The Last Star-Bearer: Heir of the Shattered Light

CHAPTER 4: DUALITY

The air crackled with dying embers of magic, thick with the scent of ozone and ancient ash. The battlefield... once a lush valley beneath twin blood red moons.

At its center stood the Dark Shadow Archmage, his obsidian robes flaring like wings as he staggered, shaking his head as if clearing a fog. His crimson eyes locked onto Tristan, the young nobody who moments ago had unleashed a beam of pure sunfire, searing through shadow constructs like parchment.

“Sun magic?” the Archmage hissed, his voice a guttural rasp. “From a stranger? An impossibility!” Confusion twisted his features, then gave way to fury. “Unless… unless you—Lumen—forced my hand! You're in cahoot in this menacle!”

His gaze lifted to the heavens, where the lingering essence of the sun conclave shimmered like gold dust in the wind. “You tricked me! You used my own rituals, my blood, to summon that irregularity. You will pay for that!” He howled, the sound echoing unnaturally across the shattered terrain.

Before anyone could react, he raised his staff... a twisted helix of bone and void-iron and it pulsed with a sickly light, violet veins threading through a core of pure black. The runes carved into the ground flared to life, ancient syllables burning in the air like cursed fire.

“So be it!” the Archmage roared. “If fate denies me control, I shall claim dominion anyway! Six thousand years of waiting....of hunger....end today!”

The chanting began.... a series of guttural, spiraling words that made the very air quiver. "Tenebris portas, Necrolordus veni. Umbrae accedant, via infernus pateat."

The earth groaned. Cracks ripped through the valley floor, glowing with the same violet-black energy. "Vailis Umbra, Necrolordus Praevius, Porta aperitur."

Then, with a thunderous boom, a massive rift gaped open, a yawning mouth of darkness swallowing the sky above it. Winds howled from the depths, carrying whispers of long-dead souls.

The shadow arch mage continued to chant the spell. ”O Necrolordus, audi me, ascende ex profundis Terrae... Evasio... carceris ligantis!”

“No!” cried Lirien, the Wind Archmage, her silver robes whipping around her. She flung her hands forward, summoning a cyclone of razor-sharp air.

Aelar, Fire Archmage, followed, hurling a comet of molten flame. Gorath and Nymira, earth and water... combined their powers into a torrent of stone and ice, launching it toward the portal.

But the rift inhaled the attacks, digesting them without a flicker.

“It’s absorbing everything,” Nymira gasped, her voice trembling.

“The balance is breaking,” Terram muttered. “If the Necrolord returns, the sacrifices of the Sun Conclave and Moon Covenant will be for nothing. Light will falter. The realms will fall. Darkness will consume the light!”

A deep, guttural laugh rumbled from the abyss—low at first, then rising into a cacophony that shook the bones of every living soul. From the darkness emerged him.

The Necrolord.

Towering, clad in armor forged from the souls of forgotten kings, his crown a jagged halo of obsidian thorns. His eyes, twin voids... glowed with cold, malevolent intelligence. He drew a breath, and from his mouth spilled not air, but a tide of black smoke that coiled like serpents across the battlefield. Where it touched the ground, shadowy forms arose... gargoyles with wings of slate, panthers with eyes like dying stars. An army born of breath.

“Freedom,” the Necrolord intoned, his voice the echo of collapsing mountains. “At last. ”

He stepped forward, one foot rising from the portal, then the other—slow, deliberate, inevitable. His voice echoed from the dunes of the Helgian sand. ”Regnum Lucis, tempus est... recipere iram meam... Omnem lucem consumam donec tenebrae solae exsistant in toto regno!”

“This is unbelievable!” someone cried, perhaps Lirien, perhaps not.

Tristan felt a surge of energy burning inside him. He didn’t think. He didn’t pray. He screamed.

“NO!” And the world burned.

Golden light once again erupted from Tristan’s palms, pure and radiant... sun magic, yes, but mingling with it was something else. A silvery luminescence, soft yet unyielding, like moonlight distilled into power. It wasn’t just sun. Not just moon.

It was both.

The twin beams, gold and silver... lanced across the battlefield, striking the portal at its core. For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then—

CRACK.

The rift split like glass. Reality itself seemed to wail as the portal imploded. A shockwave exploded outward... black flames, raw void energy, debris... hurling mages, soldiers, even the Necrolord himself backward. The Necrolord roared, his form flickering, dragged halfway back into the collapsing abyss before the rift snapped shut with a sound like a dying star.

Silence.

Then groans. The wind, now gentle, carried ash and the scent of burnt stone.

Tristan dropped to his knees. His breath came in ragged gasps. His hands trembled. The glow around him faded, leaving only a boy, exhausted, pale, swaying. All energy he released for unknown reason drain his body.

The Dark Shadow Archmage lay on his side, his staff cracked, his body scorched. He coughed blood, then slowly, painfully, pushed himself up. His eyes, though dimmed, burned with a renewed purpose.

“Impossible,” he whispered. Then, louder: “But not defeated. Not yet.” He raised his broken staff skyward. “All shadows... retreat! Fall back into the Lleh! Nunc!”

A chorus of shrieks answered... the gargoyle and panther shadows dissolving into mist, retreating into cracks in the earth, into the shadows of stones, even into the dying light of the moon.

The Shadow Archmage turned his gaze one final time to Tristan. “You… you carry both sun and moon. A child of duality.” A slow, knowing smile curled his lips. “You’ve delayed the inevitable. But I will return. When the Nexar Fragments are whole, when the stars align... I will summon him again. The Necrolord will walk the realms.”

And with that, he vanished... swallowed by a wisp of darkness.

The remaining mages staggered to their feet. Lumen warriors, crimson cloaks, golden helms...rushed forward, circling Tristan, their staves raised, their faces wary.

“He used moon magic,” one whispered, horrified. “Moon magic! That’s extinct...tied too closely to the Luna, to the in-between. It could be corruption!”

“He saved us,” Lirien snapped, stepping between them and Tristan. “He stopped the Necrolord. That has to mean something.”

“Or it could mean he’s the key,” Aelar said darkly. “The prophecy spoke of a child who could open and close the gates. But it didn’t say which side he’d stand on.”

Tristan looked up, his silver-gold eyes dull with exhaustion. “I... I don't know how it happen.”

Gorath knelt beside him. “The power you wielded... it’s ancient. Older than the Conclave. Older than the Covenant. No one has mastered both sun and moon even the arch mages.”

“And they were obliterated six thousand years ago when they seal the Necrolord!,” Nymira reminded softly.

Tristan closed his eyes. He felt empty, hollowed out. But beneath the fatigue, a whisper stirred... a memory, perhaps, or something deeper. A voice, faint, melodic, singing in a language he didn’t know. Moonlight on water. A hand guiding his. A promise, broken long ago.

The warriors lowered their staves slightly, but did not lower their guard.

Above, the sky darkened. Stars blinked into view, cold, distant. One, however, shone brighter than the rest. A yellow-bluish star, pulsing once, like a heartbeat.

Far below, in the deepest trenches of the world, something ancient stirred. Not the Necrolord—imprisoned again—but something else. Something that had watched. Waited.

Tristan shivered, though the night was warm.

He didn’t know who he was. But they did. And they were coming.

The battle was over. But the war—of light, shadow, and the boy who stood between them... had only just begun.