Magister Keldran Rhyl. The name echoed in Ravi's memory, a half-forgotten piece of intel from one of Lyssara's codices. He wasn't just a magister. He was the Empress's senior Magister, the architect of the arcane seals that bound Vaelorra's most dangerous relics and prisoners. He was the final solution.
The giant iron suit—an Edict Engine, Ravi recalled Lyssara calling it—was not a weapon. It was a mobile prison, animated by Keldran's will from a safe distance. Its purpose was not to harm, but to capture. To contain.
"You have shattered the Warden's fist," the distorted voice of Keldran boomed from the construct, its disembodied tone chillingly calm amidst the ruins. "You have mocked a Noble House. You have ignited a dangerous faith in the masses." The Edict Engine took another heavy, deliberate step, the ground crunching under its immense weight. "These are crimes. But they are trivial."
The Engine raised its free hand, the one holding the massive chain. "Your true crime is against existence itself. The resonance you leave in your wake... the structural decay... is anathema to the Compact."
This was the end of the line. The game of jinxes and myths was over. They knew. They understood, in their own arcane way, what he was doing to the world.
Ravi's first instinct, the one honed by a lifetime of failure, was to run. To use the chaos and the dust as cover and disappear into the night. But Kaelith Ardentor, the paralyzed War-Priest, lay at his feet, his eyes wide with a mixture of pain and unwavering faith. The man had sacrificed his freedom for him. The thought of abandoning him was a betrayal Ravi found, to his own surprise, he was no longer capable of.
"Stand down," Ravi said, his voice quiet but clear in the dusty silence. "This has nothing to do with him."
"The priest is irrelevant," Keldran's voice replied. "A misguided soul who will be… re-educated. The Anomaly is the priority."
The Edict Engine raised its shield. The flat, iron surface began to glow, intricate purple glyphs swirling to life across its surface. It was a containment field, designed to project a spacial prison.
"I am offering you one chance at a peaceful sealing," Keldran stated. "Resist, and I will be forced to apply more… permanent measures."
Peaceful sealing. Ravi had a good idea of what that looked like. A dark box, a lifetime of nothingness, a specimen to be studied.
He made a choice. No more subtle touches. No more controlled collapses. Keldran Rhyl had declared him a threat to reality. Ravi was about to show him how right he was.
He dashed forward. Not away, but directly at the Edict Engine. It was the last thing the distant magister would expect.
He sprinted across the rubble-strewn square, his feet finding purchase on shattered stones and splintered wood. The Edict Engine, surprised by the direct assault, lowered its glowing shield and swung its heavy chain in a wide, sweeping arc, meant to ensnare his legs.
Ravi didn't try to dodge. He simply leaped. It was an clumsy, athletic move, powered by pure desperation. He sailed over the whipping chain and landed directly in front of the construct, his momentum carrying him forward.
He didn't punch. He didn't strike. He simply slammed his open palms against the solid iron of the Engine's chest plate.
The result was unlike anything that had come before.
There was no hiss of dissolving metal. There was no groan of stressed stone. There was a sound like the world tearing in half. A high-pitched, harmonic scream erupted from the point of contact, a note of pure physical dissonance that shattered the air itself.
The air around Ravi's hands shimmered, warping like heat haze. A visible crack, not in the armor, but in the space around it, snapped into existence. It was a hairline fracture of shimmering, black nothingness, edged in fractured violet light. It looked like a crack in a pane of glass, but the glass was reality.
The Edict Engine's intricate glyphs, the source of its power and animation, flared violently. Keldran's voice screamed from the construct, a sound of pure agony. "No! You fool! You'll tear it all apart!"
The armor wasn't just a suit animated by magic; it was a conduit. Ravi hadn't just touched the metal. He had touched the magister's will, his life force, channeled from afar. The dissonant resonance didn't just assault the iron; it traveled back up the magical link and slammed directly into Magister Keldran Rhyl, wherever he was hiding.
The iron construct shuddered violently, its joints grinding. The purple light in its seams flickered and died. Its arm, frozen in mid-swing, dropped limply to its side. The containment shield fizzled out. It was a dead thing now, a hollow shell of iron and broken spells.
But the real damage was the crack.
The fracture in the air remained, a foot-long tear in the world, humming with a terrifying, silent energy. It wasn't closing. It was stable. It was a permanent wound.
Ravi stumbled back, his hands numb, his mind reeling from the sheer, catastrophic wrongness of what he had just done. He had seen beyond the veil. He had touched the code of the universe and entered a syntax error.
From the dust cloud behind the dead Engine, a single figure stumbled out, clutching his head and groaning. It was one of Aurelise's agents, the one who had survived the collapse. He looked at the neutralized construct, at the paralyzed priest, and at Ravi, who was standing beside a shimmering tear in reality. The man's face was a mask of pure terror.
But he was a professional. He lifted a small silver whistle to his lips and blew a single, piercing, three-note signal. Target is here. Vulnerable. A summoning call.
The fight wasn't over. He hadn't won. He had just changed the nature of the battlefield in the most terrifying way imaginable.
Suddenly, Kaelith, still trapped in the paralytic net, began to laugh. It was a weak, choked sound, but it was unmistakably a laugh.
"Do you see now?" the War-Priest rasped, his eyes fixed on the shimmering black crack. "The old texts were right. The gods do not bleed. They do not die. When their power is met… they break the world. This is not the work of a man."
The agent backed away, his whistle still in his hand, his eyes wide with horror and something else. A flicker of the same terrible faith that was burning in Kaelith's eyes.
Ravi stared at the crack, the world-wound he had created. He wasn't a hero. He wasn't a god. He was a cosmic disease, and his every action was a symptom that worsened the sickness of the world. Keldran's words echoed in his head. Reality Contaminant. It was the truest thing anyone had ever said about him.
And through the silent, humming crack, he thought he could feel something. A pressure from the other side. Something cold, ancient, and utterly alien.
Something that was noticing the new hole in its cage.