Chapter 68: A Crown Without Borders

  Aeor wreathed his arms in violet flame, air pressing hard against his skin as he descended.

  He struck the ground beside Dregor in a sliding halt, stone grinding beneath his boots.

  He did not hesitate.

  Aeor pressed his hands to Dregor's chest, and Primeval Death surged.

  Violet met cerulean.

  Up close, he saw what the flames were doing.

  They were not burning Dregor. The fire clung to him with deliberate precision, tracing the contours of his frame as though deciding where he began and where he should end.

  His presence wavered. Not his body, but the certainty of him. The weight he carried flickered, his gravity stuttering as if the world could no longer agree on how much space he was meant to occupy.

  Aeor felt the hollowing pull beneath it all.

  This was not destruction.

  It was erasure.

  And yet he remembered.

  He knew who Dregor was, and what he meant to those who cared for him. He would not forget. That clarity did not falter, and Aeor did not allow it to.

  He poured more Essence.

  The cerulean flames resisted, then thinned, their rigid precision breaking apart as violet devoured the space they occupied. Slowly, unwillingly, the fire of Existence receded.

  When the last trace vanished, Aeor sagged back onto the stone, his arms locked behind him as he drew in a long, unsteady breath.

  Aeor's gaze drifted toward the horizon.

  Sol, its brilliance thinned, was nearing its descent, washing the land in muted orange. Against the burning cerulean sky, the sight was strangely beautiful, a contradiction he had no time to indulge.

  Aeor tore his attention away and turned back to Dregor.

  "How do you feel?" he asked.

  "Alive," Dregor said after a moment. His voice was rougher than usual as he lay against the stone. "I do not know how else to put it. It was like—"

  "You were being erased," Aeor said calmly.

  Dregor shifted his head, grit rasping softly as he looked at him.

  "...Yes," he admitted, hesitation creeping into his tone. "Were you caught in the flames as well?"

  Aeor nodded once.

  Dregor fell silent. Then he tried to push himself upright.

  Stone scraped as he strained, a low grunt escaping before his strength gave out, and he slumped back down.

  Aeor moved at once, bracing him before he could fall further.

  "What are you doing?" Aeor asked.

  "We need to find the others," Dregor said, breathing hard. "If those flames are spreading—"

  "I saw Kayneth, Zoey, and Velora," Aeor interrupted. "None of them were marked by the cerulean fire."

  Dregor stilled.

  "And even if they were," Aeor continued, his voice steady, "you are not moving anywhere like this."

  Dregor studied him for a long moment. Then the tension in his frame eased, just slightly, and he exhaled.

  "Give me a couple of hours," he said. "Then I can stand on my own again."

  Aeor raised an eyebrow.

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  "You always say that," he said. "And it always turns into several hours. Sometimes days."

  "Who needs to be fully recovered," Dregor said, "when you know you will be chipped and cracked again anyway?"

  He paused, then added, quieter, "Help me sit up."

  Aeor helped Dregor sit upright, settling his back against a nearby tree.

  Then he slipped the pack from his shoulder and knelt, rummaging through its contents for a potion.

  "I am still surprised you managed to move at all," Aeor added. "Considering what the flames were doing to you."

  Dregor shifted slightly, bark creaking against stone. "It was either that or…" He trailed off, then shook his head. "I am not even sure what it would have done to me."

  Aeor paused, then asked, "Did you see the other two in the fragments?"

  Dregor frowned. "Other two?"

  "Rorick and Korren."

  The words hung between them.

  Aeor turned back with the potion in hand and froze.

  Dregor was staring at him, eyes wide, a rare flicker of fear breaking through his usual steadiness.

  Neither of them spoke. The silence stretched as understanding crept in slowly.

  "I remember Korren," Dregor said quietly. "But… I do not remember Rorick."

  Silence followed. Memories surfaced in Aeor's mind. Half-formed conversations with Rorick. Moments where he spoke of his family, his friends, and the people he cared about.

  He was a person like him. Like Dregor. Like Zoey. And now he was just gone.

  Rage began to coil inside Aeor, his Essence stirring in response. Violet pressed faintly around his skin. He crushed the feeling before it could rise, letting the indifference of death settle over him instead.

  Aeor did not know what Rorick's absence truly meant. The signs were obvious.

  Death.

  But was that all there was to it?

  The Shepherd had died. Or so it seemed. And yet everyone remembered.

  Aeor closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples, forcing the spiraling thoughts to halt.

  He drew in a breath and opened his mouth to speak, but Dregor spoke first.

  "Listen, Aeor. I cannot pretend to know what it feels like to remember someone when the world decides they never existed."

  He paused, searching for the words.

  "Given all that is going on, there must be a way to make the world remember. To make us remember."

  Aeor released a breath he had not realized he was holding and nodded once.

  "Good," Dregor said. "Then we discuss what comes next."

  Time passed as Aeor and Dregor discussed their next steps.

  Reuniting with the others took priority.

  Aeor had initially believed the fragments were simple distortions, links between fractured points of the same landscape. But the picture Dregor laid out suggested something far stranger.

  The shards were not connecting places. They were connecting realities.

  Spatially, nothing was shifting. What changed was the world itself. Stepping into a fragment was not movement through space, but passage into an altered version of existence running alongside their own.

  After everything they had witnessed, the idea did not feel implausible.

  They chose their course and began moving toward the fragment where Aeor had last seen Zoey and Velora.

  There were no answers waiting for them. No certainty about what governed the fragments, or why they appeared when they did.

  For now, all they could do was move closer and wait.

  Whatever these shards were, their goal remained the same.

  To enter one that held the others.

  Aeor looked up at the sky from where he sat. The night had deepened, and with it the burning cerulean above had dimmed as though its existence was tethered to the sun itself.

  What remained was a light without warmth or promise.

  For a moment, the sight reminded him of something else.

  Veilfire.

  The world cracked.

  The booming sound returned.

  Aeor was on his feet at once. He turned toward Dregor, who rose beside him, though his movements were rough and uneven.

  "Stick together!" Dregor shouted.

  The ground around them erupted. Boulders tore free and chunks of land sheared upward, filling their surroundings.

  Just like before, they moved without pattern as chaos unfurled.

  Aeor called upon his scaled mantle, wings flaring as he poured Essence into his lance. Violet burned along the shaft as he took to the air.

  They dodged what they could.

  What they could not avoid, they destroyed.

  Primeval Death tore through stone at Aeor's command, while gravity buckled and collapsed around Dregor's strikes, crushing incoming debris.

  Then the fragments appeared.

  One formed far too close to Dregor.

  A massive boulder burst free from it, already carrying lethal momentum.

  Aeor felt the gravity twist as Dregor seized it.

  His feet remained planted as the force drove him backward, stone and soil ripping apart beneath the strain. The ground screamed as it gave way, but Dregor held fast, muscles locked as the boulder bled speed into the space around him.

  When it finally slowed, Dregor roared and hurled the mass aside, sending it crashing into another with explosive force.

  "Do you see them?" Dregor shouted.

  Aeor ducked beneath an oncoming boulder and scanned the surrounding fragments.

  There he saw them.

  On a fragment not far from their position, Velora, Zoey, and Baron stood together.

  This time, however, they were not the only ones there. Kayneth and Korren were also there.

  They were clustered close, holding position.

  Several of Velora's spectral shields hovered around them, layered thick with ice and veined through with golden flame. Zoey, Kayneth, and Velora stood braced at the edges, pouring steady streams of Essence into the shields, their focus absolute.

  Korren stood just behind them, musket braced against his shoulder. Each shot he fired carried a dense burst of Essence, detonating incoming stone before it could reach the shields.

  At the center of it all was Baron.

  The Dusktail remained perfectly still, eyes burning with the same cerulean hue that stained the sky above. A gentle but constant flow of Essence spilled from her, spreading outward and wrapping the group in a subtle veil.

  "There!" Aeor shouted, grabbing Dregor's attention.

  With each passing moment, they drew closer.

  Kayneth spotted them and spoke something, her words lost to the chaos unfurling around them, however, her meaning was clear as she motioned them over.

  They took several hits, unable to dodge every boulder without veering dangerously close to another fragment.

  Then the sky cracked.

  A hollow pressure tore through the air, as if a void had forced its way into existence.

  Pain exploded behind Aeor's eyes. His ears rang, warm blood spilling as his focus shattered. He clipped an incoming boulder and was thrown off balance.

  Dregor caught him a heartbeat later, hauling him back as the momentum threatened to drag Aeor straight into a fragment.

  "Focus, Aeor! We are close!" Dregor shouted, the words dragged out as he fought to keep his footing.

  But Aeor did not answer.

  His attention had already shifted. Mouth parted, he stared upward at the sky that was no longer whole.

  An impossibly vast skeletal hand tore through the sky.

  Fragments shattered in its wake, reality splintering as the cerulean flames were snuffed out like embers before a gale. The sky did not crack. It was ripped open, peeled apart to reveal the literal void beyond.

  From that wound, the entity emerged.

  Aeor saw its frame then, and the scale of it stole the breath from his lungs. A colossal skeletal form unfolded from the darkness, vast beyond comprehension. Its sheer size eclipsed the land below, a presence so immense Aeor knew, without doubt, that it could rival entire planets.

  It did not descend.

  It loomed, as if the void itself had given it shape and allowed it to lean into existence.

  Atop its skull rested a crown fashioned from its own bone.

  It did not glow. It did not pulse with power.

  It simply was.

  And in that, its authority became undeniable.

  Dread followed, heavy and absolute, settling over the world as the sky bled silence around it.

  In its wake even the boulders froze, as if even stone understood what had arrived.

  Aeor did not realize when Threadgaze had been invoked. The whisper followed all the same.

  Ul'Khazuun, the Hollow Sovereign

  Race: Voidward Colossi

  Essence Tier: Anchored (C)

  Essence Stability: Stabilized

  Status: Unbound

  Archive Note: A crown grown from itself, and a dominion that does not need borders.

  Aeor's thoughts dulled under the weight of the whispers. His mind reached for understanding and found only silence.

  How can such a thing be?

  Beside him, Dregor followed his gaze and went still. Through the fragment, Aeor saw the others freeze as well, their defenses faltering as the same impossible awe took hold.

  Then Zoey's voice ripped through the trance.

  "Move! Both of you!" she roared.

  The trance broke.

  Aeor moved without thought. He seized Dregor by the arm and leapt.

  The fragment rushed up to meet them, its surface rippling like water.

  Then they were through.

  A heartbeat later, the remaining fragments vanished, taking the void and the one that roamed its depths with them.

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