The skin on Draven’s left arm did not bleed anymore, it shattered.He stared at the jagged fracture line cutting across his wrist, where the meat of his arm had turned into smooth, pitch-black void glass. The smoke rising from the ruins of the Godfall Domain tasted like ash and copper on his tongue. He gasped for air, his lungs burning as the sheer volume of a thousand lifetimes slammed into his skull all at once. He remembered dying by fire. He remembered a sword through his throat. He remembered names, faces, and betrayals that had been wiped clean from his mind during a dozen previous shatters. Except this time, the slate wasn't clean. He remembered everything."I told you to stay dead this time," a voice rasped from the shadows of a fallen pillar.Draven didn't look up right away. He knew that voice before his chaotic mind could even fish out the name. "Hello, Jack."Jack Cole stepped into the dim light, the edge of a heavy hunting blade catching the violet glow of the sky. His co

"We are going to die down here because you lied about what that thing does."Jack choked on a breath, coughing violently as the stone tunnel shook overhead, dropping a thick shower of gray dust into his hair. He was leaning heavily against the damp rock wall, his left leg dragging like a piece of dead wood. Behind them, up in the main thoroughfare of the outpost, the shrill, metallic screeching of the void guardians echoed through the vents. The crimson pulse from Jesse's artifact had called them right to their door."I didn't lie!" Jesse shouted back, stumbling over a pile of loose shale as they hurried deeper into the subterranean dark. They gripped the brass sphere tightly against their chest, their silver hair disheveled and damp with sweat. "It stabilizes the rot! It works! I just... I didn't know the local guardians were tuned to this specific frequency!""You didn't care!" Jack yelled, his voice cracking with a terrifying mix of physical exhaustion and panic. He looked back at

"If you take another piece of my life to fuel your magic, Draven, make sure you kill me completely."Jack’s voice rose above the screeching of the beast, raw and ragged from beneath the fallen timber. He wasn't begging. His eyes were wide, burning with a terrible, fierce finality as the guardian raised its second blade over Jesse's throat."Shut up, Jack!" Draven roared. His left hand was already raised, the pitch-black void glass burning with a suffocating, blinding violet fire. He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to use the math of sacrifice again, but the claws were descending. "Get back!""Draven, no! It's too much power!" Jesse sobbed from the floor, the massive weight of the guardian fracturing their ribs. "The artifact is... it's too far away! You can't control the toll!""Bury," Draven commanded.The single word left his throat with a sickening, layered echo that shatted the remaining glass in the window frames. It was the absolute voice of the Eternal Dominion, a sound

"If you let this ghost touch me, Draven, I swear I will find a way to break whatever is left of your miserable heart."Jesse’s voice dropped into a desperate, shaking scream as the crystalline echo lunged forward, its glass fingers inches from the brass sphere. The air in the cathedral shattered into a thousand razor-sharp shards of purple light, and the pressure in the room doubled, pinning Draven to his knees before he could even draw his blade. A horrific, piercing whine erupted inside Draven's skull, dragging his mind instantly back to the first shatter, back to the smell of burning copper and the agonizing sensation of his own throat closing up around a spike of cold silver."Get away from them!" Jack roared from the cart, his voice cracking with a terrifying surge of adrenaline.With a brutal, desperate heave, Jack threw his upper body forward, falling heavily out of the cart and dragging his dead, black glass legs across the jagged stone floor. He grabbed a shattered iron strut