Claire gripped Valora's shaking wrist and yanked her back from the frontline. Dust-clouds boiled around them where Veil's power roared. Scrolls floated, torn magics fizzling mid-air. Claire's teeth clenched—not from fear this time, but from the keening ache of guilt. She had nearly sacrificed Valora. The thought cut her deeper than any blade.
She knew she was cold, but didn't know she was cruel. No…it was something different….she was weak.
Not desperate. Not vile. Just... unprepared. Unworthy.
Veil—dark hunger manifest—drank the scroll and the two Imperial mages whole. Their screams were swallowed as though they'd never existed. Veil reformed in the crater. His eyes glowed in the twilight of arcane ruin.
Claire recognized him. Atlas's nightmare. The shadow that nearly took her love's life when Atlas stood at peak. Against what misalignment, what gods, what scale could her meager scrolls stand?
No… they couldn't.
She knew it now. And her heart cracked.
