The ground shook as if something deep beneath the surface had awakened from a long, bitter sleep. Dust rolled across the ruined courtyard in thick waves, and the fractured stone glowed with veins of faint blue light. Caster staggered back, bracing himself against a broken pillar while Ardis’s team scrambled to regain their footing.Lyra’s voice trembled as she pointed toward the rising glow. “What is that? That is not natural mana. It is too old. Too structured.”Milo stumbled to her side, eyes wide. “It feels like something recognizing us. Or scanning us.”Drace drew his weapon instantly, blades humming with red runes. “Whatever it is, get ready. It is moving.”Caster’s breath quickened. His pulse hammered against his ribs. He knew that glow. He remembered it from Flint’s memory, from the shard Flint had sealed in the plane’s core. The “Heart Residue.” A dangerous relic. A living remnant.And now it was reacting. Not to Ardis’s team. To him. Eidric appeared beside him, voice whisp

Caster regained consciousness slowly, as if waking from a deep night with no stars. His breath came out weak and uneven. His body felt heavy, too heavy, pinned by something that bit into his skin like cold metal thorns.When he opened his eyes, the world above him was a broken stretch of shadow and fractured light. He realized he was lying on the cracked floor of the ruin, bound in glowing chains. They wrapped around his wrists, his chest, his ankles. The chains pulsed with a pale blue radiance that burned every time he moved.Ardis stood a short distance away, studying him with unreadable eyes. His team formed a half-circle around them, tense and silent. No one spoke at first. Only the faint hum of the chains filled the air.Caster tried to sit up. The chains pushed him violently back to the ground.Ardis finally stepped forward. His boots stopped inches from Caster’s hand.“Do not struggle,” he said calmly. “These are anti-void restraints. They were designed exactly for someone like

The silence after the battle did not feel peaceful. It felt wrong. It felt like a deep breath held too long by something ancient and wounded. Caster pushed himself up from the broken ground, his body trembling with pain. Dust settled slowly around him like falling ash. Every time he inhaled, it felt like the air itself resisted him.He touched his ribs and winced. His hands came away stained with blood and thin streaks of dark void energy. His body was barely holding together, and the Skell Plane was in even worse shape.The ground beneath him shuddered with a low, sickening vibration. It felt like a heartbeat that could not find its rhythm. A heartbeat ready to stop.Eidric hovered close, but his form flickered like a dying candle. Parts of his translucent body faded in and out, as if the plane was pulling pieces of him away.“Caster,” Eidric whispered. His voice sounded thin, stretched. “The rupture from the battle has accelerated the collapse.”Caster forced himself to stand fully

The crystal pulsed softly in the center of the broken forge. Its light shimmered like a single heartbeat in the middle of a collapsing world. Caster knelt beside it, his hands trembling as he touched the warm surface. The glow was calm. Too calm. It frightened him.“Eidric,” he whispered, barely able to speak. “Answer me.”Nothing.He pressed his forehead against the crystal. “Eidric, please. Say something.”Still nothing.Caster’s breath shook. His chest felt tight, as if someone had reached into him and pulled something loose from inside. Around him, the Skell Plane trembled again. The ground cracked in slow waves. Part of the sky flickered, turning black like burnt pages.He did not look up. He did not care. The crystal pulsed again, this time with a softer rhythm. It felt like a sigh, like something fading.Caster gripped it with both hands. “Eidric… you promised. You promised to stay with me.”A faint shape flickered inside the crystal. It was small, nothing more than a driftin

The wind screamed across the shattered platform as the two figures faced each other. Caster stood with his chest rising and falling in slow, painful breaths, the Skell core glowing faintly in his left hand. His right hand trembled, coated in thin streaks of void light that flickered like dying stars. His clothes were torn, and blood-soaked one of his sleeves, but his eyes still held a fierce, burning resolve.Across from him, Ardis Valen stepped through the drifting dust. His weapon hummed with a sharp blue glow, each pulse steady and cold. The air around him bent in strange ripples as circuits in his armor activated, pulling mana directly from the environment and shaping it into controlled power. His stance was confident, stable, and full of deadly focus.Far above them, the Spire towered like a wounded giant. Cracks glowed across its length, leaking unstable mana that dripped like liquid starlight. The sky twisted around the Spire as the plane’s laws continued to break apart,