Valoria’s skyline smoldered in the aftermath of Terry’s previous victories. Ash drifted like snow through the shattered streets, coating rubble and broken spires in a fine gray haze.Mira crouched atop a collapsed column, scanning the distant hills where Circle forces were regrouping.“They’re moving again,” she muttered, voice tight with tension. “And this time… it’s massive. Full-scale assault.”Terry’s silver-shadowed veins pulsed with Afterlight. His aura coiled around him like a living storm. “Then we meet them head-on. We’ve survived worse. We dictate the battlefield.”Corvin’s shadowlight flared defensively around them. “Valen… every surge, every pulse, these generals are learning from you. They’ll strike harder, smarter. You must remain precise.”“I am aware,” Terry said, voice steady. “Balance is not chaos. It’s control. They’ll see the difference.”From the distant hills, a massive column of the Circle’s forces advanced, crimson banners snapping violently in the wind. Leadin

The sky over Valoria churned with bruised clouds, streaked by veins of pale silver light. Terry stood at the center of the broken plaza, Mira at his right, Corvin and Ardan behind him, as the wind shifted, unnatural, charged, whispering like a thousand unseen voices.Mira stepped closer. “Terry… the air just changed. You feel it too?”“I do.” His voice was low, tense. “Something just crossed into Valoria. Something big.”Corvin’s brows furrowed. “It’s not a general. This… presence is older. And it’s coming straight for us.”Ardan braced on his staff, breath wavering. “A Harbinger… I thought the Circle abandoned them ages ago.”“They didn’t,” Terry murmured. “They saved one.”A quake rippled under their feet. Stones trembled. The air thickened, pressure building like a storm about to break. Mira unsheathed her blades instantly. “Terry, movement, north corridor!”He stepped forward. “Everyone stay behind me.”From the rubble-strewn street, a silhouette approached, walking calmly, each s

Valoria’s ruined skyline shimmered in the afterglow of Terry’s harmonic pulse. The streets lay silent, debris strewn like teeth from a broken jaw. Mira, Corvin, and Ardan moved cautiously beside him, every shadow a potential threat.Mira broke the silence first. “Terry… that Choir… it wasn’t just a test. It was a warning. They’re showing us the next level.”Terry’s silver-shadowed eyes scanned the horizon. “Then we meet it before it arrives. Let them understand that Valoria cannot be leveled without consequence.”Corvin’s shadowlight shimmered, forming a protective lattice around them. “Even if the Circle escalates to the Primordial Accords, I trust your Afterlight, but this… is beyond anything mortals should face.”“I am not mortal,” Terry said simply. “I am Balance incarnate. Mortality doesn’t matter when the Afterlight flows through you fully.”Ardan coughed, gripping his staff. “And the city… it resonates with you. Every strike, every pulse, it lives. It helps. It guides. That’s h

Terry’s vision shattered into a thousand silver shards as he crossed the threshold, then reformed in a place that felt like standing inside a pulse.The Silent Meridian was not a tunnel or chamber.It was a dimension of geometry.Lines of light, thin, trembling, impossibly precise, ran in every direction, forming shifting lattices and spirals that pulsed with deep harmonic breath. Each line echoed with faint memories of Valoria’s foundations, its birth, its evolutions.And it all beat in time with Terry’s own Afterlight.“Okay…” Terry whispered. “One wrong thought and this whole place folds in on itself. No pressure.”A voice drifted through the glowing framework.“Welcome, Stormbearer.”Terry spun, Afterlight flaring.A figure stepped out from a rotating helix of light. Tall, robed in silver threads that seemed woven from moonlit ink. His face was serene, but his eyes were deep wells of shifting sigils.It was Eldran, the First Meridian Shepherd, the architect of Valoria’s ancient ha

The storm over Valoria wasn’t weather, it was a wound. A spiraling tear of violet static pulsed above the skyline, bleeding light across the ruined districts as if the sky itself had been carved open.Terry felt it before he saw it.A pressure in his ribs.A vibration in his bones.A whisper in the sword at his back, hungry and trembling.“Corvin did this,” Mira muttered beside him. Her cloak snapped in the rising wind. “Or… whatever he’s turning into.”Terry didn’t answer. He couldn’t.Because the second he looked at the sky… he felt called.Not by Corvin.By something deeper.A pulse rippled through the storm, and every fallen streetlight flickered to life at once, casting long eerie shadows down the abandoned avenue.Then came the voice.Not through the air. Not through sound.Through the bones of every living thing.“HEALER.”Mira flinched. “Terry!”But Terry was already sinking to one knee, gasping as the ground beneath him vibrated.The message wasn’t just spoken. It was transmi