The glowing tear in the air did not close. It hung over the broken black stone, right in the middle of Erynd’s Crossing.Kael Dorn and Caster Spellbound sat in the sharp black glass dirt. They were bleeding. They were covered in thick gray ash. They breathed heavily, their chests moving up and down in the freezing cold air.Just a minute ago, the tear was a wild, violent mouth. It had tried to eat Kael. It had tried to suck him into the dark, backward world of the Ash Plane. It had pulled on him with the heavy gravity of his own sad memories.But now, the tear was completely still.The violent wind stopped blowing. The loud, terrible noise of breaking glass faded away.Everything became very, very quiet."Why did it stop?" Kael whispered. He held his right hand close to his chest. Under his skin, the dark ash mark in the shape of the tear slowly spun. It felt like a piece of cold ice buried in his flesh.Caster did not look at Kael. Caster kept his eyes locked on the glowing, red-edge

This time, Caster let Kael pull him. He took three steps back from the glowing edge of the tear.As soon as Caster moved away, the silver thread snapped.The giant structure inside the Ash Plane, the Crown of Cinders, suddenly stopped spinning perfectly. It wobbled, like a spinning top losing its balance.Without Caster’s direct alignment holding it steady, the massive weight of the Warden’s magic hit the broken node all at once.CRACK!The sound was louder than thunder. It hit them in the chest like a physical blow.The glowing red and purple edges of the tear suddenly folded inward.The world rushed to fix the hole.With a final, violent SNAP, the tear in the air vanished completely.It did not fade away slowly. It was there one second, and gone the next.The black glass dirt settled. The wind died instantly.Absolute silence returned to Erynd’s Crossing.Kael fell to his knees. He was exhausted. His body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. His head pounded with a terrible heada

The sun was shining brightly on the First Ring of the Tower. The sky was a perfect, clear blue. The giant white stone walls of the city looked clean and strong.But Caster Spellbound did not feel the warmth of the sun. He only felt the freezing cold of the dark world he had just left.Caster walked slowly toward the Great Silver Doors of the Tower. His feet dragged on the white stone path. His gray robes were torn. They were stained with dark red blood and covered in thick, black dust. He looked like an old ghost walking into a house of the living.He was completely exhausted. His bones ached. His magical energy was very low. The long walk back from Erynd’s Crossing had taken everything out of him. He had left Kael Dorn at a secret safe house near the edge of the city. Kael was burning with a terrible fever. The dark ash mark on Kael’s right hand was spreading, poisoning him with the memory-magic of the Ash Plane. Caster had to find a way to heal him. But first, Caster had to face the

Caster looked at Vane. Caster’s eyes narrowed. Suddenly, Caster saw past Vane’s angry words. He looked at the tight muscles in Vane’s jaw. He looked at the sweat on Liora’s forehead. He looked at how tightly the Archmages gripped their chairs.They were not angry. They were terrified.Caster realized the absolute truth. They did not care that he broke a law. They did not care about Erynd’s Crossing.They cared about the earthquake.When the giant black void and the Crown of Cinders had aligned with Caster at the Crossing, the power of that connection had shaken the entire world. The Council had felt that massive, impossible power.They were not afraid of what Caster had done. They were deeply, completely terrified of what had responded to him.They realized that Caster was connected to a god-like force that they could not control. If Caster was the anchor, then Caster was the most dangerous weapon in the world. And they wanted to bury the weapon so it could never be fired again."The

"I am defending the truth," Lysane fired back. "You talk about 'containment.' You tell the people in the lower Rings that the ash is just bad weather. You tell them the Tower walls are perfectly safe. It is a lie. We have built our beautiful city on top of a sleeping volcano, and now the volcano is waking up."Lysane turned around and pointed at Caster."If you kill him right now," Lysane said, her voice turning hard and cold, "if you cut the anchor... the dam breaks instantly. The Warden will not just leak ash into this room. It will step through the floor. It will crush this entire Tower into dust in one single heartbeat. Caster is not the bomb, Vane. He is the lock holding the bomb back. If you erase him, you kill us all."The room fell completely silent again.Even the guards looked terrified. Torin completely lowered his sword. He stepped back.Vane looked at the pile of ash on his table. He looked at Caster. Then he looked at Lysane.Vane was a politician. He cared about power.