The vision opened on the collapsing plaza of proto-Aetheris, and it did not open gently.
Seven void-beasts came through the crumbling barrier. Low-tier things, awkwardly jointed, all animal panic and no malice — the kind a seasoned Rift-Warden cleared without breaking stride. The Warden cleared them. His longsword took a lunging shadow-hound in one smooth arc. He sidestepped a second without looking and put the pommel through a third's skull. His blade hummed with rift-charge, low and steady, a sound the unit had followed for years.
To Taryn, to Kaelen, to Lysara, to the crowd pressed against the failing wards, it was the calmest thing left on a dying island. Their Warden was holding the line. Their Warden was winning.
Marcus believed it too.
Watching through his eyes, Kael wanted to believe it. The fight was flawless — too flawless, some cold part of him noted, the way a detective notes a room that has been cleaned before the police arrive. The Warden thinned the pack without ever emptying it. He never turned his back to the cliff. He never once raised his blade to guard — and somehow, standing safely behind the line he held, that bothered Marcus more than the beasts did.
The eighth one came from the flank, low and fast, where the grid was thin. The Warden had to have seen it. He had seen everything else without looking.
He pivoted away from it.
Kaelen was already turning toward the threat, his warden's baton half-lifted into a block that would miss. He had spent the whole fight watching the Warden's back. He died the way students die — still seeking the approval of the lesson.
The longsword moved. Silver crossed the space between them, and Marcus's eyes—
Static. White, roaring, merciless static.
The vision tore like wet paper. Somewhere inside it, half-drowned in the noise, Kael caught three broken syllables — "—for the new rea—" — and then even that was gone, and the cold of the Spire closed over him like water.
He never saw the blow land.
He never saw who fell.
The memory did not let him.