The air in the Grand Hall of Valoria didn't smell like magic; it smelled like ozone and burnt hair. Aerovan coughed, blinking away the stinging blue mist that swirled around his ankles. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. One moment he’d been walking home from a late shift at the hardware store, and the next, the floor had turned into a kaleidoscope of light."Is he the one?" a booming voice demanded.Aerovan looked up. The room was massive, vaulted ceilings lost in shadow, lit by flickering braziers that cast long, dancing shadows. In front of him stood a man in gilded plate armor, his crown glinting under the magical discharge. This was King Caevin Roder, and he looked like a man who had just been stood up at his own wedding."The resonance was perfect, Your Majesty," a woman in white robes whispered. She stepped toward Aerovan, her eyes glowing with a faint, receding silver light. "He is the third. The final pillar of our defense.""Well?" The King stepped off

The searchlights continued to sweep the jagged horizon of the quarry, pale fingers of light poking through the rising dust. Drovic didn’t wait for Aerovan to admire his handiwork any longer; he grabbed the younger man by the collar of his soot-stained shirt and yanked him toward the treeline."Move it, kid! If the Knights find you standing over a crater with a smoking metal stick, they won't ask for a demonstration. They'll drop you first and sort the scrap later!"Aerovan stumbled, his boots catching on the uneven rock. "I’m moving, I’m moving! Just—give me a second. My legs feel like they’re made of lead.""That's the 'price' you mentioned, isn't it?" Drovic hissed, guiding him through a narrow thicket of briars. "You look like you've aged a decade in ten minutes. If we don't get you back to the forge and hide that... that thing, you’re going to be a very dead 'legend'.""I can still walk, Drovic. Just... everything is heavy. Even the air.""Yeah, well, keep walking. We stay off the

The hammer didn't fall from Aerovan’s hand so much as his hand simply ceased to be a part of his conscious reality. The heavy iron tool struck the floor with a dull thud, followed immediately by the sound of Aerovan’s knees hitting the soot-covered planks. He didn’t make a sound. He just tipped forward, his forehead resting against the cool, dark base of the anvil."Aerovan!" Lysenne’s voice was a sharp crack in the sudden silence. She was at his side in a second, her hands hovering over his shoulders as if afraid he might shatter if she touched him. "Drovic, help him!""I told him," Drovic groaned, though his voice was thick with a shaky sort of terror. He shoved past the King’s guards, ignoring the leveled spears. "I told the damn kid he was burning the candle at both ends and in the middle too."King Roder stepped forward, his heavy boots clicking rhythmically until he stood over the collapsed smith. He looked down at the white hair, the trembling, skeletal hands, and the glowing p

The shadow of the God-Killer stretched across the East District like the hand of a cold, indifferent god. Its sheer size blocked out the flickering orange of the burning city, casting Aerovan and Lysenne into a premature, suffocating twilight."Can you even stand?" Lysenne’s voice was barely a whisper, her hands trembling as she tried to pull Aerovan’s arm over her shoulder. "Aerovan, look at the size of that thing. Your cannon... it took everything you had just to dent a regular one. This isn't a fight. It’s a funeral."Aerovan spat a glob of thick, dark blood onto the shattered cobblestones and forced a grin that looked more like a jagged scar. "Then it’s a good thing I’m already dressed for the occasion. Drovic! Help her. Get me back to the forge.""Kid, the forge is falling apart," Drovic grunted, though he moved quickly, his massive frame providing the literal pillar Aerovan needed to stay upright. "The roof is half-gone and the hearth is barely holding a spark. You’re asking for

"If you're done coughing your lungs out onto my boots, we have five minutes before the next boulder flattens this cellar," Drovic growled, kicking a chunk of smoldering oak away from the threshold of the reinforced coal bunker.Aerovan wiped his mouth with the back of a black-stained hand, his chest heaving as he stared down at the jagged gray fragment he had just clawed out of the rubble. It didn't look like much—just a lump of heavy, dull-gray stone, rough-edged and lifeless, torn from the outer casing of a shattered Duchy golem that had been blasted apart in the alleyway an hour prior."It's not glowing," Lysenne said, kneeling beside them in the suffocating gloom of the basement. Her once-impeccable royal tunic was now soaked in soot and sweat, a long tear exposing the dirt-smudged skin of her shoulder. She reached out a tentative finger toward the fragment. "Every magical construct in the academy libraries hums. It pulses with residual anathema. This... this feels cold. Like a ri