“You stupid boy.”

  The raven-haired Herald dropped onto the Shade-Titan’s back and slid down its side, landing with a hard crunch behind Kar.

  Kar twisted, disoriented. She was too close for him to compel the Titan to do much, not unless he wanted it to crush both of them. He backed up until his back pressed against the cool stone of the Causeway.

  And then he saw they weren’t alone.

  Valorcryst had followed the Titan here, along with their Focuser allies. Above, the other Herald woman hovered nearby, hands working some dark Focusing.

  White projectiles blasted into her. Blood sprayed as she crashed to the ground in a heap.

  So his Encryst bearings did fit those cylinders after all.

  Raven-hair lunged, brandishing a dagger. Kar raised his Voidcryst arm across his body by reflex.

  The blade’s edge glinted strangely—indistinct, as if the very air were being ripped apart by its passage.

  It carved effortlessly through Kar’s wrist as if it wasn’t there, then sheared through Encryst armor before biting deep into his lower left chest and abdomen.

  He grunted—eyes almost squeezing shut—then coughed blood. Kar tried to grab at her with his right hand. The severed stump of it thudded against her.

  Behind her, the Titan shifted. Kar felt his control slipping at the same time his Voidcryst arm began screaming inside his head. Black tendrils sprang from the stump of that wrist and stabbed into the Herald’s neck. The arm tried to Absorb, and Kar felt it rebuffed instantly.

  The Herald snarled in her guttural tongue. She ripped her blade free from Kar’s body and slashed upward, severing the tendrils embedded in her throat.

  Kar’s legs gave out, and he slid down the Causeway’s stone to the ground. Through labored breaths, he tried to regain control over the Titan through the leash—but the Herald crouched, found the Encryst chain and cut it in a single clean stroke.

  “Reopen it,” she commanded, keeping her distance.

  Dazed thoughts skittered through Kar’s mind. He looked down at the gash torn through armor and flesh. Dark blood oozed out with every heavy thud of his heart.

  A white short-spear buzzed past and grazed the Herald’s upper arm. She hissed and snapped her gaze to the encircling Valorcryst.

  She spared a last, hateful look at Kar, then spat a curse in her foreign tongue and vanished with a thunderclap.

  The world tilted as Kar sagged sideways.

  The Titan started to rise… but chains flew cross-hatched through the air above and snapped tight, yanking it back down and anchoring it in place.

  Hammering steps brought a familiar Valorcryst face into view—Tharn—before Kar passed out.

  He drifted back and forth between consciousness and oblivion, Tharn’s worried faceted eyes the only constant as the Valorcryst carried him. The sky was blue. A brilliant blue. It made him smile.

  Then he coughed again, choking on his own blood.

  Kar was finally laid to rest in the foyer of the fortress hall. Bodies—shattered shadowcryst, cryst-soldiers, and humans—lay in heaps.

  Words wheezed out of him, indecipherable. He was shaking now.

  Figures ran to his side, crowding close. Isa foremost, Nat just behind her with Ember in hand. The Prism pulsed, a cloud of effervescent energy continuously blooming from the crack along its side.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Kar drew a breath. Ember’s Energía flooded through him, and a welcome voice echoed distantly, “Oh Karalinde…”

  Isa Focused. She held a large blue shard in hand, her face pale and drawn. Kar felt her Imbuement knitting him back together. The damage was too extensive, though. He was sure of it.

  Another figure stepped up behind them, an old, weathered face. A woman with white hair. She looked… familiar, in a way Kar couldn’t place.

  The woman gently pushed Isa aside, closed her eyes, and raised two frail hands over Kar.

  An unheard rhythm began to build—slowly at first, growing steadily—inside Kar’s Encryst arm. The cloud of energy leaking from Ember drifted toward the woman, gathering into a swirling mass around her before it was funneled into Kar.

  A soothing calm settled over Kar, and he felt himself stiffening—inside and out. On the outside it felt like wet mud drying into a hard crust on his skin.

  White Encryst spread from Kar’s left arm across his chest and abdomen, sealing over torn flesh. His armor had been removed at some point.

  It kept creeping, and as it did, Kar’s Voidcryst appendage began to thrash, desperate.

  The old woman caught and stilled it with one hand. Where her fingers touched the dark arm, Encryst spread like freezing ice.

  The Voidcryst screamed mutedly inside Kar’s head, the sounds growing more and more distant as it was encased bit by bit.

  Kar slipped into darkness again before the process was complete.

  ----

  Kar woke to the sounds of a bird chirping outside his window. He wasn’t in a cell—and he wasn’t alone.

  “Decided to rejoin the waking world, huh?”

  Kar blinked blearily. Sunlight slanted across the sheets and into his eyes. He raised his right arm to block it out…

  …and froze.

  His voidcryst arm was coated by a thin skin of Encryst. The black beneath bled through, creating a waxen, dark grey sheen. And where the hand should have been, the arm ended in a rounded stump.

  Aldwin lay in the bed next to him, smiling gently.

  Relief stuck Kar like something physical, a clenching in his chest that let go. “How long was I out?”

  “Since yesterday.”

  Kar nodded and sank back into the pillow. The walls and ceiling around him were strangely faded, like this room had been worn down by time. Somewhere outside, a distant roar echoed. Not shadowcryst. It sounded more like… a cryst-beast?

  Kar looked to Aldwin, alarmed.

  Aldwin just grinned. “We’re in the Archives, back on Valor. I’m not sure if they’ll let you back into Dagenar.”

  Kar almost snorted, but the ache in his chest stopped him. So did the sobering reminder of everything he’d inadvertently unleashed on the Hub Realm.

  “Did the Causeway stay shut?” Kar asked.

  Aldwin nodded, “That’s what they’re saying. There’s a rift of a mess to clean up, but the last of the shadowcryst are being hunted down.”

  Ember’s familiar voice, distant but clear, grabbed Kar’s attention.

  “Karalinde! You are awake.”

  Kar swallowed. “Where are you, Ember?” He was relieved to hear the Prism, but wondered how he was able to.

  “I am with Natalie. We are not far. She wants to see you!” I will let the others know too, they have all been waiting for you to awaken.”

  Ember’s presence faded as if it had already turned to speak with someone else.

  Kar slowly flexed his Encryst fingers, then the toes of both feet. He breathed in and held a breath. His chest felt… constricted.

  He pulled the sheet down to his waist and lifted the collar of his shirt to look.

  Kar’s right side was Voidcryst now, sealed over in the same manner the arm was—like obsidian obscured by ice. The more he looked at it, the more he thought he heard a faint, indistinct whispering. He blocked it out.

  On his left, pale scars of Encryst traced where the Herald’s blade had opened him.

  Imagery of the Causeway, and Darby flashed in his mind. The darkness of the Bore and shadows clamoring through. The screams.

  Stifling heat crept up Kar’s neck. His breathing turned shallow, and he dragged the sheet back up, covering himself as if the cloth could hide what he’d become.

  His mouth was dry; nausea bubbled in his gut. All he wanted was to crawl out of the skin that no longer felt like his own.

  A light knock sounded in the hallway, and a moment later the door opened. Isa stepped through.

  Kar’s little sister smiled as she entered the room, and he had to fight back tears. He hadn’t been the one to save her, but she was safe. Finally. A weight he’d been carrying for months—ever since the caravan was attacked on the road beside the Rift—lifted so abruptly it left him dizzy.

  Isa was followed by Lore. Her hair took on a fiery hue in the sunlight slanting through the window.

  A strange mix of feelings hit Kar all at once—shame, relief, desire.

  Lore hesitated in the doorway, meeting Kar’s eyes. He waited for some hint of what she was thinking.

  Then she smiled—at him and at Aldwin—and crossed the room. She came around to the far side of Kar’s bed and knelt, taking his sealed right hand in both of hers and kissing it. “I’m glad you’re still here,” she whispered.

  More footsteps crowded the hall. Derek entered with Natalie just behind him, Ember held in a cross-body sling across her chest. Erio and Tharn followed.

  And last came the old woman Kar had last seen with her hands over his chest, Ember-forging. She looked at him with grandmotherly eyes, and smiled warmly.