Chapter 69

  The fight had dragged on for nearly an hour—a time that felt endless.

  Neimar felt every second of it in the marrow of his bones. He was exhausted before the battle even began, and the only reason he still clawed through the sky was the same reason Orrhal hadn’t crushed him instantly: the invader had fallen. Fallen horribly. From a low of Tier VI to a peak Tier IV—Its vessel discarded like a dirty rag.

  Had Orrhal retained its true power, Neimar would’ve died in the first breath of this clash.

  But weakness had made the monster cautious. And caution had made it cruel.

  Orrhal was drawing this out—bleeding him dry, pressing him to maintain the chains on the vessel sealed in the mountain. And that was the thing killing him.

  The Eye pulsed in the distance like a star trying to be born. A world-ending mass of accumulated energy, enough to burn the Rift to a cinder if its bindings ever failed. And he—alone—kept those bindings intact. The chains that yoked that abomination were woven into his mind, his spirit, his very will. Every heartbeat was a struggle.

  And the more he fought Orrhal, the more the chains pulled back.

  Orrhal knew exactly what it was doing.

  Every time Neimar tried to push forward with real force, the effort required and the energy expenditure strained him. And for all his efforts in preventing a cataclismic disaster, Orrhal struck harder.

  The monster harried him mercilessly while drifting always—always—in Raime’s direction.

  It was letting Raime run. Why? Neimar still didn’t know. A trap was the only answer that fit. Orrhal wanted him to believe there was hope, wanted Raime to believe he had a chance, wanted the illusion to hold long enough for the boy to run straight into whatever nightmare waited at the portal.

  Hope could be a leash if you tightened it properly.

  And Orrhal was tugging that leash with exquisite precision.

  Neimar parried another cascade of annihilation-laced spears, each one shrieking as it bent the air behind it. His twelve split-minds wove and un-wove in frantic cycles—shredded by Orrhal’s pressure, reformed the next instant only to be torn again.

  He couldn’t leave a sub-mind exposed for more than a breath; Orrhal’s Law would devour their individuality and return them as broken shards. And still he needed them—needed every piece—to counter the many layered probes that Orrhal pressed into him constantly.

  A single lapse was death.

  A single distraction meant the Eye would flare, and the Rift would collapse into a single, catastrophic instant.

  And over all of this—woven through the pain and strain and smoke blistering off his own skin—came Orrhal’s voice. Smooth. Mocking. Patient.

  “Faltering again, Sovereign? How pathetic.”

  Neimar didn’t waste breath answering.

  “Your little human is skilled,” Orrhal continued, drifting backward on a wake of violet flames. “But it won’t save him. You should have left him to me when he first came to play, it would have saved me a lot of effort.”

  Neimar’s teeth ground together.

  He couldn’t afford a distraction. Not now. But it bled into his thoughts anyway, sharp and metallic.

  Keep running, Raime. I’ll buy you time. Buy yourself and my people a new future.

  A flare of mental pressure stabbed into his mind—three simultaneous probes snapping at the edges of his consciousness. He cut two down with split-minds, severed the third with a pulse of counter-resonance, then swerved sharply as Orrhal conjured a web of crystalline sigils mid-air.

  Ritual constructs on the fly—of course it could. Of course it would.

  “Orrhal,” he hissed, voice hoarse. “Enough games.”

  “But I’m enjoying them,” the monster sang back. “Aren’t you? This is a fine death march we dance. Better than the last one. Remind me again… how many of your people had to sacrifice themselves for your failings?”

  Another barrage slammed into him—seeking projectiles that burned with the Law of annihilation. Neimar twisted, creating a vacuum of energy behind him, bending trajectories so they shrieked harmlessly into the ground.

  He felt the beasts then.

  Dozens—no, thousands—of minds far away in the forest shifting patterns all at once. A tidal movement of panic and mayhem. He recognized the sensation instantly: forced dominance.

  Raime.

  Neimar’s stomach clenched.

  That wasn’t something Raime would do unless pressed to desperation.

  “What did you do?” Neimar snapped, his voice cracking with strain he could barely contain.

  Orrhal’s laugh fluttered like a torn banner in the wind.

  “Me? I don’t know, Neimar. Maybe the boy decided to stop being merciful. How touching that he finally learned from your people.”

  Neimar didn’t believe a word of it. Something was missing in the signatures around Raime—some presence he could not detect. Silence where a threat should be.

  He surged forward, abandoning the slow defensive pattern he’d maintained. Orrhal’s brows twitched upward, amused.

  “Running to him? How adorable. Shall I go first?”

  Neimar struck. Hard.

  The air between them detonated as wills collided—shattered violet fractals and silver-white ripples bursting outward. Orrhal skidded back half a step, actually forced to block.

  A rare grave expression flickered across the monster’s ruined features.

  Neimar’s heart lurched when he saw why.

  Below he spotted movement—hundreds of abominations crowded in a battle formation around the gate. Orrhal had obscured them from his senses entirely, a perfect veil knotted over the field.

  How?

  A small army… encircling the portal… waiting for Raime.

  A killing ring.

  “I admit to have underestimated the boy,” Orrhal murmured. “He really is resourceful, isn’t he? Your little disciple. Moving beasts like pawns. Willing to drown them in pain and fear. You should be proud.”

  Neimar was. In the marrow of his spirit, he was. His chest tightened at the sight of Raime’s desperate ingenuity—the stampede tearing most of the corrupted formation apart, beasts screaming as they fell under psychic fire, Raime pushing through in a desperate attempt to reach the gate.

  He was close.

  So close.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Just a little longer. Just—

  Orrhal tilted its head.

  “It ends here, Neimar.”

  Its robes parted. A sphere of silent light hovered against Orrhal’s chest—pure energy compressed into an orb so dense it bent space around it. No signature. No presence. Perfectly veiled. Orrhal must have prepared it from the very beginning.

  Neimar hadn’t sensed a whisper of it.

  He brought his hands together, weaving all the energy he could accumulate in such a little time into a barrier—thick, layered, reinforced by his full mind while the residual energy present in his body reinforced it, only in the vitals organs though, he couldn’t spare anything for more.

  The orb slammed into him.

  The world inverted around him, sky folding into earth as the barrier hurled downward with him pinned against it. When it shattered, the energy erupted—an explosion of violet white that ate through everything it touched.

  Pain.

  More than pain.

  He hit the ground in a storm of dirt and fire. And when he looked down—through the haze—he saw more than felt, what was left of him.

  Both arms evaporated from the shoulders down. Half his left leg was gone above the knee. Ribs open to the air. Organs exposed. Bone charred. Skin curling in smoking ribbons.

  He was still alive only thanks to spite and will.

  Raime.

  He forcefully moved himself upright. His vision blurred—faded—returned in a jagged burst. He sensed Orrhal turning, drifting toward the portal, toward the boy now buried in the swarm.

  No.

  Neimar launched himself forward. Telekinesis tore at the ground beneath him as he pushed every strand of will through his core and gathered all the energy he could. Even with a body half destroyed his mind remained his most powerful weapon.

  He made it halfway when he heard it.

  “Die.”

  Orrhal’s tone held glee, and absolute certainty.

  Neimar didn’t think. There was no time to think.

  He raised a barrier—thin, desperate—to intercept the beam Orrhal fired. Violet annihilation surged, crashing through his defense like a tidal wave, slowed only a fraction.

  Then he felt Raime.

  Emptying everything. Core flaring. The boy’s own barrier appearing like a golden sun.

  The beam struck.

  Neimar saw the new barrier shatter too, Raime’s resistance collapsed, the weapons he always brought along interpose in front of him—but it still wasn’t enough. They didn’t resist a second, they became just a fragmented shrapnel mass hitting Raime alongside the violet beam.

  He saw his student getting blown away—felt the impact gouge a trench nearly a hundred meters long.

  For a long instant Neimar thought everything was lost. Then—

  A pulse.

  Weak. Flickering.

  Alive.

  Raime was alive.

  Neimar’s breath broke with relief even as agony threatened to drown him. Orrhal drifted forward, preparing to finish the job, but Neimar lunged—pouring every breath, every scrap of burning life—into one final blast.

  The attack hammered Orrhal back, just enough to break its line.

  Just enough to stand between the monster and his pupil.

  He sent a final sweeping wave behind him, tearing apart the closest abominations by the portal. It bought seconds—maybe less. It was all he had.

  He planted himself in front of Orrhal, half a body left, mind burning, vision flickering.

  Behind him, through dust and pain—

  Raime stirred.

  Neimar breathed once. Shallow. Fierce.

  Just a little more, Raime. Stand. Live.

  He lifted what remained of his consciousness—every bit of it—against Orrhal’s looming presence.

  And let go of the chains he held on for all these millennia.

  Raime took only a breath—ragged and wet of blood—before he pushed himself up a few centimeters from the shattered ground. The motion sent pain lancing through every torn muscle and splintered bone, but he refused to collapse again. His body felt hollowed out, scraped clean from the inside. His core sputtered weakly—a shell of empty energy. It was nothing but an empty vessel, its once-bright reservoir reduced to faint, fading sparks that struggled to stay lit. His only remaining Thread’s energy was used up to reinforce his body as much as he could before the attack hit. He had nothing now.

  He planted his only remaining arm against the broken ground. Skin split open at the knuckles. Nails chipped or totally absent. Blood smeared beneath him as he clawed forward, dragging himself toward the portal’s distant shimmer. Inch by inch. Breath by breath. His vision blurred and refocused in frantic waves, every blink showing him a different world—one where he crawled, one where he didn’t, one where the ground was nothing but drifting haze.

  But the sound behind him was real.

  A surge of power—monolithic, ancient, cold and blazing at once—tore through the air like a blade made of light and gravity. Neimar. Raime felt it ripple across his back, pinning the air to his skin. His teacher was pouring everything he had into restraining Orrhal, every last shred of the Sovereign might forcing his foe to a standstill.

  Raime didn’t need to see it to know what it cost.

  Too much, he thought. He’s burning through it too fast.

  Chains groaned in the distance—deep, echoing through the Rift’s very bones. One snapped with a sound that made the world tremble. Then another. The vibration reached through the ground and up Raime’s arm, rattling his teeth.

  There was no going back anymore.

  He tried to gather enough psionic focus to dull the pain, but his mind scattered like ash the instant he reached inward. No suppression. No clarity. Only raw, unfiltered agony chewing through nerve and spirit alike. His breath caught, and he pressed his forehead to the cold stone, jaw tight, willing himself to move.

  He dragged himself another half-meter. All his attributes worth nothing now that his body was broken. The little energy he was regenerating was automatically getting sucked out by the shrapnel piercing his body, for some reason.

  His weapons lay in broken pieces around him, and in him, slagged and twisted. His link to the dominated beasts had dissolved the moment Orrhal’s attack hit—their minds slipping out of his control, scattering into static. He was alone. A broken body with an empty core. And yet he crawled, because surrender was not an option, not with what was coming.

  He searched wildly—psychically, instinctively—for something, anything he could use. A sliver of power. A discarded tool. A spark in the rubble. Nothing answered him but the roar of energies behind him and the mounting, suffocating pressure of the chains breaking.

  Then—

  A presence brushed the edges of his mind. Familiar. Bright in its simplicity.

  Raime forced his head up, neck trembling, and saw the young drokhar sprinting toward him.

  The beast—small only compared to its adult kin, its dark plates cracked from earlier battles—closed the distance with clattering limbs. Its mind touched his fully, not with words but with compressed images and emotions:

  Friend. Hurt. Me help. Kill. Enemy.

  A tremor of relief loosened Raime’s chest—even though pain answered it immediately. Hope flickered behind his ribs, thin and shaking.

  He pushed back a reply along the weakened thread between them.

  No. Not kill. My teacher still fights. Bring me… inside. Portal. Hurry.

  The drokhar slowed for a heartbeat, its mind blooming with confusion and fear—fear for him. But it understood. Loyal to a fault, it dipped low and curled its scythe-like limbs beneath his torso with jarring, careful precision. Pain tore a strangled sound from Raime’s throat as his body lifted off the ground like a sack of potatoes. He couldn’t even brace himself; his remaining arm hung limp over the creature’s armored back.

  Behind him, the world shrieked.

  The clash between Neimar and Orrhal escalated to a pitch Raime could feel in his bones—the kind of sound that didn’t come from throats but from two cosmic forces trying to annihilate each other. The flavour of it was unmistakable: it was Neimar spending power at a prodigious, impossible rate to hold Orrhal frozen in place.

  At the same moment, another chain broke.

  Then another.

  Their collapse thundered through the Rift in rolling waves.

  The drokhar bolted toward the portal, six limbs becoming lines of frantic motion. The ground raced beneath them, uneven and blurred. Raime’s head bobbed limply with each step, and he fought to remain conscious.

  Something glinted near the rubble—the spatial cube.

  Raime forced a stuttered pulse through the mental link:

  There. Take. Important.

  The beast skidded, veered, snapped its jaw around the cube with surprising delicacy, then launched forward again. The portal’s shimmering boundary widened ahead, a beacon of freedom.

  But the Rift itself was turning against them.

  From every direction, creatures converged—commanded by Orrhal’s madness. Their minds were like hooks driving into Raime’s skull. Psychic attacks hitting him and his mount. Fresh pain flared through him. His vision became dark at the edges.

  The drokhar staggered as the mental onslaught hit both of them, but it didn’t slow. It snarled, baring fangs around the cube, while adult drokhar roared back—massive forms flanking them, intercepting the charging beasts. They tore into the swarm with savage aggression, buying seconds at the cost of their lives.

  Raime forced his head to turn—just barely—and saw the mountain.

  It was splitting.

  A radiant blade of light was bursting outward from its heart. Not a beam—something older, deeper. A crack in reality pouring out annihilation.

  The final chain snapped.

  The light seemed to implode back into the mountain for just a moment.

  Then a tide of raw, uncontrolled energy erupted from the mountain’s core in a wave that scorched sky and stone alike. The Rift trembled like it was trying to tear itself apart. Every creature screamed—some in rage, some in terror, some simply because the end of their existence was just a moment away.

  Time thickened. Slowed. Warped.

  Sound became underwater echoes. Colours bled into one another. Raime felt the drokhar beneath him but couldn’t hear it anymore, couldn’t feel the wind, couldn’t breathe. His senses overlapped—sight became sound, pain became colour, gravity became thought.

  And through that disorienting blur…

  He saw Orrhal.

  Frozen mid-snarl. Chains of silver light bound it, restricted it.

  Caught like an insect trapped in amber.

  His face twisted with fury, disbelief, pure refusal.

  Then he saw Neimar.

  The last Sovereign of Ithural burned like a silver star—what remained of his body, little more than a broken skeleton bound in light and will, energy spewing outward in torrents that burned the air. One arm shredded. Ribs visible through cracked flesh. His single eye blazed like a dying comet.

  But he wasn’t looking at Orrhal.

  He was looking at Raime.

  His visage was the depiction of serenity, it was warm and peaceful despite the wave of annihilation coming to claim him.

  Raime met that eye with his single one remaining. Too many things were left unsaid, too many lessons still to learn.

  But the world wouldn’t wait for them, no. The world dimmed around that gaze. The noise fell away. Even the pain receded for a heartbeat.

  Neimar’s voice reached his mind—woven straight into the fabric of Raime’s consciousness.

  Thank you, Raime… for fulfilling the last dream of this old man. My path ends here, but yours have just begun.

  The drokhar leapt into the portal. The shimmering light swallowed them whole.

  And Raime fell back into the void.