The scent of burnt crystal still lingered in the air.
Even three days later, the upper platforms of the Tribunal Spire shimmered with residual heat, as if the memory of flame refused to leave. The sky above Sylvarion had returned to its usual silver-blue wuth clouds drifting lazily in the high atmosphere, but no one looked up anymore.
Eldrys didn’t look up either.
He kept his eyes forward and his boots silent against the sun-slicked marble, as he walked the length of the ruined chamber. The once-pristine floor was still blackened with soot. Patches of melted glass clung to the shattered archways like frozen tears. Somewhere beneath it all, blood had soaked into the stone, Eladrin blood which was pale and silvery. There was no spell clean enough to erase that.
The Tribunal had ended in slaughter.
He stopped beside the cracked remains of the high seat, Thaelis’ seat. It had splintered like dry wood when Vhaelyx tore through it. Eldrys rested his gloved hand on the edge, jaw clenched.
The wood was scorched to the marrow. His fingers brushed over the blackened grain, and it cracked softly under the pressure. He hadn’t been standing far from this spot when the tribunal began. He remembered the light filtering down through the crystalline dome, the sharp ceremonial scents of sage and elderflower filling the air, and the way everyone sat so still.
They hadn’t even finished reciting the Judgement Rite before she broke free.
One breath she stood silent and the next, the room howled open, magic rupturing like a split seam with the sound of her scream a raw, inhuman thing that shattered every expectation.
No one had expected that much power. Not from Nymira.
A voice stirred beside him, brittle with disbelief.
“She tore them apart.”
Eldrys turned slightly. Captain Velin stood next to the ruin with his arms at his sides and his fingers twitching unconsciously. His eyes were locked on the ash-washed floor, as if trying to make sense of it.
“Thaelis didn’t even draw a ward.”
“He didn’t think he’d need one,” Eldrys said. His voice rasped like dry stone. “None of us did.”
“Foolish.”
“No.” Eldrys’ gaze didn’t move from the broken wood. “He trusted her.”
He felt that trust now, like a ghost pressing on his chest.
The pyres were built by hand.
Not conjured or summoned this time. Eldrys had insisted. Let them splinter the wood with axes, carry it on their shoulders through the upper platforms and stack it themselves. Let every soldier, every scribe and every surviving druid sweat under the weight of the memory of dead.
He laid Thaelis’ ash filled basket himself which was wrapped in silk the colour of moonlight.
They lit the fires at dusk, when the sky over Sylvarion turned the colour of crushed violets. As tradition dictated, the flames were blue – fed by memory-root and lunar cedar was scenting the air with bittersweet perfume. A crowd gathered in concentric rings around the clearing, all standing shoulder to shoulder beneath the towering limbs of the Singing Tree.
The tree itself was silent.
Its wind-chimes, which were natural threads of mana grown into the leaves, had always sung during the rites while catching the breath of the dying and turning it to song. Tonight, they hung still. The leaves had dulled from jade to a bruised, grey-green.
High Oracle Selhira raised her arms. Her ceremonial robe caught the firelight, it was veined with starlight thread, and her voice rose into the hush.
“Let the names of the fallen pass into root and sky, remembered not in shadow, but in spark.”
One by one, she called them.
“First: Thaelis.”
Her voice cracked. Just slightly. Her left hand twitched as it was curling at the edge of her robe before she steadied it behind her back and continued.
Eldrys noticed. He would remember it.
The flames licked upward. The wood popped sharply and began scenting the air with burning oils and bitter resin. Smoke curled in ribbons, catching on the collars of soldiers’ uniforms and staining silk sleeves. Eldrys stood with arms folded and his helmet tucked beneath one arm. His jaw was clenched but his breath stayed even yet his throat ached through every verse.
Some of the younger guards cried quietly. Others just stood hollow-eyed and blinking into the fire like they didn’t understand it was real.
When the names were finished, a gust of wind passed through the clearing, lifting the smoke in spirals toward the Singing Tree’s upper canopy. Still the tree remained silent. Not a single chime stirred.
The silence settled like ash.
By midmorning, the sun filtered pale and sluggish through a sky smudged with grey. Eldrys rode at the head of the unit with his horse’s hooves crunching softly over a trail that no longer sang. Behind him came three scouts — Tyven among them, always muttering — and Maellen, the druidic warden, whose cloak was already stained from kneeling too often in blackened undergrowth. They moved in silence past the last of the standing stones, where ward-lines had once pulsed gently with gold and green. Now the air thickened the farther they rode, until even the breath in their lungs felt heavy.
The forest was wrong here.
Sound died quickly. Birds kept away. No insects stirred. Mana, normally a quiet hum beneath the soil, had gone mute. Trees stood still but bowed, as though trying to lean away from something deeper in the patch.
Maellen dismounted first. She crouched beside a tree whose trunk had collapsed inward, it looked like a ribcage crushed by unseen pressure. “This was Moonview,” she said, as her fingers brushed hollow bark that fell away. “The moss here held ancestral patterns. Every root remembered the song of the First Bloom. But now…”
She touched the trunk again. Her hand came away dusted in grey.
Vines recoiled from the path like they’d been burned. Leaves had become translucent husks. The moss crackled beneath bootsteps and was as brittle as dry parchment.
Tyven grimaced and drew his hood tighter. “Feels like the trees are watching us.”
“It’s not the trees,” Maellen murmured. “It’s the absence. When the weave dies in a place like this, the memory goes with it.”
Eldrys didn’t speak at first. He moved to the edge of the path and knelt with his fingertips grazing along the earth. There was no breath of ley-energy at all.
“Will it recover?” he asked.
Maellen shook her head slowly. “Not on its own. And if the corruption spreads beyond these roots… it won’t stop at memory. It’ll take identity.”
Tyven clicked his tongue and kicked a root that snapped with a crack like dry bone. “So we lose a trail. There are others.”
“No,” Maellen said softly. “We lose a living archive.”
Eldrys rose while rubbing ash between his fingers. “Mark the boundary. Triple wards. No one steps in without clearance.”
Maellen stayed kneeling. Her hand remained on the hollow tree with her eyes closed in remembrance.
Back in Sylvarion, the city pulsed with an unease.
Eldrys fielded two dozen reports in a single day — flickers of fear, panic responses and false alarms. Civilians claiming to see Nymira in alleyways, whispers of Vhaelyx’s return in glimmers of firelight. One scroll, written in a shaky civilian hand and sealed with wax stamped crooked, described a “woman of ash and stars” walking through the southern aqueduct in the early hours of dawn. The writer claimed the air shimmered behind her like “heat off steel”, and that the water in the trough had turned black.
He read each one carefully with his expression unreadable and then burned them in the fireplace of his office, one by one. Paper curled. Ink vanished into flame.
He couldn’t afford mass hysteria. Fear, once it rooted, would spread faster than truth. And truth, whatever it was now, was in short supply.
On the third night, Eldrys sat alone in Thaelis’ study. The room was untouched since the old mage’s death. Dust had begun to gather around the bookshelves, though the faint scent of sage and smoke still clung to the air like memory. The crystals embedded in the walls — once kept bright by Thaelis’ daily rituals — now flickered weakly, their glow was dim and reverent.
The desk was cluttered with papers half-stacked and ink bottles dry at the rims. Eldrys poured himself a measure of winterwine and sat heavily in the high-backed chair with the leather creaking under his weight. His fingers hovered above the drawer before pulling it open with care.
Inside was an envelope sealed with wax and marked in Thaelis’ familiar slanted hand.
To Whomever Reads This — should she fall.
He broke the seal and unfolded the parchment slowly.
My Friend,
If you’re reading this, then I was wrong. Or perhaps, more truthfully, I was right, and lacked the courage to act on it.
I’m not writing this as a command, or a confession. Just someone placing his trust in another, because I fear what’s coming and I do not know who else will see it clearly if I don’t.
It’s about Nymira.
There are things I’ve noticed. There are fragments and inconsistencies. Her magical resonance falters in strange ways. I’ve seen her cast the simplest spell and watched the energy spiral just slightly out of alignment, only to correct itself a moment later. Once, when she thought I wasn’t looking, I saw the light dim in her eyes… just for a breath. Not tiredness not sorrow. but aomething else. A shadow behind her smile.
I told myself they were isolated lapses. Overwork or strain. I tried to believe the girl I mentored, who sang the ley-lines back to harmony in her youth, couldn’t be anything but what she claimed to be. But my instincts whisper otherwise. Something ancient clings to her. Something cruel, buried deep, and biding its time.
I cannot prove any of this. And without proof, I cannot stand before the Tribunal and cast doubt on her character. It would destroy her before we ever learned the truth. So I’ve chosen silence. Perhaps foolishly or… perhaps selfishly.
But if the worst comes, if she loses herself, then you must know:
No prison made by mortal hands will hold her. She is not simply Eladrin anymore. If something darker has found a home inside her, it may try to wear her like a mask.
If it comes to blood, choose mercy when you can. If it comes to ash, bury her where the Singing Tree still hears. Let that tree remember her as I once did – brilliant, curious, and full of grace.
I hope none of this is needed.
I hope you never read these words.
—Thaelis
Eldrys sat back slowly, staring at the parchment for a long time before folding it and sliding it back into its envelope. He didn’t speak or move.
The crystals dimmed a little further, their pulse barely visible now, as if they, too, understood.
He didn’t know Nymira well. Not personally.
Their paths had only crossed a handful of times. She had visited the barracks once, to inspect ley-anchor placement for Sylvarion’s southern defense wards. He remembered how easily she had navigated the hallways, pausing to smile politely at every passing guard, her eyes were thoughtful and her voice was soft. She had worn a pale green cloak over silver-etched armor, and something about her presence had quieted the room that it felt like walking into a temple during snowfall.
She hadn’t treated him like a soldier.
“Captain Eldrys,” she had said with a small smile. “Thank you for running such a disciplined post.”
“You’ve never been here before,” he’d replied, startled by the compliment.
“I’ve read every training report since your appointment,” she answered, almost playfully. “I make a habit of knowing who guards the thresholds of our realm.”
He remembered blushing but grateful for the excuse to bow his head in acknowledgement. That brief exchange had stayed with him. Not for the flattery but because it felt genuine.
Later, when she’d lingered to observe a training session, he’d approached her again, unsure why.
“I assume you don’t usually make personal visits like this,” he’d said, trying not to sound like he was fishing.
“I don’t,” she replied while watching a cadet struggle to draw a stable ward circle. “But Thaelis mentioned your unit held the strongest shielding record in three rotations. I was curious to see why.”
He’d expected a polite detachment but instead she stayed through the end of drills, asked questions and even corrected a misaligned anchor herself while kneeling in the dirt in full ceremonial armour with her sleeves pushed back.
“It’s about tone,” she’d said while drawing a line in the soil with two fingers. “You don’t impose command on a ley-line. You negotiate with it.”
That moment with mud on her knees and the sunlight catching in her lashes, had never left him.
It started with a sharp, guttural scream, and so sudden that the entire eastern wing fell still. Eldrys was already turning toward the infirmary before the second cry came, clipped by what sounded like a violent burst of air.
He pushed through the door to find a young kitchen apprentice, Maerin, convulsing on the floor. Pale light surged from the gaps between her fingers, and her back arched as if some unseen thread were pulling her from the inside. Her eyes had rolled white, and the tips of her hair crackled with residual magic which was lifting and falling like strands underwater.
“Contain her!” barked the attending cleric. Another healer dropped to their knees, murmuring a dampening incantation as runes flared along their palms. Eldrys stepped forward, shielding a nearby child who had frozen in fear. A sharp scent of ozone and scorched linen filled the air.
The seizure ended as quickly as it had begun. Maerin collapsed into a limp heap, her eyes fluttering and breath ragged. Her hands were covered in burns.
Eldrys exhaled slowly.
This was the third case that week.
Three citizens, each of them within earshot or eyeshot of the Tribunal Hall during Vhaelyx’s escape, had begun to exhibit violent magical seizures. Not castings or curses but their bodies were leaking arcana. All wildly and uncontrolled. Each episode left their auras thinner and their spirits stretched.
He visited the worst of them himself that evening.
Loranis, a junior scribe, hadn’t spoken since the Tribunal. He sat in a chair beside the window with his arms bandaged from self-inflicted burns. His hands having burst into flames during the second seizure and him trying to scratch the glyphs off his own skin.
Eldrys crouched beside him.
“Do you remember what you saw?” he asked gently.
Loranis nodded. His lips cracked as he finally whispered, “She smiled when she killed them.”
Eldrys didn’t correct him.
It was easier for people to believe that than confront the truth.
She hadn’t smiled.
She had screamed.
Days turned into a blur of damage reports and containment plans. Sylvarion’s political elite began spinning conspiracy. Rumours of a secret experiment sanctioned by the High Seat, whispers of darker forces manipulating the Tribunal for gain. One minor noble stood up in Council and accused the Oracle of treason in full view of the public scrying mirrors. Another suggested Sylvarion abandon the southern ley-lines entirely, citing “spiritual contamination.”
A druidic envoy from the Moonfall Conclave arrived wearing blackened leaves in mourning braid while demanding reparations for the scorched roots and dead glades near Witherdeep.
Merchants protested supply delays as mana transport routes twisted into unstable conduits. Even temple bells rang differently, they were slower and discordant.
Tensions rippled like fault lines through every district.
And Eldrys held the line.
He sat in on meetings that he once only guarded. He spoke fewer words, but with more weight behind. He realized that now he wasn’t just Guard-Captain anymore, he was becoming the spine of a city on edge.
At the end of that week, as moonlight pooled over the High Branches and the wards shimmered faintly in Sylvarion’s sky like ghost-lanterns, Eldrys gathered with a handful of trusted officers in the back corner of the barracks mess hall. The official meeting rooms had grown too formal and too suffocating. There were councillors lurking, advisors listening and every word was expected to mean something. This, instead, was off the record. Just men and women who had seen the worst of it, all of them sitting together with quiet wine and heavier silences.
The room smelled of steel and sweat and old wood polish. A few of the younger recruits lingered at the far end. Their voices were low with their eyes flicking occasionally to the table where their commanders drank with shadows under their eyes.
The wine was hot, it was bitter and brewed from darkroot berries grown near the northern ley-rift. A punch to the throat but Eldrys welcomed the sting.
Commander Vekar leaned forward with one hand wrapped around his clay mug. He was older, thick-necked, thick-boned and with a sword scar curling across his right temple. He didn’t waste words.
“She’s still alive,” he said.
Eldrys looked up slowly, brow furrowed. “We don’t know that.”
“We do,” Vekar replied, with the certainty of a soldier who’s buried too many. “No body. No ash signature. And the warden patrols haven’t found so much as a tooth.”
Across the table, Lieutenant Kirell sipped slowly with her ink-stained fingers cradling her cup like she might spill something volatile. She was young, sharp-eyed and more scribe than scout but deadly accurate with a longbow.
“She’s gone,” Kirell said. “Whatever she is now, it’s not coming back. Not here. Not to this city.”
“She will,” Eldrys replied. He didn’t raise his voice and instead he simply spoke with certainty “One day. And when she does, I want us to be something better than the mob we became.”
There was a beat of silence.
Vekar scoffed softly. “You want us to welcome her?”
“No,” Eldrys said. “I want us to be ready to listen.”
“And if she brings fire again?”
Eldrys drank from his cup. The wine burned. He set it down with his gaze drifting toward the mess hall window. Outside, the forest loomed. It was tall, elegant and indifferent. “Then I’ll walk into it myself before I let anyone else burn.”
The room fell still.
Kirell watched him for a long moment, then quietly pushed her drink away. “There’s talk in the Southern Quarter,” she said. “People say the Tribunal was a setup. That it was all a trap. That she was provoked.”
“They’re half right,” murmured Vekar.
“They’re looking for someone to blame,” Eldrys said. “And someone to fear.”
Another officer leaned in named Seren, from the outer wards. She was soft-spoken, but her hands bore calluses from spell-sword training. “And who do they fear more? Her? Or the people who let it happen?”
Eldrys didn’t answer.
Outside, the Singing Tree stood hushed, its boughs were still discoloured from the wave of magic that had torn through its roots. Its silence unnerved the city more than screams might have.
“They need leadership,” Eldrys said finally. “Not just swords. They need belief in something that isn’t fire and vengeance.”
Kirell folded her arms. “That’s asking a lot, Captain.”
“I know.”
Vekar grunted, then raised his mug. “Then here’s to impossible things.”
They drank in silence.
The mess hall lanterns flickered. Somewhere, far off, in a forest named Witherdeep, a bird cried in the trees with a high, shrill note that ended abruptly.
Outside, the wind shifted. And for a moment, it smelled faintly of ash.
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