Elara Zephyrwind sat alone in her living room, her eyes glued to the glimmering mana-screen in front of her. The newscaster's voice trembled as she fought to remain composed.
"Breaking news! The situation has turned critical on the Isle of Whispers. Contact with multiple student factions has been severed in the aftermath of a catastrophic influx of demonic power. Evacuation procedures have been called. The Academy affirms that teachers are on their way to evacuate survivors. "
Elara's tea slipped from between her shaking fingers and spilled across the floor. She did not even glance down. The seeping warmth of the liquid against her naked toes was a remote, irrelevant feeling.
"Lost communication…" she breathed. The words were parched, sticking in her throat. "No… no, please, no."
She cinched the blue shawl more closely to her shoulders while her eyes were wide on the wiggling image on the screen. It wasn't just the face of the newscaster; the channel shifted to a distant scrying perspective—it was jumbled.
A black splotch of smoke on the horizon, jagged with blips of light—golden, red, and an
unsettling, alien blue light—that waved rhythmically like an angry star.
To see that blue light not only stopped Elara's heart, it was the blue color she hadn't seen since her husband's funeral and not one that she thought she would never have the misfortune of seeing again.
The reporter's voice broke. "We don't have names confirmed at this moment. The Headmaster hasn't made a statement. Parents are instructed to go to the main harbor to receive arriving ships."
Her chair crashed backward as she sprinted. She did not pause to fasten the door. The shawl hung behind her like a mangled wing as she ran through the dawn streets. The city was waking up slowly.
A baker set out bread in a window, his face serene.
A clockwork street cleaner ticked softly as it passed. This ordinary, tranquil existence felt like a brutal affront. Her breath was ragged, her heart racing with one frantic, constant thought:
Please be safe, Kairen. Please be hurt. Please be afraid. Just please. return home.
Miles out on the black, roiling sea, the world had no sunlight.
The cries—Ilya's, Dain's, Kaelan's—rang out, torn and shrieking, until the bottomless sea closed over them.
And then, nothing.
A nothing so dense, so absolute, it felt like a weight. It was a void, and it had just swallowed up their friend.
The buzzing in Dain's ears was the lone sound in the universe, a thin, high whine that cut through the abrupt, unnatural chill.
He was kneeling, the deck hard and wet beneath his knees. He gazed at the blank spot of water where the island had been. The pale, ghostly blue light that throbbed deep in the water seemed like a tombstone, a last, cruel farewell.
He couldn't be gone. He couldn't.
Dain squeezed his eyes shut, trying to make the world rewind, to turn back two hours, to when they were laughing on the beach.
He remembered Kairen's smile in the training yard, the one he'd finally achieved. He remembered Lia's embarrassed laugh when he'd volunteered to carry her pack. He watched Kairen turn away, with an army to face him alone, his little body afire with that impossible, dreadful light. He watched Lia hurl herself before that claw, and her smile was weak and last.
Two. He had lost two of them.
A noise, a little, hurt thing, ripped itself from Dain's chest. It was a sob, and another came fast on its heels. He wasn't thunderous. His sorrow was an overwhelming, inner weight that took his breath.
He was the "Vanguard-Bro," the protector, the great, tough one who was supposed to save everyone. And when it counted, he had fled. He had let Kairen die. He had let Lia die. This reality was an illness, heavier and worse than any sorrow.
He searched for Ilya.
She still stood at the railing, stiff as a spear. Her screaming had ceased. Now she was unstirringly still. Her silver hair blew into her face, but she did not blink. She simply gazed into the empty water, her chest heaving and tearing for air. The "Moonlit Blade" mask was on again, but it was not serene. It was the stiff, brittle face of shock, a dam restraining an ocean of agony.
Her mind, her best tool, was betraying her. It was reliving the scene, frame by frame, breaking it down. The energy surge. The abnormally cold. The silent, world-destroying explosion of blue light. It wasn't magic.
It wasn't any element or rune she knew. It was something different. Something old. She hadn't lost her friend, she had seen him engulfed by an anomaly that defied every natural law she had ever learned.
There was no logic to explain it. Analysis would not work. All that existed was the vacuous, irrational hole where Kairen once resided.
Close by, slumped against the mainmast, Kaelan Brightblade was a mess. He wasn't the golden prince of the academy anymore. He was a boy, his rich armor streaked with ash and demon blood, his body shaking with sobs. He was muttering, rocking to and fro, his voice reed-thin and fractured, his golden hair dirty with grime.
"It's my fault," he whispered, the words sticking in his throat. He bashed his hair in fistfuls, his knuckles pale. "I removed them from the trail. I had to be the hero. I labeled him weak." His breath caught on a raw sob. "He stayed for me. He died. for me. It's all my fault…"
He was correct. And that, he realized, was something he would never be able to get rid of. The kid he had bullied for being "talentless" had just showed him some kind of courage and strength Kaelan couldn't even understand. Kairen's sacrifice hadn't only saved his life; it had broken his whole perception.
The rest of the students were a distraught, frightened group. A young elementalist was gagging over the ship's rail, the acrid stench of her terror biting at the cold air. Two of the Vanguard recruits perched on a bundle of rope, just sitting and staring at their own hands, smeared with blood that wasn't their own. They had lived. They had no idea why.
Professor Valerius stood at the front, his back to the children that he had been unable to protect. His white-knuckled fists gripped the railing. He was a man of reason, of rules, of syllabus. He had obeyed orders. He had retreated. And by doing so, he had forsaken two of his pupils to death. The heaviness of his defeat was a tangible load, curving his shoulders, aging him ten years in one night.
He was forced to make the call. He powered up his comms crystal, his hand trembling. The face of Magister Kellan, already wan with fear, shimmered into existence.
"Valerius," Kellan's voice was a low growl. "Report."
Valerius's eyes were on the black water. "The evacuation. is complete. All other units accounted for."
"And Zephyrwind's team?" Kellan's voice was too quiet.
Valerius swallowed. "We have. casualties. Lia of the Support Path. KIA. Kairen Zephyrwind." He choked on the name. "He. he covered the retreat. M.I.A., presumed consumed by the energy surge."
The silence on the other end was a void. Valerius finally turned, his face, usually so cold and composed, a mask of grief and exhaustion.
"Take a course for Azurefall," he told the captain of the ship. His voice was empty. Emptied. "Get. get them below. Get them warm."
No one stirred. No one could stir. To go below seemed like surrender. It seemed like leaving Kairen and Lia forever.
The return home was not calculated in miles, but in silence. The low roar of the ship's engines was a dirge for the dead beneath the quiet tears. The sun started to rise, coloring the sky in gentle hues of pink and gold. The light was a mockery. How could the day start when Kairen's had ended?
Dain leaned against the cabin wall, sitting on the cold deck. He would not go in. He punched the steel bulkhead to his left, once, muffled sound that cracked his knuckles. He felt nothing. He only watched the blood well up, a dull red in the light of dawn. He had failed.
Ilya stood at the rail, a lone, stiffened form. She gazed out over the horizon, as if she thought that she could make Kairen return by staring really hard. She absently sketched the rune for "void" on the damp, cold railing. It was the only thing her mind could provide.
As Azurefall's spires broke through the morning fog, a fresh terror fell across the ship. The mission was complete. The war was lost.
Now, they had to confront the ones behind.
The ship sailed into the central harbor. On the piers, there was a crowd waiting. Teachers. Ministry men. And families, their faces hope-tainted with fear.
As had been her intention, Elara Zephyrwind stood in the very first row of onlookers, her blue shawl grasped in her hand. Her knuckles showed white, her eyes frantically searching the deck with a desperate hope. She had waited what seemed like forever, her fear building with each second the ship was late.
Dain saw her. His breath caught. His gut chilled to ice. He fell back, his hand over his mouth.
"Oh, gods," he whispered. "She's here. I can't. I can't do this."
Ilya's eyes flashed to Elara, and for an instant, her rigid composure broke. A glimpse of raw, unmitigated pain flashed on her face.
The ramp descended with a heavy, final thud.
The students drifted away like specters, a mournful procession of defeat. The parents surged forward. A woman let out a shriek of joy, shoving her daughter—an elementalist—and into an embrace, weeping with relief. A father clutched his son, a Vanguard recruit, and just held on to him, his own eyes clenched shut.
This tide of elated reunions washed over Elara, leaving her alone in a bubble of chilling quiet. Her gaze continued to rove, seeking. He's only hurt. He's in the med-bay. They're taking him away. That final thread of frantic, rationalizing optimism. He's on his way. He's just. he's injured, that's all.
Professor Valerius was the final one down. He strode down like a man headed for the gallows. He came to a stop directly in front of Elara.
She saw his face. She saw the students standing behind him. She saw Kaelan, his blond hair dirty from the street, crying. She saw Dain, his face smeared with tears, and he couldn't even meet her gaze.
She saw all of them. except the one she had come looking for.
She put her hand to her mouth. The hope that had brought her to the harbor disintegrated, leaving her with a growing, soul-tearing horror.
"Professor…?" she breathed, her voice shaking. "Where… where is my son? Where is Kairen?"
Valerius looked at the woman who had lost her husband, the woman he had just failed. He saw the mother of the boy who had saved them all. His professional mask, his academic rigor, all of it crumbled to dust. His voice broke.
"Elara…" he choked out. "I… I am so sorry."
He didn't need to say more.
The world fell mute. Elara's eyes, those wide purple eyes so reminiscent of her son's, widened and drained of color. The shawl, all that remained to connect her to that morning, fell from her grasp, floating onto the stone dock. Her legs failed.
It was not a great noise. It was not the cry of pain from the ship. It was a soft, ripping gasp, the ripping of a heart, the sound that severed the whole harbor and halted the new day at a dead, horrifying standstill.