# Chapter 963: The Scavenger's Warning
The sound was the first sign of the end. It was not a crack, nor a roar, but a crystalline chime, impossibly pure and impossibly vast, that rang through the dead air of the Bloom-Wastes. Kestrel Vane, his lungs burning with the taste of grit and ozone, risked a glance over his shoulder. A thousand miles away, it seemed, the great spire of crystal that had been Soren Vale's prison—and the Withering King's—was fracturing. Hairline fractures of black light spiderwebbed across its surface, spreading like frost on a windowpane. The chime came again, higher this time, a sound that vibrated in his teeth and in the marrow of his bones.
"Move!" he screamed, his voice a raw scrape against the oppressive silence. He grabbed the arm of a stumbling scavenger, a woman named Jora whose face was a mask of terror, and hauled her forward. "Don't look! Run!"
Their team was a ragged handful, the last survivors of the Sable League's ill-fated expedition. They had come to claim a prize, to secure a weapon for their merchant princes. Now they were just meat fleeing a slaughter. The ground beneath their feet, a fine grey powder that choked with every step, began to tremble. The chime became a dissonant shriek, a symphony of a million shattering panes of glass. The crystal spire didn't explode; it unmade itself. It dissolved into a swirling vortex of black smoke and fractured light, a maelstrom of absolute nothingness that began to expand with terrifying speed.
The air grew cold, a cold that wasn't a lack of heat but an active, malevolent presence. It was the chill of the void, the temperature of a starless sky. Kestrel felt it seep through his worn leather coat, a damp, clinging cold that promised oblivion. The roiling cloud of shadow, the essence of the Withering King, was not yet a king. It was not yet a man. It was a hunger given form, a sentient emptiness that devoured sound, light, and hope. It left behind a perfect, sterile silence in its wake.
Jora fell, her leg twisting at an unnatural angle on the unstable ground. Kestrel skidded to a halt, the vortex of shadow less than a mile behind them now, a tidal wave of night blotting out the sickly green horizon. He could see things moving within it—half-formed shapes of bone and shadow, whispers of a form that was still coalescing.
"Leave me!" Jora cried, her face streaked with tears and grime. "Save yourself!"
Kestrel's mind raced. He was a scavenger, a survivor. His first instinct, his only instinct, was to obey. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to run, to leave the dead weight behind. But he saw the Sable League insignia on her tattered sleeve, the same one on his own. They had been tools, and now they were being discarded. A flicker of something he hadn't felt in years—defiance—warred against his pragmatism.
"No," he grunted, heaving her up. "They don't get to win that easily." He slung her arm over his shoulder, his own muscles screaming in protest. The weight was immense, but the weight of the shadow at their back was greater. They limped onward, a pathetic, two-legged creature fleeing a god.
The shadow was gaining. The silence it left in its wake was absolute, a pressure against the eardrums. Kestrel could feel his own thoughts growing sluggish, his memories of warmth and sunlight fading like old photographs. The Withering King wasn't just consuming the land; it was consuming the past.
He knew then that they would not make it. There was no outrunning this. No hole deep enough, no mountain high enough. This was the end of the world, and they had a front-row seat. But as the cold began to numb his fingers, a different kind of warmth sparked in his chest. It was a memory of Prince Cassian, the royal who had treated him not like a tool, but like a man. The prince who had trusted him with a mission that had led them all here. Cassian deserved a warning. The world deserved a warning.
"Jora," he gasped, his breath pluming in the unnatural cold. "The resonator. The one we used for long-range comms. Do you still have it?"
Her eyes, wide with fear, flickered with understanding. She fumbled at her belt, her numb fingers clumsy. She produced a small, brass-bound device, a tuning fork attached to a crystal matrix. It was designed to send a tight-beam message across the wastes, a whisper meant for a single receiver.
"Here," she choked out, pressing it into his hand.
He let her slide to the ground, propping her against a grey rock. There was no time. The shadow was a hundred yards away, close enough that he could feel the pull of its emptiness, the way it tugged at the very fabric of his being. He knelt, his hands shaking so violently he could barely hold the device. He had to focus. He had to make this count. He pictured Cassian's face, the earnestness in his eyes, the weight of the crown he never wanted.
He slammed the base of the resonator onto a flat rock. The crystal matrix flared with a weak, sputtering light. He poured his own will into it, his own life force, his last desperate act. He focused on the message, on the words that had to get through.
"Cassian!" he screamed, his voice amplified by the device, a raw, desperate broadcast that tore through the oppressive silence. "It's Kestrel! The crystal is shattered! He's free!"
The shadow was fifty yards away. The cold was an agony now. He could feel his skin turning brittle, his breath freezing in his throat.
"The King… the Withering King… it's not a man yet. It's a storm. A wave of nothing!" His voice cracked, the sound thinning as the device began to fail, the cold sapping its energy. He could feel Jora's hand go limp beside him. She was gone.
He had one last burst of strength. He had to tell them where it was going. He could feel its direction, its purpose. It was a blind, starving thing, and it was moving toward the only source of life it could feel, a beacon of warmth and power in a dead world.
"It's heading for the World-Tree!" he shrieked, the words tearing from his lungs. "It can feel it! It's drawn to the light! Cassian, it's coming for the tree! Less than a day! You have to—"
The shadow reached him.
It was not a physical impact. It was an unmaking. The resonator in his hand crumbled to dust. The sound of his own voice vanished, stolen from the air. The feeling of his body, the pain in his lungs, the memory of Jora's face—it all dissolved into the absolute, perfect silence. His last conscious thought was not of fear, but of a final, desperate hope that his warning had been heard.
Then, Kestrel Vane was gone.
A thousand miles away, in a secure command center deep beneath the streets of Aethelburg, Prince Cassian stood over a map table, his face illuminated by the soft glow of enchanted orbs. Reports were trickling in—chaotic, panicked accounts of the World-Tree's scream, of the grey rain of withered leaves. He felt a cold dread coiling in his gut, a sense of failure so profound it was suffocating. He had been so focused on the war in the wastes, on the ghost of Nyra's final words, that he had left his home vulnerable.
Suddenly, a sharp, piercing whine cut through the tense quiet of the room. Every head turned toward the long-range communication crystal, a massive, fist-sized emerald that sat in a silver cradle. It was glowing with a frantic, unstable light, pulsing with a desperate energy. A voice, raw and distorted by distance and terror, erupted from the stone.
"—ssian! It's Kestrel! The crystal is shattered! He's free!"
Cassian's blood ran cold. He lunged toward the crystal, his hands flat on the cold surface of the table. "Kestrel! Report! What is your status?"
The voice continued, thin and fraying, like a rope about to snap. "The King… the Withering King… it's not a man yet. It's a storm. A wave of nothing!"
The room was deathly silent. Every agent, every guard, every strategist stared at the glowing emerald, their faces pale with horror. The abstract threat they had been chasing, the monster at the end of the world, was now real, and it was loose.
The voice rose to a final, agonized shriek. "It's heading for the World-Tree! It can feel it! It's drawn to the light! Cassian, it's coming for the tree! Less than a day! You have to—"
The message ended. Not with a fade, but with a clean, abrupt cut. The emerald crystal went dark, its light extinguished as if a hand had snuffed out a candle. The silence that followed was heavier than a tomb. It was the silence of a severed connection, the silence of a man consumed by the void.
Cassian stood frozen, his knuckles white where he gripped the edge of the map table. Kestrel was dead. The Withering King was free. And it was coming for them. Not in a month, not in a year. Less than a day.
He looked down at the map. The tiny, carved figure of the World-Tree at the center of Aethelburg seemed to mock him. He had been fighting a war on two fronts, trying to choose the lesser of two apocalypses. Now, the choice had been made for him. Both apocalypses were converging on his doorstep at the same time. The race was over. The final battle had begun.