The sky above was gray, not with clouds, but with the ashen breath of the dying earth. The trees here had long since turned to blackened husks, their branches clawing at the heavens like the fingers of the dead. No birds sang. No wolves howled. Only the wind whispered. Soft, uncertain, and full of voices that weren't there.
Viriel stood at the edge of the ruin, cloak billowing around his pale form, watching the last rays of dusk bleed through the broken spires of what once was a temple to the star-goddess, Avarielle. Her image, cracked and mossy still watched from the fractured arch above, her broken hands extended as if cradling something long vanished.
He passed beneath her gaze without offering prayer.
The stone floor bore the remnants of a ritual long since faded, black runes carved into the marble, blood having long dried in their grooves. In the center of the room lay a circle of mirror shards, each reflecting only darkness, no matter how the light struck them.
Viriel knelt beside them and opened a pouch at his side. Inside, wrapped in a dark silk, was the largest shard of them all, the only one that ever shimmered when he bled beside it.
He held it in his hand and whispered her name.
"Rhea."
The shard pulsed faintly. A flicker. A breath.
His crimson eyes narrowed.
She was still there.
But weaker than before.
Footsteps disturbed the silence behind him. Slow. Wary.
Viriel didn't turn.
"You're late."
The man who entered was draped in a patchwork of robes and leather, a hood pulled low over pale blue eyes. He was unarmed, but his presence was sharp. Measured. Dangerous in a way that didn't rely on steel.
Vali, A scholar, and former inquisitor.
A man who had hunted beings like Viriel, until he learned what the Church had buried.
"I had to burn my name from two records and slip past a patrol to get here," Vali muttered, pulling back his hood. His face was weathered but intelligent. Cold, not cruel. "You're lucky I came at all."
"I am not lucky," Viriel replied softly. "If I were, she wouldn't be in the Void."
Vali's gaze flicked to the mirror-shard. He approached slowly, wariness in his every movement.
"That fragment… that's real?"
"It is all that remains of her."
Vali crouched beside him, examining the shard without touching it. "You say she invoked the Rite of Ash herself?"
"She knew what they would do to her soul." Viriel's voice was flat. "She chose exile to the Void over desecration by the pyre."
Vali let out a breath and looked away.
"I've studied the Void for years. The priests call it a place of rest. The witches call it a prison. Both are wrong. It's a mirror without form, a sea made of memory and loss. You don't reach into it. You sink."
"That is why I need you," Viriel said. "You have the rites. The spells. The knowledge."
"I also have a spine," Vali snapped, rising. "Do you have any idea what happens if you pull the wrong soul out of the Void?"
"I am not afraid."
Vali met his gaze. "No. You're in love. Which may be worse."
For a moment, silence hung over them like a noose.
Then Viriel rose, his cloak settling around his frame. "She is fading. The shard dims more each day. If I do nothing, she will be lost, forgotten."
Vali's jaw tightened. "And if you reach too deep and bring back… something else?"
Viriel looked to the altar. To the broken goddess watching from above.
"Either way I will be with her."
Vali exhaled, defeated. He turned, motioning toward the far end of the ruin, where the cracked floor gave way to stairs leading into blackness.
"The mirror gate is beneath the temple," he said at last. "Sealed in salt and silver. We'll need blood. And something that remembers her. Not you. Something untouched by your grief."
"I have her name," Viriel murmured. "Written in the tongue she spoke in rituals."
Vali paused. "That may be enough. Or it may call down something that answers to her name but never bore it."
Viriel touched the shard again. A broken whisper brushed the edge of his senses.
"…Viriel…"
A chill went through him.
She was still there.
Waiting.
The whisper faded.
Viriel remained still, fingers grazing the shard as if the warmth of her voice still lingered. But something else had shifted in the air, the scent of ash was no longer distant. It was near. Thick. Wet. Moving.
Vali's head snapped toward the broken arch behind them.
"You opened the shard."
"It opened on its own."
"No," Vali said grimly, reaching into his satchel. "Something heard."
A low chittering echoed through the ruin, like bones scraping stone. Then silence. Then movement. Wet and rapid.
From the shadows of the cracked doorway, something stepped into the light.
It had once been a man, or something like one. Its limbs were too long, bent at the wrong angles. Pale flesh hung in strips like shedding skin. Its eyes were dozens of tiny, black pits drilled into a featureless face. The scent that rolled off it was not rot, but regret, like the ache of a memory far buried.
Viriel's hand was already on the hilt of his sword. A slender, blackened blade etched with veins of crimson.
"A Voidspawn," he said. "It followed the shard."
"No," Vali whispered. "It was called."
The creature shrieked, not from its mouth, but from within its many eyes. A piercing, harmonic wail that made the runes on the floor glow and the mirror shards quake.
Then it lunged.
Viriel moved first. Faster than the eye. His blade swept low, cleaving through the creature's outstretched arm but the limb didn't fall. It bent backward, wrapping around his wrist like a snake. He snarled and tore his blade from the unsightly arm, his blade glowing faintly with blood.
"If we cut the limbs, this damn thing will just regenerate, we need to burn it or something!"
"I told you," Vali shouted, already drawing a dagger etched with silver glyphs. "Voidspawn don't die easily!"
He ripped a charm from his belt, a bone-carved sigil and flung it to the floor. It shattered, leaving light erupting upward in a spiraling cage of runes. The creature screeched, momentarily pinned within.
Vali began chanting. Old words. Harsh syllables that tasted like blood and felt like fire.
Viriel didn't wait.
He dashed into the circle, blade flashing. Each strike is meticulous, a tendon, a joint, its neck. The Voidspawn's limbs twisted and it countered, shrieking from its many mouths, forcing Viriel onto the defensive. For a time, it overpowered him. Its limbs multiplied, becoming a swarm of grasping hands and shadowed claws.
After what felt like an eternity, Vali's voice rose.
A pillar of light descended from the ceiling, pale and cold. It struck the Voidspawn in the chest. The creature froze, twitching violently as if caught between worlds.
"Attack!" Vali shouted.
Viriel surged forward with a growl, driving his blade deep into the beings chest.
The runes on the sword lit up. The creature yelped, this time, a high, human scream. For just a moment, Viriel saw something behind the eyes, a boy's face. Lost. Empty.
Then it exploded into a scarlet dust, its form collapsing inward like burned paper.
Silence returned. The runes faded. The shards darkened and stilled.
"That… was one. Just one."
Viriel wiped his blade clean on a strip of black cloth. His expression dark.
"They're watching the boundary."
"Of course they are," Vali said. "You're not the only one trying to open a door."
He stood, voice colder now.
"You want to pull her out of the Void? Fine. But make no mistake, they want to come with her. Every soul that lingers in that place will reach for warmth like frozen men. And you, Viriel, are standing on the shore with fire in your hands."
Viriel slid the shard back into its wrappings.
"Then I will burn them all," he said. "If it brings her home."