The transition from the warmth of the tea shop to the open air of the Upper District was like stepping from a dream into a fever. The bruised violet of the sky had deepened into something that looked less like weather and more like an infection.
As Vane and Sylva approached the Cathedral Square, the usual order of the city was missing. People weren't just running; they were stumbling as if the ground beneath them had lost its solidity.
"Stay behind me, Sylva," Vane said, his voice a calm anchor in the rising panic. "The lines are blurring. Don't look at the shadows too closely—they've forgotten which way they're supposed to fall."
The Purity Engine sat at the heart of the square, a brass monument to human arrogance. It was no longer humming. It was screaming—a high, discordant vibration that made the surrounding stone buildings weep dust. At the center of the machine, the Heart of the Saint sat encased in a crystal housing, pulsing with a frantic, stuttering gold light.
The High Inquisitor stood on the dais, his arms raised, his face a mask of zealotry and dawning horror. Blue ether was pouring out of the machine, but it wasn't radiating. It was being sucked inward, forming a swirling, pitch-black vortex above the relic.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Vane remarked, pausing at the edge of the square. He looked at the black hole in reality as if he were critiquing a poorly hung painting. "They've managed to create a perfect vacuum in the fabric of the world. Now, nature is going to do what it does best: fill the void."
"Vane, the people!" Sylva cried. The vortex was beginning to pull. Loose cobblestones, discarded banners, and the cloaks of fleeing citizens were being dragged toward the engine.
Vane checked his watch. "The tea hasn't even settled yet, and already I have to do manual labor. Very well."
He stepped into the square. Unlike the knights who were struggling to keep their footing, Vane moved with a terrifying stability. He didn't fight the pull; he simply stepped through the distorted space as if he were walking on solid ground while everyone else was on ice. He raised his hand and simply snapped his fingers.
The sound was like a thunderclap in a vacuum. Suddenly, the violent suction reversed. The pitch-black center shifted into a translucent grey, revealing glimpses of a silent, endless expanse of white fog on the other side.
"I reversed the flow," Vane said simply. "The Void is no longer eating Aethelgard. For the moment, Aethelgard is breathing into the Void."
But as the pressure equalized, the grey mist within the opening began to churn. A shape detached itself from the fog—a creature that defied the local laws of biology. It was a spindly, multi-limbed horror made of calcified shadow, its body flickering in and out of existence like a bad reflection. It possessed only a jagged vertical rift in its torso that leaked a cold, pale light.
It pulled itself through the "bridge," its long, needle-like fingers cracking the marble of the square as it landed. The creature didn't roar; it emitted a sound like grinding glass that made the nearby Inquisitors collapse, clutching their ears.
Fascinating, Vane thought, watching the entity begin to unfold its impossible form. A Scavenger of the Fold. I haven't seen one of those since my stay in the Void. It's significantly uglier in this lighting.
The creature lunged, moving in a series of stuttering leaps toward the nearest group of cowering citizens.
Vane didn't draw a weapon. He didn't even break his stride toward the machine. He simply reached out a hand as the creature flickered toward him.
"You're in the wrong place," Vane murmured.
As the creature's claw swung toward his head, Vane didn't dodge. He caught the entity's wrist—not with physical strength, but by locking its very existence into a fixed point. The creature froze mid-motion, its shadow-flesh rippling violently as it tried to move against a space Vane had made unyielding.
"Lesson two, little bird," Vane said, looking back at Sylva. "Don't fight the monster. Simply remind it that it doesn't belong here."
He closed his fist.
There was no explosion, only a sharp pop of displaced air. The creature didn't die; it was simply compressed and shunted back through the grey rift.
Vane wiped a speck of frost from his sleeve, looking up at the High Inquisitor, who was staring at him in catatonic silence.
"Now," Vane said, his violet eyes glowing with a cold, predatory light. "I'd like my relic back. You're making entirely too much of a mess with it."
The High Inquisitor's shock lasted only as long as it took for Vane to take another step. The man's eyes cleared, fueled by a dangerous mixture of terror and religious fervor. To the Church, there was no room for a man who could treat a holy nightmare like a minor inconvenience.
"Heresy!" the Inquisitor screamed, his voice cracking as he slammed his iron-shod staff into the metal dais. "The Void-walker seeks to claim the Heart! Guards, seize him! Purge the interloper!"
A dozen armored knights, their senses dulled by the roar of the machine, shook off their stupor. They leveled their glowing lances and charged.
Vane didn't stop walking. He didn't even look at them. To Vane, the charge was nothing more than a series of predictable trajectories. He saw the way the light from their lances hit the mist, illuminating the pockets of dead air where their reach ended.
"Sylva," Vane said over his shoulder, his voice cutting through the clatter of steel. "Remember what I said about the furniture? If they can't decide where you are, they can't decide where to strike. Don't react. Just exist where they aren't."
As the first knight lunged, Vane tilted his head a fraction of an inch. The spear tip whistled past his ear, missing him by less than a hair. He stepped forward with a liquid, effortless grace, and the knight's own momentum carried him past, stumbling into the muck. The second and third attackers swung their heavy broadswords in a synchronized arc. Vane simply wasn't there when the blades arrived; he had moved into the small pocket of space between their swings, his cloak brushing their armor like a ghost's touch.
I really hate property damage, Vane thought, watching a stray spark from a lance scorch a nearby stone pillar. This square was actually quite well-proportioned. It's a pity these people have no sense of spatial respect.
"Stop him!" the Inquisitor howled, desperate now. He began to channel a spell, his hands glowing with a harsh, blinding blue light that smelled of burning ozone.
Vane reached the base of the Purity Engine. He looked up at the crystal housing where the Heart of the Saint sat. The relic was vibrating so violently it was beginning to crack its container, leaking golden energy that lashed out like whipped wire.
Above it, the Rift was at its peak—a jagged, vertical tear in the sky that looked less like a hole and more like the world was a piece of parchment that had been scorched through. Inside the tear, the Folding Void churned—a silent, colorless expanse of white fog and calcified shadows. It wasn't a place of darkness, but a place of absence, and it was trying to pull the square into its nothingness.
"You're pulling too hard," Vane said, his voice dropping to a low, steady resonance that seemed to push back against the vacuum of the Rift. He looked at the Inquisitor. "You think you're drawing power, but you're just screaming into a canyon and being surprised by the echo."
The Inquisitor unleashed his spell—a concentrated bolt of sanctified ether meant to vaporize anything in its path.
Vane didn't block it. He didn't even raise a hand. He possessed a level of Conceptual Authority that made such gestures unnecessary. As the bolt reached him, the space around Vane seemed to curve and warp. The light didn't hit him; it flowed around him like water around a polished stone, redirected by the sheer weight of his presence. The bolt slammed into the base of the machine instead, causing a shower of brass sparks and the screech of shearing metal.
"My turn," Vane said.
He reached into the heart of the machine. His hand didn't collide with the spinning brass gears or the hissing steam pipes; it passed through them as if they were made of smoke. This was his true ability: the power to Edit Reality. He wasn't touching the machine; he was simply deciding that, for him, the machine wasn't a solid object.
He grasped the Heart of the Saint. The moment his fingers touched the relic, the screaming stopped.
The gold light of the Heart didn't fight him. It surrendered. It flowed into him, recognizing the resonance he carried—the deep, ancient silence of the Void he had walked for ten thousand years. The stuttering, frantic pulses became a steady, low thrum.
Vane pulled his hand back, and the Heart came with it, sliding out of the housing as if it had been waiting for him to reclaim it.
The Purity Engine groaned, its power source gone. The blue light died instantly. The grey rift above the square shivered, losing its anchor, and began to shrink. The white fog of the Void retreated, the "wound" in the sky knitting itself back together with a series of sharp, glass-like cracks until only the bruised violet sky remained.
"No!" the Inquisitor wailed, collapsing to his knees as his staff clattered to the floor. "The Light! You've stolen the Light!"
Vane looked down at the relic in his hand. It was no longer a frantic, glowing beacon. It was a smooth, warm stone that felt like a heartbeat against his palm, pulsing with a golden glow that was soft and controlled.
"It wasn't your light to begin with," Vane said coldly. He turned back to Sylva, who was standing at the edge of the dais, her eyes wide with awe at the sudden, heavy silence. "And it certainly wasn't meant to be used as a furnace."
He tucked the Heart into a deep pocket of his cloak. The square was suddenly, unnervingly quiet. The only sound was the distant ringing of the city's bells and the ragged breathing of the defeated knights who were too terrified to move.
Vane checked his watch.
"Well," he said, the violet glow in his eyes fading back to a deep, dark purple. "The tea is definitely cold now. That's a genuine shame. I suppose we should find somewhere with a fresh pot