The chamber was a storm of contradictions: the building, righteous hum of the Array, the stench of blood and ozone, the cold fury radiating from Ultramar.

  “You see?” Ultramar spat, gesturing at Koronos, who stood with the Sword plunged into the Array’s heart, channeling his will into the burgeoning gateway. “He decries my purpose, but he uses the gods-given power in his blood for the same petty goal! To run! To hide on his primitive, pathetic little world! You are no better than I am, ‘Animal-Lord.’ You serve yourself!”

  Koronos didn’t turn. His voice, amplified by the pouring energy, filled the chamber, flat and absolute. “I fight the darkness. You feed it. That is the only difference that matters.”

  Ultramar’s face contorted. He takes one of his men’s black crystal blades, raises it. “Then fight me! Or are you a coward, hiding behind a machine?”

  He lunged for Koronos, to stab him in the back.

  Pericles was already moving. He interposed himself between the usurper and his lord, his own sword meeting the black crystal with a shriek of stressed metal. The impact jarred him to his bones. Ultramar was strong, fueled by decades of parasitic power.

  Corvannafax engaged Ultramar’s thugs to keep them at bay.

  “Out of my way, relic,” Ultramar snarled, pressing his advantage.

  Pericles gave no ground. He fought as he always had: solid, unyielding, a wall of muscle and grim determination. He parried a slash aimed for his throat, took a shallow cut across his ribs from the return stroke, and drove a kick into Ultramar’s knee. It was like kicking stone. Ultramar barely grunted, hammering a pommel-strike into Pericles’s shoulder that numbed his entire arm.

  He was outmatched. He knew it. But he didn’t need to win. He just needed to hold. For Hybornyesis. For the promise of home.

  He saw an opening, a fraction of a second where Ultramar overcommitted. He took it, driving his sword point into the gap at Ultramar’s hip. The blade bit deep, drawing a roar of pain and surprise. But in doing so, he left himself open.

  Ultramar’s black crystal blade came around in a backhanded arc too fast to block. It sheared through Pericles’s guard and sank into his side, just below his breastplate. A cold, void-like numbness spread from the wound, leaching strength. It was a mortal wound.

  Pericles staggered, his sword dropping from nerveless fingers. He locked his hands around Ultramar’s sword arm, holding the blade in his own body, a human shackle. “My… lord…”

  From her position near the shuddering Array, Zeyzey saw it all. She saw Pericles’s sacrifice, the mortal wound. She saw the gateway, the ripening star at the Array’s heart swell to a shimmering, unstable pool of light. It was almost ready.

  Then, she saw the chamber entry breach; the corrupted army was here.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Not a trickle, but a tide. Hundreds of corrupted soldiers, their void eyes fixed on the light, poured into the chamber, a silent, shambling flood of grey flesh and dead metal. The Whisper’s main force had found the heart.

  Her calculations, which had been a frantic swirl since the caverns, crystalized into a single, cold point. Ultramar was a fanatic bound to a patron of cosmic horror. The Bergian Empire was collapsing into a feeding ground. This city was a tomb.

  But the Everliving… he had shattered the Purifiers. He had wounded the Anchor. He held a power that made her witch-sense feel like a guttering candle. And he had a way out.

  Her best chance for power, for survival, for a future, was with him. Not as a prisoner, but as something else. An asset. A survivor.

  “THE HORDE!” she screamed, the warning tearing from her throat. “THEY’RE HERE!”

  Pericles’s cry was a lance in his heart. The Array thrummed, saturated. It was time.

  He released the Sword of the First, leaving it embedded in the central node, a keystone holding the gateway open. He turned, the spear of Koronos of the Thunderfel Clan cold in his hand.

  He saw Pericles, dying, holding Ultramar fast. He saw the grey tide flooding his sanctuary. He saw the gateway, their only hope, pulsing with stolen time.

  Rage, grief, and the raw, unbounded power of Sleeping Dragon coalesced within him. He took three running steps and leapt.

  Not a jump of muscle, but of will. From his back erupted vast, spectral wings of shimmering blue and white light; not feathers, but coalesced energy, the Sky-King’s Aspect manifesting at its full, majestic, terrifying scale on this world of a richer majikal essence. They beat once, with a sound like a thunderclap, propelling him across the chamber.

  He descended upon Ultramar like a falling star. The usurper, trapped by Pericles’s final act, could only look up, his eyes wide with shock at the vision of wrath descending.

  Koronos drove the spear down with all his weight and momentum. It punched through Ultramar’s ornate breastplate, through his chest, and out his back in a spray of dark blood, pinning him to the floor beside the man he had just killed.

  The light died in Ultramar’s eyes. The Whisper’s favorite son was gone.

  Koronos landed, the wings dissipating into fading motes of light. He didn’t look at the body. He looked at Pericles, who met his gaze with a final, grim nod, and then slumped, still.

  “TO THE DIAS!” Koronos roared, his voice raw.

  Corvannafax was already there, dragging Daggeroth by his arm. Shelove bounded to his side.

  But from the shadows, Arch-Sorceress Lazuli stepped forward, her face a mask of vengeful fury. Her hands wove a complex, ugly pattern in the air. “You kill my lord? You steal our destiny? NO! If the White Tides do not claim you, then the Fire Lords will! This path is closed!” She hurled her spell not at them, but at the heart of the glowing gateway with all her will and power. The exertion was so much that it made her eyes, nose and ears bleed; nearly killing herself.

  Daggeroth, in a last act of desperate defiance, loosed an arrow at her. It struck an invisible majikal shield a foot from her face and shattered into splinters.

  The sorceress’s interference struck the Array. The stable, ripening pool of light convulsed. Its color shifted from clean white-gold to a sickly, bruised purple. The geometry of the gateway warped, screaming in protest.

  Koronos knew they had seconds. A corrupted path was better than none.

  He grabbed Corvannafax, shoving her toward the distorted light. “GO!”

  As one, they plunged into the maelstrom: Koronos, Corvannafax, Daggeroth, Zeyzey, and Shelove. The last thing Koronos saw through the swirling violet light was the burning capital, the sea of grey bodies flooding the Sanctum, and the furious, bleeding face of Arch-Sorceress Lazuli, her hands still clawing at the fabric of reality itself.

  Then, the light consumed them, and the world tore apart.

  Koronos the Kazarian | Royal Road