Maiya doused a clean towel in water, dabbing the sweat from Vir’s forehead for what must surely have been the thousandth time.

  “I’m here,” she said, leaning over to rest her head on his chest. The sound of his beating heart comforted her—told her he was still alive. “I know you can hear me, despite what everyone says. I’m here. Come back to us. Please…” she whispered, as she had done countless times over the past month.

  Tara and the others were convinced there was nothing left of him to hear her. That his soul had been shattered so thoroughly, there could never be a recovery, not even for him, and that even if he miraculously did, he would be nothing but a shell of the man he once was.

  Half the realm was in mourning, but not her.

  Vir didn’t need to be mourned. He needed support. He was all alone, fighting. She was sure of it. Because that was what he did. Vir fought and fought and fought. And he rewrote what was possible.

  He’d done it time and time again.

  “We made a promise, didn’t we?” she said, squeezing his hand. “That we’d stick together, even if the world turned against us? That we’d follow each other. To the bitter end. I’ve never forgotten, Vir. I’m here. I’m always here. And I know. You won’t give up. You’ll overcome this, just like you did with everything else.”

  After a month of tears, Maiya thought she had none left to shed, and yet they streamed freely down her face, wetting Vir’s blanket. “You’re not going to give up on me, right? You promised you would win. You promised me a life together. You’re supposed to be my Raja... My king! Are you going to let it end like this?”

  Her only response was Vir’s labored, irregular breaths.

  Maybe Tara was right about the soul, but Vir wasn’t like everyone else. He denied it, but he wasn’t. Vir never was mortal. He was the Akh Nara, and that was more than a name. Vir was something more.

  “So, you see? This can’t be the end. So fight this. Fight this with all that you have. Because I am here, fighting right beside you. And I will never… ever… let go!”

  Maiya gasped. Had she imagined it?

  The slight pressure from Vir’s hand—the one she had been clutching—squeezing back?

  Maiya kissed his hand. There was hope. And she would believe that to the day she died.

  Darkness. Terror. Agony.

  The worst moments of Vir’s life played out again and again, forcing him to relive the most terrible moments without reprieve.

  Rudvik’s death.

  Aliscia and Apramor’s note of farewell.

  Tia’s expression when she learned Vir was a demon.

  Maiya falling into a vat of boiling water.

  Vir nearly dying to the Imperium Automaton.

  On and on it went, and though coherent thoughts were few and far between, Vir had assumed them to be illusions, at first. He vaguely recalled experiencing something like that in the past.

  Or had he? Memories appeared, out of order and unbidden. Entirely beyond his control.

  But as the hours passed and days became months, and the months bled into what must have been years, some part of him knew.

  That these were no mere illusions. That his mind was fractured. Broken beyond repair.

  Even those terrible memories eventually became faint, as parts of his mind continued to crumble. Now, he only vaguely remembered a battlefield in a red land. A mistake at a crucial moment that had cost him everything.

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  He remembered agonizing over that mistake in the years of darkness that came after. Asking ‘what if’ until he forgot what he was thinking of, and the cycle began anew.

  His wishes went unanswered. For there were no gods here in this horrible place.

  And yet, something stopped him from giving up. Something told him to press on. A voice—the gentlest of voices, in fact.

  It was a goddess’s voice, urging him to go on. To fight. A promise made. An oath unbroken.

  It was that voice he listened to over the years, slowly gathering the pieces of what remained.

  He knew not why or even what it would achieve. Only that the voice asked him to.

  That was, until today.

  Until this moment, when all the pieces that remained had been collected and placed—a broken mosaic of stained glass.

  It was then that the darkness vanished, giving way to tall trees, a meadow, and a river that ran through it. A place he remembered from ages past.

  “M-mindscape,” he muttered awkwardly, throat dry and rusted from disuse—the sounds clumsy and strange.

  Something, however, was terribly wrong.

  This was not the soothing place it should have been. It was broken—just as he was broken.

  Tears in the sky bled into black nothingness. Cracks in the land led to an infinite abyss.

  This place was shattered.

  Because it was his place. Reflection of his soul. The core of his identity. And he was broken.

  “Took you long enough,” a voice said from behind him.

  “You are… Shardul?” Vir asked, having nearly forgotten the demon’s face and name. “And I am… I am Vir.”

  That was his name, yes. One of several. The one he had been given so very long ago.

  “Indeed. That monkey truly did a number on you. I’m afraid your soul is shattered. Normally, I would recommend allowing yourself to pass on. To reincarnate and try again. However, time, it seems, is not on our side. You may not have another opportunity before the realms collapse.”

  “If he returns the way he is,” another voice said, “he will return as nothing more than an empty husk. Useless to his people and to the Realms.”

  Vir turned to find a scowling red giant, arms crossed in frustration. Narak the Destroyer.

  “Indeed,” a third voice added. This one, Vir had never seen before. An old man with a great white beard reaching to his waist and deep, twinkling eyes.

  “Jalendra?” Vir muttered, sifting through vague, broken memories of long ago.

  “A bare vestige of the being I once was,” Jalendra said. “But yes. It seems your splintered mind has reached a deep place. I had thought my memory all but lost.”

  “Vestige... predecessors. All of you. You helped me survive before,” Vir said, unsure if the memories were real or mere figments of his imagination, eroded from the passage of time that they were.

  “Yes,” Jalendra said. “Your reincarnating soul bears a portion of the souls that came before you. They burned whatever little remained to save you back then. We cannot do the same for you now, for there is no soul within us. No power to act on the world. We are nothing but figments of your memories, augmented by your imagination.”

  “So I must recover on my own,” Vir said.

  “No,” Jalendra said, shaking his head. “I am afraid that is impossible.”

  “No one recovers from Warrior Chakra attacks,” Shardul said. “Not even us.”

  “Then, I have no hope,” Vir said. “I’m doomed to spend my days in this broken place?”

  “For the sake of the realms, we must do something!” Narak the Destroyer said.

  “Is there truly nothing we can do?” Vir asked.

  The old man stroked his beard in thought. “I do not know if this will work, boy. But we must try. For your life—and the Realms—we must try.”

  “Jalendra?” Shardul asked.

  Jalendra stroked his beard. “Bear in mind that this has never been attempted, let alone succeeded. No one has ever repaired their soul, but if one considers the concepts… Yes. Perhaps there is something. It shall be an interesting challenge.”

  “What do I need to do?” Vir asked. The agony that had wracked him for centuries was still there, crippling his very existence. He’d simply managed to adjust to the crippling pain. For it to be gone—finally gone—Vir dared not hope.

  “Fundamentally, soul corruption occurs because the attacker’s Warrior Chakra injects itself into the soul of another, polluting it. The soul, unable to bear such corruption, breaks apart. If you are to have any hope of recovery, we must first excise the corruption in your soul.”

  “This will not be enough,” Shardul said.

  “Indeed,” Jalendra replied with a nod. “Once excised, we must heal the wounds left behind.”

  “I have pranites that heal me,” Vir volunteered, only for Jalendra to laugh.

  “This is not the physical plane, boy. Such things have no meaning here. This is a demesne where thoughts, ideas, and Chakras reign supreme!”

  “Chakras?” Vir frowned. “You mean…”

  “Yes,” Jalendra said. “If you are to have any hope of recovering, you must first master the Chakra that can banish the blight that infests your soul.”

  “The Warrior Chakra,” Vir said.

  “Not just that. All of them. The Heart, which will allow you to heal slowly from minor Chakra-inflicted wounds. The Third Eye, which will grant you total awareness. Both of yourself and of all around you. And finally, the Crown. The mantle that sits at the peak of Chakra mastery. For nothing short of mastery—over your soul—over the very essence of who you are, will suffice.”

  “And then?”

  “And then, we unmake you.”

  “What?” Narak scoffed. “That will erase him! What of the Heart?”

  “The damage is far beyond the means of the Heart Chakra,” Jalendra said, shaking his head. “Did you think repairing such a fracture would be easy? Hmm? Did you think it possible to merely rearrange the pieces, to stitch them back like some sort of tapestry?”

  Narak remained silent.

  “No,” Jalendra said with a twinkle in his eyes. “The glass must first be melted. Flowed into liquid and reforged anew. The boy will never be the same. But, with effort and the gods' luck… he may return whole.

  “And just perhaps... as something more.”