The storm broke over the cliffs as Liora stumbled back into the ruined valley.
The sky was a churning mass of bruised clouds, and the rain hit the earth like hammer blows.Lightning forked across the heavens, illuminating the wreckage left behind: shattered trees, burned fields, the corpses of men and monsters alike.
She was too late.
The Circle had struck.
And they had left nothing standing.
Liora swore under her breath and pushed forward, ignoring the fire of exhaustion gnawing at her limbs. The shard was still clutched in her fist, a pulse of defiance against the despair clawing at her heart.
Somewhere in the carnage, she heard it — a low, ragged moan.
She ran.
Over broken stones and blood-soaked grass until she found them.
Nyssa.
Pinned beneath a fallen column, blood streaming from a gash across her forehead. Her eyes fluttered open as Liora skidded to her side.
"You came back," Nyssa whispered, smiling weakly.
"Always," Liora breathed, voice cracking.
She grabbed the column with both hands, channeling the Veil through her muscles. The world blurred around her as power flooded her veins. With a scream, she heaved the stone aside.
Nyssa gasped as she was freed — but the moment Liora pulled her into her arms, she knew.
Something was wrong.
Terribly, horribly wrong.
Nyssa's chest was soaked in blood.
And when Liora pressed her hand to it, there was no heartbeat.
Just a hollow echo.
"I'm sorry," Nyssa whispered. "They took it... They took my soul..."
Liora's vision blurred with tears.
The Circle hadn't just wounded her.
They had harvested her — ripped her soul from her body to fuel their spells.
It was a fate worse than death.
Nyssa's hands clutched at Liora's cloak, desperate.
"Don't let me become one of them," she begged. "Please... not a Hollow..."
A Hollow — the mindless husks the Circle created when they drained a soul but left the body breathing.
Liora swallowed hard.
There was only one mercy she could offer.
Her hands shook as she summoned a sliver of the Codex's true magic — a blade woven from memory and light.
Nyssa smiled, even as tears streaked her dirt-smeared cheeks.
"Tell Daren... I would've said yes."
Liora didn't ask to what.
She didn't need to.
With a sob, she pressed the blade through Nyssa's heart.
Nyssa's body shuddered once, then stilled.
The light in her eyes — the last flicker of her soul — drifted up like a wisp of smoke and was gone.
The storm raged around Liora, but she barely felt it.
Something inside her had snapped.
Not cracked.Not bent.
Snapped.
She rose slowly, her hands bathed in blood, her eyes burning with something darker than fury.
Resolve.
The Circle wanted war?
They would have it.
She would tear their sanctuaries down stone by stone.
She would unleash every forbidden art, every cursed memory locked in the Codex.
She would become the monster they feared.
If the cost was her humanity, so be it.
The price had already been paid — in Nyssa's blood.
A sound broke through her grief — hooves pounding against the earth.
Liora turned.
A squad of White Circle hunters thundered toward her, their armor gleaming silver in the lightning flashes.
At their head rode a woman Liora recognized instantly.
Lady Veris.
High Inquisitor of the White Circle.
Nyssa's executioner.
Veris smiled, her white-blond hair plastered to her face by the rain.
"I see we missed one," she sneered. "Good. We need fresh stock."
Liora didn't answer.
She didn't summon the Veil.
She didn't prepare a ritual.
She simply raised her hand.
And the Codex answered.
The monolith's power poured into her veins, dark and molten, singing a dirge only she could hear.
The hunters slowed, sensing the wrongness in the air.
It was too late.
With a thought, Liora unraveled the world around them.
The ground split open, skeletal hands clawing free from the mud. The dead rose — not as mindless zombies, but as burning, wailing echoes of those slaughtered by the Circle.
The hunters screamed.
One by one, they were dragged under — torn apart, soul and body alike, by the very people they had butchered.
Veris alone remained, wheeling her horse back in terror.
"What are you?" she shrieked.
Liora stepped forward, rain steaming off her skin.
"Your reckoning."
She flung a chain of spectral light at Veris, wrapping around her chest and yanking her from the saddle.
The High Inquisitor crashed to the ground, gasping, as Liora stood over her.
"Mercy," Veris croaked, crawling backward.
"Mercy?" Liora echoed. Her voice was hollow. "You carved out souls like meat. You fed children to the pyres. You wore their ashes like perfume."
Veris whimpered.
Liora knelt.
Pressed her bloody hand to Veris's forehead.
And showed her.
Showed her every life she had stolen.
Every scream.
Every plea.
Every flicker of innocence snuffed out.
Veris's own soul began to fray at the edges, unraveling like wet paper.
She died screaming.
When it was done, Liora stood alone amid the storm, her heart hollow.
She didn't cry.
There were no tears left.
Only purpose.
The White Circle had declared war.
She would answer.
And when she was done...
The world would never forget her name.