Consciousness did not return to Arrion Haelend. It was summoned.
The blinding-white pain of shattered bones, the damp chill of the dust-plain, the faint smell of Kestrel's fear—all of it dissolved into a vast, silent, and pressurized darkness. He had no body here. He was a point of awareness, a spark adrift in a sea of immense, slumbering wills.
Then, the stars awoke.
Not stars of light, but stars of presence. Twelve constellations of terrifying, ancient consciousness focused on him. He felt them before he saw them: the deep, rooted patience of the Verdant King; the boundless, storm-tossed fury of the Storm-Roc; the serene, crushing depth of the River-Mother; the molten, creative rage of the Forge-Wyrm. All twelve of the Mythic Beasts, the guardians of Eryndor's primal domains, were here, in this non-place. And they were looking at him.
Their forms were not physical, but conceptual—a towering vortex of wind and lightning, a mountain that breathed, a forest that spanned eternity. And at the centre of their celestial arrangement sat a presence that dwarfed them all.
The Azure Emperor.
The true dragon was not a lizard of scale and wing here. He was a law. A perfect, elegant equation of power, hierarchy, and age. He appeared as an infinite, coiling serpent of liquid sapphire and void, each scale a reflecting galaxy, his eyes twin quasars of calm, absolute authority. His gaze pinned Arrion's spark in place.
A voice spoke. It was not a sound, but the imposition of meaning directly into his being. It was the Emperor's voice, and it held the weight of continental drift.
YOU HAVE TOUCHED THE WALL.
Then, the other voices crashed in, a symphony of divine rebuke.
YOU, MORTAL FRAGMENT, DARED TO UNSEAL THE ABYSS! - The Storm-Roc's voice was a hurricane of outrage.
THE FRACTURE IS NOT A TOOL! IT IS A WOUND!- The River-Mother's tone was one of profound, flowing sorrow.
YOU WIELD A WARDEN'S LEGACY LIKE A CHILD SWINGS A FORGE-HAMMER!- The Forge-Wyrm's words dripped with scorching contempt.
The condemnation was universal, a cosmic judgment from the beings who understood the fragility of the Composition. Arrion's spark flared with defiance, but it was a tiny candle against a supernova. He had no voice here, but his intent—his memory of the crushing claws, the drilling teeth, the vow to protect—radiated outward.
The Verdant King's presence, a serene, furious forest, pulsed. HE FACED THE DEEPLING NOT WITH ARROGANCE, BUT WITH EXTINCTION'S KISS UPON HIS THROAT. HE USED THE ONLY KEY HE HAD: HIS BLOOD'S MEMORY OF THE DOOR.
A ripple passed through the celestial council. The condemnation did not vanish, but it tempered, cooled by the King's testimony.
The Azure Emperor's galaxy-eyes considered Arrion. THE ACT WAS RECKLESS BEYOND MEASURE. THE RIP YOU TORE COULD HAVE UNSPOOLED REALITY FOR LEAGUES. YOU USED A COSMIC SCALPEL TO KILL AN ANT, AND NEARLY SEVERED THE LIMB.
The truth of it settled into Arrion's essence. He hadn't understood the scale. He had felt a seam and ripped it open, not comprehending he was tugging on the threads of the world's tapestry.
BUT, the Emperor's thought continued, a tectonic shift in tone, THE ANT WAS A CANCER. A SCRAPER AT THE FABRIC FROM THE OUTSIDE. THE CHTHONIC DELVER DOES NOT BELONG IN THE COMPOSITION. ITS EXISTENCE HERE WAS A FESTERING SPLINTER. YOU, WARDEN'S SON, REMOVED THE SPLINTER. YOU USED A BLIND, BRUTAL, AND INFINITELY DANGEROUS METHOD… BUT YOU ACHIEVED WHAT EVEN MY KIN MIGHT HESITATE TO ATTEMPT IN THE HEART OF THE MATERIAL WORLD.
There was no praise. It was a cold, factual assessment. A recognition of result over method. The other Beasts radiated a grudging, wary acknowledgment. He had done a thing of cosmic housekeeping, however messily.
YOU HAVE DRAWN ATTENTION, the Storm-Roc crackled. THE UNMAKING VOID HAS A MEMORY. IT FELT A KEY TURN IN A LOCK IT THOUGHT SEALED. THE WILLS OF THE OTHER PLANES… THEY STIR.
Before Arrion could grapple with this new horror, the dreamscape changed.
The council of Beasts and the Emperor faded, not to darkness, but to a grey, misty plain under a sky of silent lightning. Standing before him were figures. They had form here, where the Beasts did not.
There were three.
To the left, a man Arrion knew only from a single, cherished description and the armor he now wore. Bunnor. Seven feet and three inches of perfected warrior form, hair of spun gold, eyes of absolute onyx that held not just stars, but the deep, patient darkness between them. He wore simple clothes, but his presence was that of a locked gate.
To the right, another giant, older, his hair silver-gilt, his onyx eyes cracked with tiny, lightning-fork lines of pain. His hands were scarred as if from handling burning stone. Arcturus , his grandfather. A Warden who had known a quieter, but no less perilous, age.
And in the centre, the source of the storm-sky. The Lightning Giant from his earlier vision. A being of contained, coruscating energy, his form a challenge to reality itself. His voice, when it came, was the first crack of thunder in the storm.
YOU LOOKED INTO THE ABYSS, BOY. AND YOU POKED IT WITH A STICK.
Bunnor spoke, his voice not the thunder of the giant, but the deep, resonant silence of a stone settling into its eternal place. "You used the Warden's last resort. The Final Expulsion. It is written in our blood, a failsafe for breaches that cannot be mended. But it is a weapon of mutual annihilation. To open a door to the Unmaking, you must stand on the threshold. You nearly stepped through."
Arcturus's voice was gravel worn smooth by time. "The Delver was a symptom. A rat in the walls, drawn by a larger crack. The crack your mother found. The crack I went to find." Kaelen's onyx eyes held a profound, weary sorrow. "The Glutton-From-Below is not just a hungry god. It is a leak. A slow, persistent drip from the Plane of Unmaking into ours. The shamans and Ralke are merely flies drinking the seepage. You did not just banish a monster, son. You demonstrated, to every power that watches the walls, that the lock on that particular door is… shaky."
The Lightning Giant took a step forward, his electric gaze boring into Arrion's essence. "YOU FOUGHT WELL. YOU USED WHAT YOU HAD. BUT YOU ARE A SWORD HAMMERED HOT AND QUENCHED IN BLOOD, NOT ONE TEMPERED BY KNOWLEDGE. YOU HAVE THE STRENGTH OF THE HAELEND LINE. YOU HAVE CLAIMED THE ADEPT'S RUNG. BUT YOU LACK THE CONTEXT OF POWER."
Bunnor nodded. "You understand force. You are learning will. But you do not understand the architecture you are applying it to. The Planes are not separate rooms. They are instruments in the Great Composition. To play one note—to even touch a key as catastrophic as the Abyssal Fracture—requires an understanding of the entire symphony. You played a note that could have shattered every instrument in the hall."
The criticism was devastating, but it was not delivered with malice. It was the stern, urgent lesson of a master craftsman to an apprentice who had just used a rare, priceless chisel to pry open a crate.
"THE ATTENTION YOU HAVE DRAWN IS NOT FROM ENEMIES ALONE," the Lightning Giant boomed. "THE PROGENITORS SLEEP, BUT THEIR CHORUS STIRS. THE SAINTS IN THEIR ECHOES. THE SAGES IN THEIR ATHENAEUM. THE DRAGONS IN THEIR AERIE. THEY ALL FELT THE WALL TREMBLE. TO SOME, YOU ARE A LUNATIC WITH A BOMB. TO OTHERS… A POTENTIAL, UNTAMED AND DANGEROUS."
Arcturus looked at him, his cracked-onyx eyes full of a grandfather's grim pride. "You have forced your way onto a stage you were not yet meant to tread, boy. By right of blood and deed, the eyes of powers you cannot fathom are now upon you. The Azure Emperor does not convene the Mythic Beasts for every mortal who stumbles."
"You have a choice," Bunnor said, his voice finally softening a fraction. "The path ahead forks. You can continue as you are—a weapon of instinct and reaction. You will be hunted by the things that fear the light you've shown, and manipulated by the things that wish to wield you. Your strength will break against problems it cannot simply cut."
"Or," the Lightning Giant said, the sky flashing behind him, "YOU CAN SEEK THE FORGE. NOT THE FORGE OF FLAME, BUT THE FORGE OF UNDERSTANDING. YOU MUST LEARN THE LAWS YOU ARE BOUND TO UPHOLD. YOU MUST CLAIM THE RANKS NOT JUST OF KNIGHT, BUT OF WARDEN. YOU MUST BECOME THE MASTER OF THE THRESHOLD, NOT ITS DESPERATE JANITOR."
The vision began to fade, the figures of his ancestors dissolving into the mist. Bunnor's voice was the last to reach him, a whisper filled with all the years of absence and silent watching. "The crack is real. The Glutton must be silenced. But you cannot silence it with a scream into the void. You must mend the wall. To do that, you must first learn what the wall is. Wake up, son. Your trial has just truly begun. And you are broken. But we are never stronger than when we are forced to rebuild."
The grey plain, the lightning, the towering figures—all vanished.
Arrion's awareness was hurled back into the screaming prison of his flesh. The pain was a world of white-hot agony. But layered over it now was the cold, immense weight of the lesson. He was not just a hunter in a war. He was an untaught physicist who had nearly triggered a supernova. He had the power to affect the cosmic scale, but the understanding of a child.
He lay in the dust, every fiber of his being a testament to his near-destruction, and knew two things with absolute clarity: he was being watched by gods and monsters, and he was woefully, perilously unprepared. The journey to the mountains was no longer just a quest for vengeance or a cure for a blight. It was a race to find the knowledge he needed before his own power, or the attention it had drawn, unmade the world he was trying to save.