Caster Spellbound and Sikoa lay in the cold, wet mud. They were high up on a rocky hillside, miles away from the center of the battlefield. They had run as far as their tired, broken bodies could take them. Now, they could not run anymore. Caster pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. He coughed violently. Every time he coughed, a tiny speck of glowing golden blood hit the dark dirt. His chest burned with a sharp, terrible agony. His broken ribs felt like hot knives pressing into his lungs. He slowly lifted his head. He looked down at the Rift Plains. The giant, walking mountain of iron—the Crimson Engine—was completely gone. Elias Thorpe’s massive soul-engine had detonated. But it had not exploded with normal orange fire. It had exploded with pure, blinding, raw planar energy. A massive pillar of light still shot straight up from the ground. It was a mile wide. It connected the muddy earth directly to the shattered, broken sky. "Caster," Sikoa whispered. Her voice was shaki

A creature pulled itself out of the tear in reality. It was horrifying. It looked like a massive, terrifying spider, but it had no head. It had no face. Its body was just a chaotic, swirling ball of dead ash and sharp, broken obsidian rocks. It moved with unnatural, jerky, twitching motions. It fell from the rift and landed in the mud of the battlefield. It was not alone. All across the sky, from hundreds of small, jagged tears, creatures began to spill out. They fell like a rain of nightmares. There were giant, crawling things made of broken glass. There were flying creatures that looked like bats made of thick, burning red blood. There were tall, thin, faceless monsters that glided over the ground like shadows. These were the void-creatures. They were the minor, terrifying inhabitants of the Ash Void. They were not intelligent gods like the Ash Warden. They were just hungry, blind, chaotic beasts. They lived in the dark spaces between dimensions, feeding on scraps of dead magic.

The giant ring of bright white light was falling from the broken sky. It was covered in thousands of huge, burning eyes. It fell straight toward the muddy cliff where Caster Spellbound and Sikoa stood. The sound of the falling ring was like a million voices singing a single, terrible note. Caster stared up at the cosmic nightmare. He could not run. He could not hide. Then, the pain hit him. "AGHHHH!" Caster screamed. He dropped to his knees. He grabbed his chest with both of his dirty, bleeding hands. He curled forward, pressing his forehead into the cold, wet mud. Deep inside his empty soul, the tiny golden seed woke up completely. But it did not hum softly. It roared. The sound vibrated so violently that Caster’s bones rattled. It felt like a wild, angry wasp was trapped inside his heart, trying to chew its way out. The golden magic burned him. It was incredibly hot. Smoke actually began to rise from his wet gray shirt. "Caster!" Sikoa yelled. She dropped to her knees in the

"When they realized their mistake, they were terrified," Caster continued. "They knew the network was going to tear the planet apart. So, they made a desperate choice. They summoned the Ash Warden."Sikoa gasped. "The dark god.""Yes," Caster nodded. "The founders did not summon the Warden to destroy the world. They summoned it to be a cork. They took the heavy, dense, absolute consequence of the Ash Plane, and they stuffed it directly into the center of the Blackthorn Network."Caster pointed toward the distant capital city of Glassview. "They put the dark god into the main control hub," Caster said. "And then they built the Sage Tower on top of it to keep it locked away. The Ash Warden acted like a massive, heavy battery. Its dark magic clogged the pipes of the network. It turned all the portal doors off. It forced the machine to go to sleep for a thousand years."Sikoa slowly backed away from the edge of the cliff. She looked up at the giant ring of burning eyes hovering silently a

Caster Spellbound fell through the dark hole. He had jumped off the muddy cliff, stepping directly into the jagged, tearing magical rift. The moment he crossed the line, the physical world vanished. There was no sound. There was no air. He was tumbling through a freezing, violently spinning tunnel of pure, toxic green and bruised purple light. The planar friction tore at his clothes. It tried to peel his skin from his bones. The journey through the corrupted Blackthorn Network was a nightmare. "Hold on!" Caster yelled, but the wind stole his voice. He closed his eyes. He focused all his mind on the tiny, warm golden seed inside his chest. The golden light wrapped around his frail body like a tight, warm blanket. It protected him from the crushing weight of the dark dimensions rubbing against each other. Suddenly, the spinning stopped. Caster was thrown violently forward. He flew out of the green light. He hit a hard, wet cobblestone street. He rolled three times, scraping his han