The sky was a wound.As Lyra and her companions climbed the broken ridge toward the capital’s heart, lightning tore through the clouds in jagged bursts of violet and white. The sound was deafening — not thunder - but something deeper. A voice made of storms.Arcturus’s ritual had reached its zenith.The city below was gone — replaced by a swirling maelstrom of energy and ruin. Buildings hung suspended in the air, frozen mid-collapse, fragments of earth and crystal rotating like planets around a dying sun. The air itself shimmered, vibrating with a low hum that made Lyra’s skin crawl.Zephyr squinted against the wind. “The closer we get, the heavier it feels. Like the air’s pressing down on us.”Lirien’s voice trembled. “That’s the resonance field. The voice is bleeding into our realm. He’s breaking the boundary between what is and what was meant to be.”Thorne gripped his sword tighter. “Then let’s break him before he finishes the job.”Lyra said nothing. Her pendant pulsed against he

The morning after the storm’s end came with an eerie stillness.For the first time in weeks, the sky over Elyria was clear — a soft, endless blue stretching over the horizon. The wind no longer carried the taste of ash or thunder, but something lighter, fragile, like the air before a new dawn.Lyra stood before the gates of the ruined city, her cloak brushing against the cracked stone. Behind her, the others gathered — weary, yet resolute.Zephyr adjusted the strap of his pack. “Feels strange leaving it behind,” he muttered, glancing back at the city that had been their battleground.Thorne nodded, his gaze distant. “Strange, but right. What’s left here needs rebuilding — not more war.”Eira stood apart, silent as ever, her eyes fixed on the horizon. When she finally spoke, her voice was calm but edged with something sharp. “The Sea of Mirrors lies far beyond the Northern Reaches. No maps show the way. The land itself shifts — as if the Voice doesn’t want to be found easily.”Lirien’s

For a long moment, no one spoke. The air itself seemed to hum with awareness — alive, sentient. The light that surrounded them pulsed like the rhythm of a great heart, each beat resonating through the ground beneath their feet.Eryndor took a slow breath, his eyes tracing the horizon. The realm stretched endlessly in all directions — fragments of floating land, crystalline rivers flowing in impossible arcs, and stairways that led nowhere yet shimmered like promises“This place…” Lyra whispered. “It feels… alive.”“It is,” Eira said softly. “You’re standing inside the Voice itself — or at least, what remains of it.”Lirien turned in a slow circle, her staff pulsing faintly with light. “The old texts called it the Sanctum Originis. The birthplace of all thought. If this truly is the Heart of the Voice, then…”“Then this is where it all began,” Zephyr finished, his tone reverent.Eryndor stepped forward, his hand brushing against the shimmering air. Energy flowed around his fingers like

The darkness remembered him.When the world broke, most beings vanished into light or silence. But Arcturus fell into something deeper — a chasm between creation and nothingness.For what felt like centuries, he drifted there, surrounded by whispers that were not voices, memories that were not his own.At first, there was pain — unbearable, consuming. Then there was clarity.He opened his eyes, and the void opened with him.He stood on the edge of a vast, shifting plain. The ground pulsed like living flesh beneath black glass, and the sky above him bled crimson through a web of shadowed clouds.The air was thick with distortion, the smell of ozone and something old — like burning time.For a long moment, Arcturus said nothing.Then, a low chuckle broke from his throat.“So… it worked.”He looked down at his hands. They glowed faintly with runes — not the magic of the old world, but something older, rawer. His veins pulsed with both light and shadow, two opposing forces that should hav

Light swallowed him whole. The moment Eryndor crossed the threshold, the world vanished. There was no sound, no scent, no ground beneath his feet — only endless, shifting radiance. He turned, but the entrance was gone. The others — Lyra, Zephyr, Lirien — had vanished like smoke. He was alone. “Where am I?” he whispered. His voice didn’t echo. It simply dissolved into the brightness, as if the air refused to carry it. Then, gradually, the light condensed. Shapes began to form — curved walls of polished crystal, each one reflecting an image of him. Dozens of Eryndors stared back. Some wore his armour. Others were older, scarred, and broken. A few bore eyes are not of blue but silver. Then, one of the reflections moved when he did not. Eryndor froze. “What…?” The reflection smiled faintly — a smile he didn’t make. Its eyes glowed with cold fire. You came seeking truth, it said, though its lips didn’t move. But truth cuts both ways. The walls rippled, and suddenly, he stood in