"Now," Caster whispered to himself. "I end the army."Caster raised his right hand. He looked at the simple silver ring on his index finger. He prepared to push a massive burst of his golden magic into the ring. He prepared to freeze the entire Glassview army on the battlefield above them. "CASTER, NO!" Sikoa shrieked, running toward him through the crossfire. "THE RING IS A TRAP! THE WARDEN WROTE THE CODE!"Caster heard her voice. He froze. He looked at Sikoa. He looked at the silver ring on his finger. His brilliant mind instantly replayed the memories of the dark concrete lab in Fort Ironcliff. He remembered the freezing cold feeling when he designed the virus. He remembered how easy the math had felt. The horrific realization hit him like a falling mountain. Solon was right. The Warden had guided his hand. Caster hesitated for exactly one second. He stopped pushing golden magic into his shield. That one second of hesitation was all Elias Thorpe needed. "You lose, old man!" T

Young Toby looked at his friends. The Glassview soldiers were bravely marching forward. The glowing blue crystals on their chests, the Resonant Shards, pulsed with their fast heartbeats.When the Crimson soldiers fired their screaming red beams of blood magic, the blue shields rippled like water and bounced the attacks away. "We are winning!" a Glassview captain shouted happily. "Push forward! Break their lines!"But then, the invisible signal hit them. The corrupted, violent signal from Caster’s silver ring shot out of the ground and washed over the entire battlefield. It hit the blue crystal on Toby’s chest. The blue crystal stopped pulsing with Toby’s heartbeat. The soft blue light instantly turned pitch black. Toby gasped. He felt a terrible, freezing cold spread across his chest. The black light shot out of the crystal and wrapped around his dark gray steel armor. Toby tried to lift his rifle, but his arms would not move. He tried to take a step, but his legs were locked in

The faceless woman drifted forward. She moved faster than a human could blink. She stood directly in front of a Crimson shock trooper. She reached out her dark gray hand and touched the center of the man’s heavy black armor. The man did not even have time to scream. The moment the dark ash touched his chest, his armor instantly rusted to brown dust. The freezing, heavy entropy of the Ash Plane passed through the metal and entered his heart. The man’s body lost its solid shape. His skin turned gray. His bones dissolved. He literally fell apart into a pile of dry, loose gray dirt on the white stone floor. He was erased. The other forty-nine Crimson troopers screamed in pure terror. They dropped their heavy rifles. They turned and ran toward the broken doorway of the sanctuary, trying to escape the slow, silent marching of the dead. Elias Thorpe stood frozen in the center of the room. His green eye was wide with horror. His red, magical eye was spinning wildly, trying to process

Caster Spellbound knelt in the thick, dry gray dust. He looked up. He did not see the sky. He did not see the clouds. He saw a monster. The Ash Warden had risen from the earth. But it was not just a thirty-foot-tall beast anymore. The dark god had consumed the massive magical energy of the war. It had eaten the screaming red blood magic of the Crimson Alliance. It had eaten the cold, dead purple magic of the Glassview cannons. Now, the Ash Warden was as tall as a mountain range. Its dark, pitch-black body blocked out the horizon. Its broad shoulders brushed against the edge of the atmosphere. The heavy Crown of Cinders spinning above its faceless head looked like a ring of dead, burning moons. Its two pale gray eyes were the size of entire cities, glowing with a cold, uncaring light in the dark sky. "Light save us," Sikoa whispered. The brave, strong rogue fell to her knees next to Caster. She dropped her heavy rifle into the dust. Her one good eye was wide with absolute, pure ter

Caster frowned deeply. He looked down at his own chest. Deep, deep inside his dark, empty soul, the tiny golden seed was sleeping. The hum was very faint. The golden magic was a strange, unknown power. It was born from the collision of human sacrifice and cosmic consequence. It was not the magic of destruction. It was the magic of absolute truth. "If conflict feeds it," Caster whispered to himself, "what starves it?"He thought about the phantom of young Jace in his soul-scape. When Caster had fought the ghost, the ghost had grown stronger. But when Caster had stood up, dropped his defenses, and accepted the ghost's anger... the ghost had vanished. You do not defeat a burning fire by throwing dry wood onto it. You defeat a fire by taking the wood away. You defeat consequence by accepting it. You defeat hatred with absolute, unconditional peace. "Surrender," Caster breathed. His eyes widened. "Complete, total surrender."It went against every instinct he had. He was a soldier. He