Discordant Note | The Beginning After the End SI-Chapter 312 - 310: The Discordant Note [End of Book 5]

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Potential trigger warnings for soul-based magic and all it implies.

Aurora

Inversion easily slid free from Toren's chest, and the blood that followed pulsed weakly. There was no momentous spurt or eruption of crimson. Just a terrible, sickly trickle of too-bright scarlet.

"No!" I screamed, panic suffusing every inch of my soul. "Toren, return to yourself! You can fight this!"

Agrona's red eyes mocked me like they always had from the depths of Taegrin Caelum, lined with subtle cruelty. As he tore my son's anchor from his chest, all he did was smile.

"It's not a matter of fighting, dear Aurora," Agrona taunted with Toren's voice, blood seeping from his teeth. "This 'child' is already doomed."

I fell to my knees before Toren's body, shaking with fear and frantic terror as I sensed his life's blood leak out into the dirt. I ignored Agrona's words. He was wrong. He was lying, as he always did. I struggled to think through visions of that cage, struggled against the urge to run again. I wanted to disappear into the darkness and fly away. If I didn't, he would take me, clip my wings and stuff me into a cage once more.

But Toren was here. I couldn't leave him. I couldn't leave my son again.

Yet Toren remained silent, our bond empty and blank. My screams echoed into a reflectionless black void as I demanded and pleaded and begged for him to wake up. Because he was dying. The red flowed in meandering rivers down his chest, and I could hear his heartbeat begin to slow.

I didn't understand what was happening, did not comprehend what Agrona was doing or how he'd taken over my son's body. But all the same, I howled with fury. I grabbed Toren's head, glaring into those curdled-blood eyes.

Agrona's arts were of the Mind. I did not understand how he had implanted himself into my son's head, but he had only done so when Toren was weak and unconscious. That meant that I could tear the Sovereign out. If I could only urge Toren's soul back, his mind might be freed.

"Relinquish him! You will relinquish my son, basilisk!" I commanded, sending pulse after pulse of energy over our bond. I would make the High Sovereign retreat. I'd carve him from my son's mind. I'd do whatever it took. "Your mental arts will not hold him. I will burn you from his skull until there is nothing left!"

Wake up, Toren! Please. Please! Wake up!

Toren's limp body laughed, wet and pained, before his hands reached up to my throat.

"I don't think I will relinquish this prize, Lady Dawn," he purred, hands sinking into the sides of my head. "And you're so, so very mistaken. You think that I've taken this poor boy's mind?"

It took me a moment to understand what I had heard, what had traveled across my head along currents of thought and malice. Because… Because Toren's mouth had not uttered the words. His lips had remained in that terrible, bloody smile. The words had been thrust into my head like hot knives. Over our bond.

I did not think the horror suffusing my soul could deepen at all. I had been through too much in my afterlife to easily feel new sorts of fear. But as Agrona's amusement coiled about me, cold and stark and interested, I recalled old, old terrors.

"I've taken his soul, little bird," Agrona's voice seeped into my very being. The tips of his fingers rustled my hair, the pads pressing painfully into my scalp.

Then he wrapped me in chains of my bond and pulled. I was yanked along roads and pathways I had always traveled with care and grace. For a fleeting infinity, I felt as if I had been lashed to one of the titans' great chariots, left to trail through countless miles of broken glass and jagged stone.

I felt liquid red seep into my burned robes, the sticky substance drawing me down. I blinked, trying to understand what… Where I was. It was so dark. So cold. It wasn't supposed to be cold.

"Fascinating," Agrona's voice echoed around and through me, genuine in its awe and wonder. I heard his laugh, this one of disbelief and incredulity. "Integration is truly evolution."

I blinked the stars from my eyes, my stumbling mind catching as I recalled what had been happening. Agrona. Toren… dying.

I was within the Sea of Toren's Soul, but it was changing. Once-calm expanses of blood swirled like riptides through the sky, embers of rose-gold light burning from beneath oceans of insight. Waves rose, fell, and rose again as they changed and morphed, the expanse of scarlet condensing beneath forgefire light. A stuttering heartbeat flowed through the never-near expanse.

The process that had begun during Toren's Third Phase and Integration had never stopped. All throughout the hell of the Xyrus battles, Toren's exhaustion, and his subsequent change, his soul had never stopped morphing.

Toren had banished the storm raging beyond his Vessel, but now it seemed as if he had only drawn it into himself.

No, not just morphing. Integrating. The Will of the Asclepius didn't exist anymore, not truly. It was being drawn in, subsumed in a collapsing supernova of the soul. Countless lifetimes of asuran insight were being molded and sculpted into something new. A sliver of a soul compounded beneath something more.

And at the center of that collapsing star, Agrona Vritra gazed in wonder at the tumult unfolding before him.

The High Sovereign's hands were shoved leisurely in his pockets as he stood over a single, calm portion of Toren's soul. His hair was dark as campfire pitch, each strand molded from the blackest night. Those blood-red eyes glimmered with fascination and interest as they traced over the expanse of the Sea. He leaned casually against the Brand of the Banished, utterly unfazed by the great dagger spearing through the core of Toren's soul.

Far beyond the hurricane of Toren's soul, the stars of those he loved glimmered in the shadow of the expanse. The hundred lantern lights of our banished flock… Seris, Cylrit, Sevren, Naereni, Arthur, Tessia…

Each of them was watching from the dark cosmos, almost as if they knew what was to happen. An audience had gathered to behold this darkest treachery, watching helplessly as a dark god stood sovereign in his very essence.

Can they know? I wondered fearfully. Can they understand what is about to happen?

Everything was so dark within the raging tumult. But I still burned. My soul cast light from afar, bonded and bright. Though one half of my bond's integrating essence was cloaked in twilight, the other still knew the touch of the dawn.

I can't let this happen, I thought with fearful resolve, struggling to my feet atop the trembling soul beneath. I didn't understand why Agrona was here, but I would cast him out. I would rip the High Sovereign from my son's soul. I wouldn't leave Toren alone as I did back in the Cathe—

Agrona's head lolled leisurely toward me, the simple act splintering my thoughts into a million shards. A smirk tugged at the edges of his lips as he looked me up and down, appraising me for any worth.

"The Cathedral," he mused, holding his chin with one hand as I stood frozen. It was as if he had read my thoughts. "You know, none of this would have been possible without the Cathedral."

Memories churned unbidden at this dread deity's casual words. I remembered the dark of that Cathedral, standing at Toren's shoulder. I'd sensed something was wrong. I'd known my son was in danger. And as dark flashes of my tortures pounded within my spiritual skull, I had run, leaving my songbird to be violated and torn.

I had failed my son. But I knew what Agrona was trying to do: he wanted me unbalanced, off-kilter, so he could sink his fangs into my soul and whisper his venom. If I asked questions, if I let myself consider that Agrona might have known all along of my existence—if he had simply let us loose—then he would win.

Agrona smiled. It was a knowing, almost mischievous sort of thing. "Please, Aurora. Do you really think I didn't know you'd bonded this petty little human the moment you followed him into my domain? We both know I set you loose intentionally. Like a canary in a cage, you've only ever sung when I deemed it so. Everything you've done has been within my expectations, even if this entire ritual has played out a bit differently than predicted."

I bared my teeth in a snarl, pushing aside useless thoughts. I settled into a martial stance, keeping my talons extended. I had spent far, far too long preparing for a confrontation with this monster.

"Everything?" I taunted, sensing weakness. "Nico Sever is dead, Agrona Vritra: dead by our hand. You shall never have your Legacy."

Agrona paused. His brow wrinkled in distaste, and for the first time, I thought I caught a hint of anger there. There was annoyance in the twitch of his lips. Surprise and uncertainty in the glint of his teeth. A predator's hesitation as something unexpected reared its head.

Darkness billowed around his feet, shadow overtaking the rose-gold light of Toren's waters. It spread down and through my bond's soul like ink, each spot a putrid black mold on healthy flesh. Some inbuilt sense warned me: that creeping shadow meant death. It meant corruption and destruction wherever it seeped. It meant the end.

I blurred forward, sensing my opening. I was a better fighter than Agrona. I had always been the better fighter. That was why he had stooped to have me drugged and captured so long ago rather than face me in a true duel.

And the soul was the domain of the phoenix. This battlefield was the sky to me. I would tear Agrona apart.

The wretched basilisk seemed taken by surprise as my knuckles ground across his chin. The electrifying contact traveled up my spiritual arm. I felt the bones of his jaw crack satisfyingly as his head rocked, his glimmering horns dipping backward.

"This is our domain, Vritra," I snarled, anger guiding my movements. Agrona's fist haphazardly lashed out, but I easily wove to the side, before binding his arm. "I will rip you out like the cancer you are."

Agrona hissed as I swept his legs out from under him, before I slammed him to the Sea water. My fury and rage centered me as I gripped his throat, my spirit searching for what had allowed the basilisk to latch onto my son's soul. I needed to burn it away.

On the edges of the Sea, the many stars of Toren's loved ones—so bright as they pulsed around him—darkened abruptly. My attention was torn from Agrona as this change washed over me like the dread of a grave.

I could feel it, in a distant way. Something cast a shadow over his bonds. Some sort of putrid mass loomed at the periphery of the infinite cosmos, slinking like a lurking predator. The sheer weight of that slow, sifting thing blotted out the light of every anchoring point Toren had.

Like a serpent in the grass, I thought, my mind ripped from the fight as I felt it lurk in the unknown. It was pulling on Toren, prodding at the bounds of the boundless. What… What in the Beyond?

The Lord of the Vritra's nose wrinkled, casting his eyes in contempt. As I held him pinned to the ink, a slight smirk adorned his bruised features. "You can't cast me out, Lady Dawn," he whispered in a soothing tone. "I'm a part of him now. I'm integrated. I had only planned to stop him from exiting his Third Phase initially. He would've popped like a breath of smoke, his essence fuel for my ritual. But now?"

And then it struck me from deep within. Memories and emotions and the flavor of amusement overwhelmed my senses. Agrona turned Toren's bond on me, wrapping it around my neck like a garrotte as recollections slammed through my skull.

I saw through Agrona's eyes as he strolled down to my trembling son in a Cathedral so long ago. Agrona had known that I was there. He'd sensed me run from my boy. He'd even expected it, gambling that I'd abandon Toren to his whims.

After all, I'd already fled once. In the aftermath of Andravhor's death, when faced with terrible grief, I had abandoned Chul to escape the pain. Agrona predicted that I'd do the same again, leaving his target vulnerable.

I felt an echo of the High Sovereign's past calculations as he pressed a palm to Toren's skull in the rotten-resplendent building, calling on his wretched mental magic. Toren's Phoenix Will had predictably risen to the surface, raging against the intrusion of the basilisk on his mind.

When this had happened, Toren's Phoenix Will had crumpled beneath Agrona's grasp, a windpipe collapsing beneath a squeezing fist. The mental fire of being so thoroughly violated had left Toren burned and cradling his charred mind.

But he hadn't been able to see. Neither of us had noticed that Agrona had left something behind then. A parasite of dark energy had sunk into the Phoenix Will, slithering like a dormant virus in the cracks and wounds, before being subsumed.

A sliver. A tiny, near-inconsequential sliver of Agrona's very Beast Will had been injected deep into the burning light of the Asclepius Will. I could not understand how the Lord of the Vritra could segment his Basilisk Will, but it didn't matter. That little sliver was small. Far, far smaller than the nigh-endless expanse of the Asclepius. And as Beast Wills were wont to do, Toren's Will had automatically subsumed it, drawing it in and adding it to the reserve of insight, never understanding that it had sealed our doom.

It was that parasite that had fed Agrona the location of our Hearth, as the High Sovereign traced its location just as Toren did the souls of his allies. It was that parasite that had allowed Agrona to send Kezess Indrath after my flock, dooming them to darkness.

It had all been according to plan. I hadn't given Agrona the location of my Hearth when captured in his dungeons, so he took it by deceit and lies instead.

And now, as Toren's ego was at its weakest and as the lives of countless Asclepius melded with his very spirit, that single parasite reasserted itself, staining everything black. It chewed and seeped and corrupted, as every art of the Vritra did.

"Maybe you could have stopped it, my dear Aurora," Agrona's voice mocked across our perverted bond. "All you would have needed to do was… be there for this little son of yours, in that pivotal moment. Atone for your original sin. But it wouldn't have mattered."

In my moment of terrible realization, Agrona ripped my hand from his throat, before slamming a fist into my side near my upper back. I wheezed as the calculated blow rattled my kidney. Pain shot through me like lightning, turning my swift attempt at a counter into a stuttering failure.

"We aren't truly corporeal here," the High Sovereign mocked, slamming a knee into my side, doubling the agony racing through my body. "I can kill you a thousand times, and you won't die. But the pain—the pain stays."

Agrona's hand slithered out, grasping my throat. "So, to keep you down, little bird, I just need your agony."

I clawed at the monster's hands, trying to breathe. I gasped, sinking inward on myself as Agrona's sprawling horns drank in the dark. Beneath him, that spreading mold continued to grow, corrupting my son's soul with every heartbeat. Agrona shook his head leisurely as he held me, before pulling me close.

"This boy's soul now holds the secrets to making as many Legacies as I could ever desire. After all, he's made himself into something quite close. Even if it is not nearly as great and powerful as the one of djinni legend and wraith myth, within the endless catalogs of phoenix insight on Reincarnation, do you truly think that you have foiled my plans?"

The High Sovereign hurled me across the raging water, but I was hardly aware of it. Toren was dying. Somewhere far away, I could feel his body failing as his life's blood streamed onto the ground. I needed to… stop it.

I tumbled to a halt again beneath the storm, anointed in golden fire as it fell like feathers from the heavens. On the periphery, that wretched shadow slithered about Toren's soul. Out of sight, but still there.

It's getting stronger, I realized. Despair darkened the edges of my vision. The pull from the shadow, wrenching at my son… As the darkness spreads beneath Agrona's boots, so does its pull. I need to erase that dark…

But what purpose would it serve? Would Agrona just turn that to his ends, too? Would it all serve him in the end, as everything else had? Every triumph and victory was simply a stepping stone.

A kick impacted my other kidney, sending me tumbling dozens of yards. And before I could recover, another made me careen through flickering, rose-gold lightning. I arced like a bird stripped of its wings, unable to think through the pain.

I rolled to a halt again, hearing the thunder crashing overhead. I fought through the pain, remembering my training. The pain was temporary. Blows to the kidney were debilitating, but—

A knee pressed into my back, before slamming me into the water. Agrona's hands sifted through my hair, a mirror to that terrible violation I'd known for so many centuries. "I didn't look through this lesser's memories way back then. That might have drawn your attention too much and ruined the entire gambit. But still… You should not have known so much about my plans for the Legacy. Yet somehow, if you attacked Nico, you did."

The Vritra Overlord shoved my face beneath the brackish, tainted water. It scoured and bit into my spirit, decaying away everything I had once believed pure.

I had once thought the probing tendrils of Agrona's mental magic were the worst violation I had ever known. I'd spent so long trembling in the dark that I could imagine nothing worse. But as my connection with Toren—that bond of light and love that had allowed so much healing—was instead crafted into a knife and plunged deep into my mind, I knew otherwise.

I screamed into the dark. Agrona searched and scoured through the crevices of my memories, scraping everything he could. When he had done so with the Mind, he had been clinical and careful, knowing that he needed precision to tear what he needed.

But he no longer cared for precision.

I didn't know how long I laid there, my soul being torn at and violated by this Vritra monster. Long enough that the light of my soul basking Toren's Sea flickered, dimmed, and died. Long enough that my resistance crumbled. Long enough that despair began to claw at the depths of my spirit.

Toren's soul was decaying. Every inch of the once-wonderful rose-gold and red was slowly turning black as Agrona's influence spread. I thought… Toren might have been resisting it, once. But as I wept my agony into the dreaded waters, it crumbled alongside my will.

"The source of it all was a book." Agrona's words came from above me, only half-heard. There was laughter in his voice. "A book? That might be the strangest thing I've ever heard. Yet both you and this human seemed to believe it, despite the absurdity. Hah… a book! Perhaps Oludari's many-worlds thesis might have a lick of sense, after all! How fascinating!"

I groaned, my body flickering and wavering. I was already so exhausted from all the events before. But I needed… I…

I struggled to my knees, resisting the urge to vomit as my vision swam. At the edges of my soul, I heard Andravhor's voice. Mordain's too. Chastising me? Telling me they loved me? I couldn't tell.

Agrona's hands were shoved in his pockets again. He stared off into the abyss, utterly uncaring of my struggles. "So many said you defied Fate, Lady Dawn," he muttered, his brow pinched in thought. "When I took that knowledge of Chul's face from you, what was the true difference between this timeline and that novel?"

The High Sovereign hummed. "In that book, did I simply never pull the right memories from your skull to set off the necessary chain reaction? Or was the face of your son simply not so important to you? Perhaps I was more thorough in my bindings in this story…" Agrona scoffed, shaking his head with annoyance. "So many fascinating possibilities this brings up. But it is irritating beyond belief that I'll never know. Aevum-based testing is out of my reach for the moment."

I stumbled, my vision swimming with tinted black. I could hardly hear what the monster was saying. I could hardly understand any of it. Just… I needed to protect.

Agrona cocked his head, his ears tilted upward as if he were listening to a song no others could perceive. The golden chains on his horns jangled lightly. "Ahh, there we are!" he said with clear amusement, snapping his fingers. "That took far longer than projected."

Toren's blackened soul heaved. It shuddered violently, twisting about like a great beast that had been dealt a terrible blow. It thundered once, like a slowing heartbeat, a rumble traveling through everything.

My soul slackened as that rumble resonated through me, rebounding about my spirit. I knew that shiver. I knew that terrible, final gasp of mortal breath. A long, long time ago, I had felt that very tremble as I'd cast my soul from my body.

Tears slipped from my eyes, each carving burning tracks along my face. I sobbed, unable to do anything but. My fury drained from me, becoming terrible, horrid grief. Some part of me wanted to rage and shout and demand recompense, but I felt that part slowly die, too. It died like Toren did.

I forgot about Agrona. I forgot about the pain he had put me through, ripping through my soul using the most sacred connection. I forgot it all, drowning in a truth that I could not deny.

I wept, my shoulders shaking as I begged with my bond. I pleaded, asking him to come back. He just needed to wake up. I just needed to wake up from this terrible nightmare. My tears splashed into the blood-red water of Toren's soul, the liquid slowly turning a rose-gold beneath the influence of his Integrated gold fire.

Please, I begged, please. Come back. Come back to me.

"He won't be coming back, Lady Dawn," a slithering, clinical voice seeped across my mind. "He won't ever come back. Some things are simply meant to be."

I felt it all drain away as those words sapped the warmth from my flesh and bones. My sobbing quieted as I realized that, too, would never be heard again. I gazed emptily into my crimson reflection, unable to do anything but… stare.

I heard Agrona's footfalls as they neared. So perfect. So poised. So untouched. The tips of his shoes disrupted the static image of a haunted ghost, turning her reflection black with seeping corruption, too.

"Regardless of whatever variable caused these supposed divergences," Agrona mused, "it was forged on the foundations of your son's life. Now, though? He's gone. Chul Asclepius is no doubt dead, too. And your Hearth? You are banished, and Kezess will see the rest of them destroyed."

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Agrona looked at me, his brow wrinkling as he massaged his chin. "Last time, I took a single memory… Now, though, everything has been taken from you, Aurora. You have nothing left to fight for."

I slowly tilted my head upward, my skull lolling atop my shoulders. I stared into that face of apathetic stone, chiseled into an expression of curiosity. The High Sovereign scrutinized my dull, empty eyes, searching for something I couldn't understand. My bond with Toren roved malevolently across my skull, searching and scouring.

I didn't… I didn't resist. There was no fire left to do so. He didn't care that Toren was dead. He didn't care that he'd taken everything. He just wanted to understand the aftereffects and fallout. He wanted to know if this would change me.

"I was expecting more," he said with disappointment. "You've been an incredibly interesting subject, Lady Dawn. So full of little, unexpected surprises. I should have known better that wringing a rag dry would break you… But some souls do break when pushed too far. Your threshold is just a bit different from the others."

And then the Beyond parted, and I beheld despair.

I'd been able to sense the pull of some hidden horror as Agrona's corrupted taint seeped deeper and deeper through Toren's soul. But though the darkening reflections of those Toren cared for grew shadowed and distant, I'd never been able to catch a hint of those shifting scales.

But now, I witnessed Agrona's soul.

In Alacrya, it was said that the Lord of the Basilisks had many faces. The wise, the powerful, the benevolent, the wrathful… All were true expressions of the unknowable Great Vritra. Lessers were advised through the Doctrination to worship and try to understand each of His manifestations, for they might better understand their struggle. As I beheld an approaching thing with horror—nearly as vast as Toren's own Integrated essence—I wondered if those fools knew the truth of what they'd said.

Hundreds of faces moaned in agony, each of them a scale where they were grafted to the sinuous, serpentine form. Some were vast as a continent, others no greater than a fingernail. Many had hair of blood-iron black or void-winter white, but I saw feather-red and dragon-gold, too. Some had horns. Others appeared to be crafted of bark or stone. Men and women and children alike adorned that demented thing, all grafted to a patchwork abomination.

Every face's features were different. But all alike, they screamed. When they shouted, all I could hear was countless heartbeats, discordant and ruinous as their Song was twisted to horrid ends. They wanted to escape. They wanted out. But they had been subsumed, drawn into the viscous mass of that serpent. Their screams would never be heard.

But while its body was coated in scales of stolen faces, Agrona's soul had no face. Where eyes and a mouth and a conscience should be, there was naught but void. A black, unending pit gnashed with endless teeth, ready to devour and dissect even the stars.

Agrona trotted away from me, content to leave my husk to become dust. He hummed a light tune as he waited for that abomination of a soul to approach: one of Toren's songs, the one that he had played before the people of Fiachra as the thunderstorm rolled in.

My horrified gaze drifted to a place near the back of the serpentine mass. Toren's soul was so dark now. The entirety of the Sea was dark. And I knew—deep in my psyche—that soon, Toren's face would stare out from there soon, too. After all, Toren had heard the screams long ago when he'd first entered Agrona's cathedral.

They'd been warning him, screaming their twisted Fate into his ears. They had never wanted him to join them.

How can Fate be so cruel? I wondered, staring emptily at doom itself. This… This is wrong. It is more wrong than anything I've ever known.

Agrona… he wanted me to feel despair. He wanted me to feel trapped and broken. He'd done all of this so that I would be little less than a husk as this thing approached. I could stop it somehow. That was why he hurt me.

"I won't let this happen," I whispered to myself, my strength beginning to return to me. There were Fates worse than Death; this I had always known. And maybe I had failed to keep Toren alive, but I would not let him suffer for eternity, either. "I'll break this Fate. I did it before."

Agrona chuckled, leaning against the Brand of the Banished. "An amusing belief," he said. "Brahmos thought he would do the same. Arthatan, too. Morshaia thought her aether arts would keep her strong. But they never had a chance. So just enjoy the show, Lady Dawn. This human's insight into the soul is truly unique. I think I'll learn quite a great deal about this process from an outsider's perspective."

The High Sovereign's words were nonchalant—almost bored in how dismissive they were. But he was responding to me. He couldn't ignore me, because he was watching my thoughts for something. Almost as if…

Something in him shifted, ever-so-slightly.

My eyes widened as I caught the movement. Because the inflection was not one of the suave, arrogant Vritra. No… It was a hint of the honest, hopeful boy I'd barely been allowed to raise. A flash of familiarity flickered through the darkness.

For a fraction of a fraction of a second, Toren pushed through. And when he did, he pressed his hand backward.

The slip was quick—nearly too quick. Nobody else would have noticed the near-miss, but I caught what Toren had tried to do. The Brand of the Banished threaded through Toren's everything, a stake of raging fire anchored in the depths of his existence. And he had tried to shove his avatar's hand into it.

Agrona's eyes flashed as he steeled his control, his lips twisting into a growl of displeasure as he stared at me, because we both knew what had just happened. Agrona had sent me hurtling across the sea with each of his kicks, knocking me further and further away from Toren's center. From his Brand. And now, when I looked at the High Sovereign lounging near that great stake, I didn't see a man casually leaning against a wall, as he'd so perfectly presented.

I saw a sentinel guarding a weapon. I saw a thing of the night prowling about the only thing that might kill it. After all, the Brand burned souls.

I lurched forward, suddenly alight with fervor and adrenaline. Asuran strength of ages past pushed me forward as I ran along Toren's soul, sensing my last opportunity.

"You've forgotten where we stand, Lady Dawn," Agrona snarled, waving an irritated hand as he tugged on our bond. "Nothing you do will change this!"

My frantic rush turned into a catastrophic tumble as visions of dark, claustrophobic cages reminded me of past agonies. My centuries of torment rushed through my head in broken images, seeping through my spirit like molten tar. I rolled along Toren's Sea. My soul—which had suddenly brightened in the distance—flickered once more like a dying star.

I heaved through the vision and flashes of darkness clouding the edges of my vision. I felt so worn. So battered and exhausted, like a sword that had been plunged into magma for a thousand years.

"I was thinking of subsuming your soul, Aurora. You've shown you're different somehow. An anomaly worthy of further study," Agrona's voice hissed from somewhere distant. "People do not escape me. It irritates me that you thought you had. But if you wish so dearly to try and fight, then perhaps I'll just let you die."

Visions of cages and dungeons and Taegrin Caelum drove themselves deeper and deeper into my head, forced there like knives. Agrona wanted me to feel despair. He had pushed and pushed and pushed for me to break and give in because I was the only thing that could stop him.

Every single action since the very start of this demented play had been precise. Agrona had violated and torn at my soul in all the ways he knew, gambling that I would be too shattered to stop his ploy.

"You gambled wrong," I hissed, my soul-light flickering. "You made a mistake, Vritra. You miscalculated."

I started to rise. One boot first, planted beneath me like the sturdiest of the hamadryad's Kadamba trees. It hurt so, so much. But my pain was just pain. My pain was nothing. My misery was nothing. Agrona was keeping me from my son.

How long had I feared this creature? I'd hovered across Toren's shoulder, espousing fear of some grand, terrible Fate. I had ingrained my terror deep into my very soul. I had always, always feared Agrona. I'd feared the end he represented; my wings broken and my flight stripped from me.

But here and now? I wasn't in a cage.

"Parasite," I whispered through gritted teeth, rising again to my feet. I wavered there, filtering through the deluge of mental assaults as I stared at the creature looming near the Brand. The pain remained. The sense of knives driving through me over and over and over and over again remained.

But Agrona had made a mistake. He'd allowed me to feel agony like nothing I'd ever felt before as Toren died. He'd made everything he could use to hurt me null and void.

"Parasite," I repeated again, glaring at the distant worm. "That's what you are. That's what you've always been."

Agrona's face was twisted into a scowl, a bead of sweat running down his forehead as I plodded forward. My steps rippled with power as fire gathered around me. The basilisk's eyes narrowed as he clenched his fists. "So this tactic doesn't work anymore," he pushed through gritted teeth. A wry, familiar smirk pressed through his growing assault of memories. He still appeared confident. "I commend your endurance, my dear Aurora. But no matter the outcome, your son is still dead."

The agony in my head reversed, then rebounded back through my soul like a shotgun blast. The sensation of Toren dying—but from the perspective of Toren himself—slammed through me with enough force I nearly evaporated. That inky blackness swirled around me, blotting out the light of my very soul.

It tried so desperately to make another cage. Agrona did all he could to remind me. He wanted me to think, deep in the reaches of my heart, that I was trapped.

I fell to my knees again as I drowned in it, my grip on my fury and fervor faltering. I trembled beneath that truth as it hammered into my skull again and again. Toren's final, desperate heartbeat, before his Vessel finally relinquished its grip.

And as the darkness closed in on me like blood iron bars, Agrona's taunts of Toren's death rebounding through my soul, something strange occurred to me. He spoke as if death was eternal.

Dead? Dead? What was death? What was the loss of a Vessel? It was only the dusk before the dawn! Just another turning of the great cosmic sphere we called the Earth! There was no such thing as eternal death, no such thing as eternal sunset! To try and convince a phoenix of death?

The arrogance.

I began to laugh. A full-bodied, powerful boom resounded from my soul, echoing over the stormy waters and piercing the darkness. "Dead?" I howled, feeling my avatar begin to change. "Dead, parasite?! You think a phoenix can die?!"

My song burned through me as I changed. I doubled and redoubled in size. My arms became wings of perfect red, my feathers rejecting the darkness with radiant sunlight. My feet were talons strong enough to crush any serpent's throat. My lips and mouth elongated, becoming the sleek sheen of a beak.

I blurred through the darkness, free of all shackles. Agrona stumbled backward from my surging form, his face now a scowl of fury and rage. He tried everything. Memories and faults and terrors tried to clip my wings, but they were banished by a bellowing howl that surged through Toren's soul. The stormwinds pushed me forward as I surged for this parasite.

That was all he ever was. A parasite. He could only take and take and take. This basilisk made an empire on the accomplishments of others. The djinn, the Alacryans, the Asclepius? They built and nurtured and loved. And this serpent sank his vampiric fangs into the throats of everything good and drank. Toren's soul-vision had the truth of it. Not a serpent.

A faceless worm.

And for the first time, I flung my anger back at the Vritra. He inundated me with Toren's dying heartbeat, trying to see me fall. Instead, I answered his darkness with light.

Old memories flowed across this bond. Visions of my time nurturing Toren, watching him grow and change amidst the poisoned pot of Alacrya. I remembered descending from the heavens, asking a dying boy if he would give his life for another. I remembered watching cautiously from afar as that strange, new soul embarked on a quest for vengeance, knowing far more than he should.

I'd felt so much fear then. Fear that this was some sort of ploy by the High Sovereign. Uncertainty that things were even more out of my control. But in the end, as Toren avenged his fallen brother and found his form, I had felt something new. Pride.

And that emotion had only grown. I'd tutored him in the arts of our Clan, watching him grow and change as he embraced his bloodright. Like a chick learning to walk beneath my sheltering wing, he'd struggled to understand his new world, so different from his old.

I remembered the heartfelt joy of watching him embrace his new life, promising to make it better. The victorious roar of breaking the Vicar of Plague. The terrible misery of leaving him to this beast in the Cathedral.

Toren had forgiven me for it. He'd understood my fear and pain, and he'd shown me it all. He'd embraced me as I'd wept into his shoulder. He'd forgiven me for taking him from his old world, too, and both of us had found the resolve to push forward in this broken world, each searching for a way to mend it a little.

Agrona's assault of shadow stuttered as light and love met it. How was he supposed to react to this? How was the calculating Sovereign of Alacrya supposed to understand a child's hope for the future, or a mother's love for her son? Even connected through the soul, it was alien to him.

And so I pushed further, flying on storm-lifted wings. I remembered helping my son as he grappled with his lost innocence, whispering what words I could to ensure his path was just. I'd stood with him as he fought the Anchor, battling for that better world. I had watched as Toren and I were finally welcomed home, given succor and a chance to sway our family.

It hadn't worked out, had it? We had failed. But we'd failed together. When we flew too close to the sun, it had been together, wing in wing and arm in arm.

Agrona's weave of malice broke. For all the torture and misery he had put me through, it had never meant anything to him beyond a means to an end. How could that cruelty of his find purchase on a mother's bond with her son? How could the seeping ink of torture ever comprehend the grace of picking your child up as they fell?

"Parasite!" I bellowed, my lungs resounding in tune with my heart. The phrase was a warcry: a declaration of the beast's true nature. It couldn't hide or skulk or run. With every utterance of the word, I took power back from that which had scorned me. "Parasite!"

I emerged unbroken from the torment to Agrona's stumbling form. His little avatar was starting to change, morphing and twisting into a serpentine form.

Far, far too slow.

My talons wrapped around his throat, cinching shut like a vice before I slammed him into the water. He writhed, black scales leaking blood as he fought and struggled beneath my impossible grip.

But he was no fighter. Not a warrior forged in fire and martial form. Not like I was. He was a manipulator and a weasel, trying to take all that others had earned and mantling it himself. He thought to put down others and keep them there.

Yet as I stared into the beast's enraged eyes, I finally understood. Creatures like this only possessed power as long as you gave it to them. And here in my soul? I was the safest I had ever been.

Even awash with rage, Agrona's eyes were still calculating. Even as I pinned him, my wing nearing the Brand of the Banished, he did not feel defeated. But his struggles slowed as he recognized the inevitable.

Across our bond, I could sense a hint of the thought process behind it all. Struggling was a waste of energy, energy that could be better attributed to planning and forming his next move. As my wing settled around the looming Brand of the Banished, he pulled himself away from his anger, looking toward the next step. Always adapting. Always shedding his skin and emerging anew.

"A phoenix never dies?" he said, still struggling to escape my grip. His face shifted with dark scales as a grin plastered itself there like rot. "You think this human can come back? I tore out his heart, Lady Dawn. Nothing has ever returned from such a death."

I leaned in close, fire misting from my beak. "You said it yourself, basilisk. He is Legacy. His soul will not crumble before the beyond. And I will do everything in my power to ensure he lives again, even if that means I must do battle with Fate itself. The World is cruel. Heartless. And I refuse such a world."

Agrona's soul surged forward in one last desperate gamble, the writhing worm with mourning-faced scales seeking to subsume my son. I stared into Agrona's eyes, mine burning with rage and triumph both.

I pressed against the Brand of the Banished, sending a silent push through it all. The Brand functioned by cutting the victim off from their Clan, using the care and love they had for their family as a knife. It drove its way through companionship and care.

But Agrona Vritra wished to subsume Toren. He wanted to make my son part of his twisted collective, another scale across his rotten soul. He wanted to make Toren a Vritra. And if one tilted their head and squinted…

The golden fire across Toren's soul brightened, blazing with terrible, soul-searing heat. I ground my teeth as it brushed across my already charred form, the flames tinted pink as they sank in and through everything. The dark shadows screamed, destroyed alongside the soul they'd infected. Agrona's surging worm of a soul was suddenly farther away, distant in the cosmos.

Like holy fire cleansing pestilence from the world, the Brand spread around us, raging and lashing at everything dark and black. The fire became a roaring tide, searing at every inch of what Agrona had taken. The sound was like a solar flare as Toren's soul burned itself: and the more of that darkness was burned, the further and further the High Sovereign's grasping maw left.

My son lost so much. So much hard-won insight and Integrated knowledge left him. So much that had become core to his being. But it needed to burn, too. My son had enough to spare to ensure nothing was left.

The High Sovereign watched it all. It must have been excruciating, feeling this sliver of himself burn away. Every single ounce of insight he'd taken and rotted became less than ash. But despite the very sensation of his primordial essence burning, he did not scream. He did not beg or weep or cower. He observed.

I could feel this sliver of him as he made observation after observation about the effects of his master plan crumbling before his eyes. They darted about, scrutinizing every last detail at a terrifying pace.

And as his skin began to smolder and blacken, he looked back at me with that same, controlled rage. "I believe you," he whispered, those eyes roving across me. He didn't say anything else, but I could sense him realigning. "I do believe you, Lady Dawn. You'll face Fate. Your little boy will survive. You've surprised me enough already, and some things seem to be outside the realm of science."

Agrona's soul was no longer visible. There was too little for it to anchor itself. No more cloying rot for it to rip and tear through. It had been sundered from its prize.

I pressed Agrona's charring body deeper into the settling water. "You won't even have the luxury of remembering, parasite. Every foul ounce of you will burn."

Agrona's glare slowly softened, misting away into a serene, empty expression. That roving observation still crept across my feathers. Many times before, I might have lent this creature power over me, might have felt exposed from its stare. I did not give it the satisfaction.

"Perhaps," it mused, staring up at me as though I were a piece of furniture out of place. "Perhaps. You're so certain your son will return. You're so confident that this boy will somehow live again. You have a will ready to face Fate itself. But if you think you are alone in that… Then you are mistaken."

His eyes darkened as the charring inched across his face, blackening the last of the taint. "I remember when I am wronged, Lady Dawn. Make no mistake."

He was careful with the enunciation of each word, crafting them like oaths to be kept. His lips ghosted across the syllables with the precision of any master artist's craft, before they were carried gently to my ears.

"I. Will. Remember."

Agrona's ruby-red eyes held mine as the char of rose-gold fire overtook them, burning everything away.

"I believe you," I whispered back, leaning close so that I would whisper in his ear. "But you still can not comprehend what has severed your head. That is my failure as a teacher. Toren… he'll finish this lesson we've begun, basilisk."

I stood there for a long, dreadful moment as the branded fires finally died low, casting the expanse of Toren's ragged soul into darkness. Twilight overtook all as Toren's soul became a tranquil, ever-still Sea once again. Beneath the endless expanse of blood, though, golden fires cast dusky light like red-sea lanterns from the unknowable depths. Burning-coal runes of incomprehensible insight swam like schools of fish through the endless ocean of red blood.

Countless charring wounds dwelt where insight used to live. Souls couldn't bleed like Vessels, but I could feel the searing agony at the edges of my bond's spirit.

And finally, Toren returned. With painstaking slowness, his buried and violated ego finally rose to the surface. Like a drowned man being finally cast to shore, little dots of warmth trickled back. One after another after another, familiar light and understanding bloomed for a moment.

The body beneath my talons took on a different shape. Long, feather-red hair adorned a set of familiar features. Runes like feathers criss-crossed his skin. And his eyes. They were finally Toren's eyes again. He blinked. Once. Twice

"Aurora?" he croaked, clutching my leg, "I feel… cold."

Strange that he should feel cold, I lamented, leaning over my son's avatar. He was covered in so, so many burns. Ugly, disfiguring burns that mirrored his very soul. He trembled like a leaf in the wind as he clung to me.

"I'm here, my little songbird," I whispered, leaning low as I nuzzled my beak through his hair. I sent him my relief and love, as much as I could manage. As much as he could manage, wounded and scarred as he had been. "I'm here."

I was so tired. My very soul was wearier than it had ever been, and I felt that I might collapse in on myself at any moment from this weight. But seeing Toren tremble—terrified, dazed, and needing his mother—I pushed those aside.

"I'm cold," he repeated, his eyes hazy as he clung to me, trying to feel warm again. "What… what happened? It's like…"

I nestled my beak against Toren's hair, sensing the cold, too. Yes… he'd left his body behind long ago. The Beyond was rushing to claim us as its own, as it claimed all departed souls.

I breathed out, absorbing Toren's features one more time. He didn't understand what was happening. All that swirled in his eyes was pain and confusion.

He looked so different from the boy I'd drawn into the Clarwood Forest so long ago. He'd grown with every step. I'd watched him change, pride filling my breast at every moment as we pressed onward. From a hesitant boy, to a questioning young man, to a warrior the greatest of Epheotus would look upon with respect, I'd seen my son shift in so many shades.

And so I grieved. I had known so many versions of my son, all of them shifting into another. I'd loved all of them, but I'd… I'd never gotten the chance to mourn the ones that had passed, because I'd grown to love the new child that had emerged from the ashes, too.

Now I mourned them all.

I wanted to see more of him. I wanted to know all the Torens that he might be, love them all with my heart that still felt so much. I wanted to see him flourish and grow happy and old with this place he'd carved for himself in the world. I wanted to feel pride in my chest as he overcame the challenges in his way.

I wanted to be there for Chul. I wanted my oldest to grow strong and confident in himself, no longer fearing what others thought. I wanted him to make amends for the wrongs he had committed, and I wanted to guide him along the better path. I wanted to mend what had broken with my flock and find a new way to fly with them all.

I wanted so, so many things.

A single tear fell from my eye. It ran like a drop of magma down my feathers, along my beak, and into the blood of Toren's Soul, sending a ripple through infinity.

"I love you, Toren," I whispered, wrapping him in my feathered embrace. "I will always love you."

Toren tried to respond, but his teeth started to chatter as a cold mist pressed in from everywhere and nowhere at once.

We were close to the edge.

"Do you see all those lights in the distance?" I whispered into Toren's ear. I allowed a trickle of soothing warmth to seep over our bond. Enough that it wouldn't burn his raw soul, but would caress it like aloe. "The white moon, the gleaming crown, the clockwork cogs, and the pierced bag of gold? Do you see them all?"

Toren's hazy eyes managed to focus ever-so-slightly. The lingering reflections of everyone Toren cared for—and those who cared for him in turn—were barely visible anymore. They were so terribly far away, like monuments on the ground to one in the distant atmosphere.

"Yeah," he said weakly. "I… I see them all. They're so far away."

"Okay," I crooned gently, frost creeping along the rims of my feathers. Beyond this avatar, I could feel my dimming soul as the infinite dark crept closer. Not much time left. "I want you to try and reach them, okay? You can pull on them. They won't let you drift away. These stars… they'll bring you home, to where it's warm."

Toren reached out a shaky, charred hand, his fingers trembling as he tried to grasp something far, far away.

Slowly—hesitantly—I felt Toren's soul reach out. In that strange, cosmic gravity of his—vastly stronger now that he'd Integrated so much of the Asclepius Will into his soul—he grasped at them all. He gripped every relationship he'd ever formed like a rope, trying to hold on.

Naereni, Sevren, Cylrit, Tessia, Arthur, Seris… All those he cared for the most were Anchors for his drifting soul. They were all he was, forged and crafted into someone greater than the sum of his parts.

"I'm still drifting," Toren said fearfully, his hand starting to tremble more. "I can't… hold on. I can't focus. You're here, right? I'm falling away. I'm alone, I…"

It was getting harder to think. Frost fully shrouded me now. The tips of my wings, the skin beneath, my beak and eyes… Little spears of cold hung from my eyelids, making everything seem darker.

"I'm behind you, Toren. I'll always be there, at your shoulder. My hand is always there. Just focus on my voice," I soothed. The darkness was surrounding me, clawing at my periphery and scraping at my essence. I was… lighter than Toren. It wanted me now. It felt as if the Reaper had finally remembered that I'd been Fated to die so long ago, and now was scrambling to reclaim its due.

But Death would have to wait. It had failed to earn me yet.

It had been so, so long since I'd sung. In this new life with Toren, I had only allowed myself the luxury and freedom a couple of times. I'd nearly forgotten how to sing when Agrona had locked me away in his dungeons. There was nothing to sing about anymore.

But here, on the edge of endlessness, as my breath froze on my lips and my light dimmed, I realized how much there was left to sing for. I could sing for Toren's life. I could sing for Chul's. I could sing for the hope that they would make this world better.

I could sing for this gift of a second chance I'd been granted. I could sing for the blessings of speaking with my Hearth again. I could sing for their future, too, and I could sing for the end of Agrona Vritra.

I could sing for so, so much. But for one time—one, last time—I would sing for my son, so his will would be steady.

Oh, oh oh,

We are all here for you.

We are masters of the sky,

Oh, oh oh.

It was a familiar tune that pulled its way from my freezing beak. An old, old lullaby, passed down for so many years. When I had been afraid at night so many millennia ago, my distant mother had sung it to me. When Chul had fretted about the future, nestled in his bed, I'd hummed this tune to give him earned rest.

Go kiss your young farewell, my dear,

Go sleep, my child, there's no need to fight.

Birds and wraiths dance without fear.

They feel their joy while the day is bright,

And drift in silence when we are here.

My feathers of vibrant red finally dulled beneath the cold. But through beak and mental bond, I delivered my music.

Through it all, the Beyond howled. It screamed and raged like a winter storm, just barely beyond perception. My feathers began to fall away as they pressed against my low-burning soul. Grasping. Heaving. But as Toren's breathing evened out and his will sharpened beneath the lullaby, I knew I could not relent. His mother's voice kept him centered.

If you are happy, you'll find peace first,

You work your way to a life filled with gold.

Toren hardly noticed as I drifted away from him, unable to maintain that avatar anymore. He'd fallen into a near trance, guided by the sound of my voice and the ghost of my hand on his shoulder. I was drifting away from him, barely kept together by our bond. Hurtling back and back and back through the dark, a seared soul in endless space, pressing the words of a song that he needed into his mind.

My song started to fail. Death turned my warmth into cold, sapping the life and love from my words. All that I was… Andravhor, Mordain, my power and legacy… It seeped away from me, drawn into the void beyond. With every passing second, I could feel it leaving me.

Visions of the old times in Epheotus burned for a moment in my mind: Morn and I, walking along the edge of the Starbrand Sanctum. The first time I had ever met Andravhor. The way his eyes had shone when he spoke of the stars.

They drifted away, drawn into the blizzard Beyond. It wasn't a burning thing. It was the slow draw of Entropy, taking back what belonged to it. The once beautiful melody faltered as I forgot more and more. But I… I would never stop my song.

If you have hope, it will quench your thirst,

I approached the edge of infinity as my soul's voice finally failed. I could feel it—one step more, and I would be gone. But I had one… One more thing to do. Toren's soul burned in the distance, still struggling to hold on. He wasn't drifting anymore, instead locked in space as a burning dot of light. An eternal stalemate kept him hovering there in equilibrium, but he needed to return. He needed to fly.

Like a chick approaching the edge of the nest, sometimes… what one needed to fly was just… a push. A push from behind that would allow their wings to spread.

Fly, Toren. Fly, and never let them clip your wings. I'm still here, at your shoulder. Always at your shoulder.

I no longer had the strength to sing the final words of that lullaby. But as I gathered all that I had left into one, final gesture, I thought them all the same.

And leave you well, that's what I'm told.

[End of Book 5: Ashfall]