The Withered Realm
The realm beyond the rift was a graveyard of stone and shadows. Jagged spires rose from the cracked earth like the ribs of a dead giant, half-swallowed by drifting ash that stung Zindra's eyes with every gust of dry wind.
No stars pierced the sky — only a sickly flicker of lightning far above, like a memory of storms long forgotten. The air felt heavy, thick with old whispers that tasted like regret.
Liyaya moved ahead, her boots scraping over brittle ground. Every few steps, she knelt to press her palms to the dead soil. Tiny shoots of green flickered under her fingers — but they withered the moment she lifted her hands, unable to root in the poisoned land.
"It's starving," she murmured. "It's trying to grow, but something deeper is choking it."
Zindra's runes glowed faint blue under his skin. He touched a half-buried pillar etched with the same symbols — older, rougher, scorched black at the edges. He felt the echo of a broken oath humming in the stone.
"This was once a starhold," he said quietly. "A realm the Council drained dry. When it was empty, they closed it off and left it to rot."
The Ghosts in the Dark
They pressed deeper into the wasteland. Shadows shifted in the corners of Zindra's vision — shapes that moved without wind. Once, Liyaya paused at a ruined archway where faint, scorched runes glowed like dying embers. When she brushed her fingers over them, the air crackled with a soft, broken chorus — the voices of sentinels who'd come here before, exiled and abandoned when their usefulness ended.
One voice lingered louder than the rest — a hollow echo that tugged at Zindra's bones. "Stay. Join the silence. Feed the dark…"
Zindra clenched his fists, runes sparking brighter in defiance. "I am not yours," he snarled to the empty air.
The shadows hissed but did not strike — not yet.
The Buried Heart
They found it at dusk — a crater at the center of the realm where the cracked earth dipped into a black pit. At the bottom pulsed a faint glow — the devourer's seed, bigger than any fragment left behind on Earth. Shadows coiled around it like worms burrowing through rotting fruit.
Liyaya dropped to one knee at the crater's edge, breath ragged. She could feel the buried roots — dry and twisted, trapped under the seed's hunger. "If we tear it out, the realm might breathe again."
Zindra's eyes narrowed, scanning the shifting darkness that ringed the pit. He could see shapes slithering around the seed — twisted sentinels, shadows wearing scraps of old star-armor, their runes flickering like dying sparks.
"These were once my kin," he whispered. "Left here to guard the grave — until the grave devoured them too."
He turned to her, his jaw set. "We break the seed, we break them. We free them — or what's left of them."
Liyaya placed her hand over his, grounding him with warmth that defied the grave-cold wind. "Then let's set them free."
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The First Strike
Zindra stepped forward, runes blazing to full brilliance for the first time since the city's fight. Liyaya's green light spread through the cracks underfoot, roots awakening like tiny veins reaching for the buried core.
The twisted sentinels hissed in unison, shadows stretching tall and thin, hollow voices echoing in the dead air:
"Breakers… traitors… join the silence…"
Zindra's lips curled into a snarl. "We'll break the silence first."
They stepped into the pit together — sentinel and seed-bearer, ready to battle the ghosts of a realm that refused to die quietly.