The gates of the Great Wall didn't swing open; they dissolved. The reinforced stone, held together for a millennium by high-level binding enchantments, simply surrendered to the presence of the two sisters. As the dust settled, the air that rushed in from the "Other Side" hit me like a physical blow. It wasn't the cold, sterile air of Eden or the salty grit of the flats. It was thick, heavy, and smelled of ozone and ancient, wet earth.
I stepped through the threshold, my boots crunching on something that wasn't stone or soil. Looking down, I realized the ground was a carpet of calcified bone and shattered crystals—the remains of a thousand years of "discards."
"Don't look down, Little Anomaly," my sister's voice echoed. She stood a few paces ahead, her silhouette framed by a sky that shouldn't exist. "The floor is made of history. The Arcanum's history."
I looked up, and the breath caught in my throat. Beyond the Wall, there was no sun. There was only a massive, swirling nebula of violet and charcoal clouds, centered around a spire so tall its peak was lost in the celestial vortex. This was the "Source"—the heart of the world's magic—but it wasn't the pure, golden light described in the Academy's textbooks. It was a bruised, bleeding wound in the sky, pulsing with a dark, rhythmic throb that matched the hunger in my own veins.
"They told us the 'Other Side' was a wasteland of demons," I whispered, my voice sounding small in the vastness.
"Demons are just what they call the things they can't control," a new voice boomed. It didn't come from the air, but from the ground itself, a vibration that rattled my teeth.
From the shadows of the spire, a figure emerged. He didn't walk; he seemed to drift, his body barely tethered to the ground by thin, glowing filaments of grey energy. He was towering, his skin like cracked porcelain, and his eyes were not eyes at all—they were two burning spheres of silver fire.
"Rowen," he said, and the name felt like a caress and a curse. "You have your mother's defiance. And your sister's hunger."
"Who are you?" I demanded, my hand instinctively reaching for the empty space where Aiden's hand used to be. The realization that I was truly alone hit me again, a cold spike of grief, but I pushed it down. Grief was for the weak.
"I am the architect of your existence," the figure said, stopping a few yards away. The warbeasts, the terrifying Seekers and Crushers, all knelt as he approached. "I am Subject Zero. The first mistake. The man who discovered that magic isn't a gift from the gods, but a debt we owe to the void."
My sister stepped beside him, her expression one of fanatical devotion. "He is the Father, Rowen. He is the one who took the Arcanum's 'perfection' and broke it so we could breathe."
Subject Zero—the Father—extended a hand toward the sky. "For a thousand years, the Arcanum has been funneling the world's magic into that spire, keeping it away from the people, using it to build their gilded cities while the rest of the world rots in the dark. They created us to be filters. To take the 'impurities'—the chaotic, wild magic—into our own bodies so they could keep the 'pure' mana for themselves."
He leaned in, his silver eyes searching mine. "The 'Wasting' you felt? It wasn't your body failing. It was your body trying to process a century's worth of toxic waste that they forced into your bloodline before you were even born."
I looked back at the Great Wall. From this side, it looked like a tombstone. "Then why the war? Why the beasts?"
"To take back what is ours," the Father hissed. "The spire is full, Rowen. It is at its breaking point. If we don't drain it, it will explode and wipe out every living soul on this planet. But the Arcanum won't let us near it. They'd rather the world burn than lose their monopoly on power."
Suddenly, the ground shook. A streak of white light slammed into the bone-fields a hundred yards away. The Arcanum hadn't waited for the gates to be repaired. They were launching long-range "Aura-Strikes" from the other side of the Wall.
"They are coming for you," the Father said, his voice urgent. "They know that you are the only one who can reach the Heart of the Spire without being incinerated. Your sister is too far gone—she is already a part of the void. But you... you still have enough humanity to bridge the gap."
"And what happens if I reach the Heart?" I asked, my heart hammering.
"You don't just drain it," my sister said, her eyes gleaming with a terrifying light. "You become it. You erase the rules of magic forever. No more Mages. No more Inquisitors. No more Anomalies. Just... us."
I looked at my hands, which were now glowing with that steady, translucent grey light. To end the magic. To end the hunger. It sounded like a dream. But as I looked into the Father's silver eyes, I saw something that made me hesitate. It wasn't the look of a savior. It was the look of a starving man watching a feast.
"Where is Aiden?" I asked suddenly.
The Father's expression darkened. "The boy is a pawn of the Academy. He is currently being 'interrogated' by the Inquisitors on the other side. They believe he betrayed them."
My breath hitched. Aiden. The boy who was my cage, but also the only person who had ever looked at me without fear—until the end. If I did what the Father wanted, what would happen to Aiden? What would happen to the world I had left behind?
"He's a distraction," my sister snapped. "Focus, Rowen. The second wave is coming."
As if on cue, the sky above the Wall ignited. Thousands of light-platforms appeared, carrying a legion of Inquisitors. But they weren't alone. Leading them was a figure in a golden suit of armor, his face hidden behind a mask of sun-glass. Malakai.
"The girl belongs to the Arcanum!" Malakai's voice boomed, amplified by the Spire's own resonance. "Subject Zero, your rebellion ends tonight. We will harvest the Anomaly, and we will use her marrow to seal the Spire for another millennium!"
The warbeasts let out a collective roar, a sound that shook the very foundation of the Spire. The battle for the end of the world had begun.
"Choose, Rowen," the Father whispered, his silver eyes glowing. "The Spire or the Wall. The void or the cage."
I looked at the chaos unfolding—the light of the Inquisitors clashing with the darkness of the warbeasts. I saw the Spire pulsing above me, a ticking bomb of a thousand years of stolen dreams. And then, I saw a small, red flicker in the distance, near the base of the Wall.
It was a pendant. A shattered, blood-red stone.
Aiden was there. He had escaped, or perhaps they had let him go to lead them to me. He was standing between the two armies, looking up at me, his face a mask of agony. He wasn't holding a sword. He was holding a small, silver vial—the last of the nectar.
He didn't scream. He didn't fight. He just stood there, a tiny, human speck in a world of monsters and gods.
"I'm not choosing the void," I said, my voice cold and hard as the obsidian bolt that had pierced my shoulder. "And I'm not choosing the cage."
I turned toward the Spire. "I'm choosing to break the Spire. My way."
I didn't wait for the Father to respond. I ran. Not away from the battle, but toward the heart of the storm. Every step I took, the bone-dust beneath my feet turned to ash. I could feel Malakai's Aura-Strikes raining down around me, but they couldn't touch me. The closer I got to the Spire, the more the magic of the Arcanum simply... vanished.
I was the Anomaly. And I was finally going to find out what happened when the hole in the world met the source of its light.
As I reached the base of the Spire, a figure stepped out from the shadows to block my path. It wasn't an Inquisitor. It wasn't a warbeast.
It was my mother. Or the woman I had called mother. She was holding a ritual dagger, her eyes streaming with tears.
"I'm sorry, Rowen," she sobbed. "I was told this was the only way to save you. To end the Wasting."
She raised the dagger, not at me, but at her own throat. "They need a sacrifice of blood to bridge the final ward. My blood. Because I'm the one who 'made' you."
"No!" I screamed, but I was too far away.
The first drop of her blood hit the base of the Spire, and the world went white.