history that would be undetectable unless and until you knew exactly what to look for."
The implications of such an accusation floated in the air like a toxic cloud. If someone had been tampering with history, everything they had been thinking to be true about recent events was, in fact, suspect. The missing boy in Silverstone. The newfound interest into Beyond Order expeditions.
Even this assault.
In the student quarters of Zenkai Dojo, Kairo sat on his narrow bed and stared at the formal notification that had been presented in person.
The parchment felt heavier than it should have.
Your training schedule has been revised effective immediately. Combat classes now begin at dawn and continue until dusk. Essence development sessions are compulsory and shall be conducted at maximum safe intensity.
Note: Due to the present circumstances, traditional safety restrictions on essence overload have been suspended. However, students marked by exceptional adaptation might find themselves fast-tracked into advanced tiers ahead of the normal schedule.
Please be informed, however, that this level of development is inherently risky. Burning of essence, spiritual exhaustion, power destabilization, to cite a few examples, can be experienced and in some rare cases. However, given the present threat level, these risks are deemed tolerable.
"They're scared," Takumi declared with agitation still evident in his essence after intensive training.
"I've never really seen the Masters scared. Now they are. When Master Renji was handing these out, his hands were shaking."
"They should be scared," Sayaka said from the window, looking out on the reconstruction below.
"I've been going over these tactical reports. Those creatures weren't just strong. They were learning. Adapting in real time to our techniques."
Kairo shivered. "You mean they've been intelligent enough to be evolving as they engage in combat?"
"I'm saying they might evolve in-between combats. All warriors they fought, all techniques they observed—could all be their data to their next attack. Each occasion makes them stronger while we lose people."
That implication settled down like a toxic cloud. If the Verythra could learn from their attacks, then every next attack would always be deadlier.
"So we get stronger faster than they can adapt," Takumi clenched his fists and essence flared around him with heat shimmering. "We push harder than we've ever pushed before."
"And hope we don't burn ourselves out in the process," Kairo said quietly.
They were students barely through their first year. Now they were being asked to speed their development across levels that usually take decades to achieve safely.
Outside the window, the city still burned through a thousand light beams of repair.
But what scared them was the darkness outside the walls.