The voice begin fading. "Enjoy your freedom, heroes. I'll be watching as you try to defend kingdoms with nothing but choice and courage. It will be... educational."The shadows pulled back. The fire flared to life again. The oppressive weight lifted.They stood in silence, weapons drawn, breaths coming hard."Is it gone?" Torin asked.Kael's hands shook as he reinforced the wards. "I think so. But those wards wouldn't have stopped it anyway. It's not physical. It's conceptual. It exists in thought and possibility.""So how do we fight it?" Sari demanded."I don't know." Kael looked exhausted. "I don't know."Liora sank to the ground, clutching the dragon scale. "It's right, isn't it? About the doubt. About the fear. I keep wondering if we did the right thing.""That's exactly what it wants," Helena said, but her voice lacked its usual certainty. "It wants us second-guessing ourselves.""But what if we should second-guess?" Torin sat heavily. "What if breaking the cycle was a mistake?

It said the VOID would return, and the cycle's protection was always an illusion. The pattern didn't keep the VOID away. It just made you dependent on something that would never truly save you.""So what does save us?" the Ironcrag Assembly leader asked."We do," Helena said simply. "We save ourselves. Through courage. Through choice. Through refusing to accept that our fates are written in stone."The shadow rippled violently, the whisper coming sharp and angry now. "Brave words. Let's see how brave you are when Vocans are shredding your children. When the VOID's roar splits the sky. When reality itself bends under cosmic horror. Will your courage be enough then?""Maybe not," Ten said, speaking directly to the shadow now. Everyone in the chamber could feel the entity's presence, even if they couldn't see it. "Maybe we'll fail. Maybe we'll all die. But we'll die knowing we tried. We'll die knowing we chose our path instead of walking one laid out for us.""You're fools.""Probably,"

Dragon script, ancient and complex. They glowed faintly with residual heat.Kenal couldn't read the script, but it could feel its meaning. Not words, but concepts bleeding directly into its mind."The cycle bound us. The pattern shaped us. But we were more before we were servants. We were free. Wild. Unchained. The breaking returns us to what we were. Chaos and possibility. Terror and wonder. Do not fear the reunion. It is only a return to truth.""Return to truth," Kenal repeated. Its clawed hand touched the symbols, and heat flared beneath its palm. The script burned brighter, then began to flow. Like liquid fire, the symbols dripped from the wall onto Kenal's scales.Pain. Searing, absolute pain. Kenal screamed, but couldn't pull away. The symbols wrapped around its body, burning patterns into obsidian scales. Knowledge flooded through it. Memories that weren't its own. The dragon's memories. The dragon-kin's ancestral memories. Everything.When it ended, Kenal collapsed to the cav

"Me," it agreed. "I've been following you. Watching your little quest. It's entertaining, watching you race toward a solution that doesn't exist.""Get lost," Sari snarled, blade pointed at the entity."But I have information you need. The Forbidden Garden is not what you think it is.""We don't need anything from you," Helena said."Don't you?" The entity drifted closer. "You think you're going to the center of the merger to claim it. To shape what humanity becomes. But the Garden isn't the center. It's the lock. And locks can be opened from either side.""What are you talking about?" Kael demanded."The ancient bearers divided the realms at the Garden. They placed Therha there as guardian. But guardians don't just keep things out. They also keep things in." The entity's form rippled with amusement. "The VOID isn't trying to reach the Garden from outside the realms. It's already there. It's been locked in the Garden since the di

A figure emerged from the depths of the Garden. Walking through the reality-warping chaos like it was a simple path. Her form flickered between young and old, solid and transparent, but her eyes burned with absolute will.Therha. The guardian of the Forbidden Garden.But changed. Transformed. She had been partly real before, anchored by Devol's magic. Now she was fully manifested, the merger giving her complete existence."You are not the end of stories, VOID. You are simply the antagonist. And every story needs an antagonist to give the heroes meaning." Therha's form solidified, becoming an old woman with eyes like galaxies. "But you forgot something important in your ten thousand years of imprisonment.""What could I possibly forget?""That Devol did not create me to guard against you entering the Garden. He created me to guard against you leaving it."The VOID hesitated. For the first time since emerging, uncertainty rippled through its darkness."What?""The division of realms was