Chapter 13: Echoes of the End
—The Vision—
Lira shrieked — but only in her head.
The world blinked, and suddenly she was nowhere. Not floating. Not falling. Simply unmoored.
The staff pulsed in her hands.
She stood on a darkened sea that whispered secrets in languages she did not understand. Stars bled backward above her. Time ran backward.
And amidst that impossible sky, a woman on a throne of bone, shrouded in darkness, held a bleeding world.
Lira stumbled backward.
The woman glanced up.
Eyes of molten silver.
A voice like silk torn across stone:
You think you are a lock.".
You are the key.
You will open all of them.
Lira gasped — the vision shattered — and she was kneeling again in the ruin, the staff searing against her flesh.
Thalen caught her.
"What's wrong?"
"I saw her," Lira whispered. "Not just her face. Her intent. She's not trying to conquer Krynn."
She raised her eyes, voice trembling.
"She's trying to leave it."
---
—The Trap—
Kerris inserted the knife into the blood groove, reciting the words he had vowed never again to utter.
The sanctum flared. Glyphs ignited.
The Bone Queen was midway through ritual, hands raised, energy arcing from the mages in chains. The gate above her screamed.
Then — the wards snapped.
The siphon inverted.
Each stolen soul, each drop of coerced memory, each ounce of pain directed inward — not out — into her.
She staggered.
Screamed.
The mask cracked.
Kerris stepped forward, raising the final sigil.
"Beg," he rasped, voice raw.
The Queen's eyes locked on his — untamed, old, impenetrable.
She did not beg.
She laughed.
> "You still don't understand.
This is not about me surviving.
This is all about you becoming.
She tossed her hand. Shadows pierced the room. The mirror fragments burst apart.
Kerris disappeared under a wave of dark fire.
---
—The Gate—
Kaela reached the ruin's inner sanctum first, blade drawn, shield up.
The second gate towered before them — larger, older, and angrier. Its frame was stitched from cracked obsidian and petrified flesh. Ghost-lights swirled inside it, pulsing in rhythm with Lira's staff.
Thalen started chanting — his voice intertwining with Lira's grasp on the staff.
This one is not closed like the first," he grumbled. "It's not sleeping — it's waking.
A tremor cracked the floor.
Seal it," Kaela growled. "Now.".
Lira moved forward — but the staff would not follow. It wrenched in her grasp, struggling, like a rope snagged on something beneath.
Lira—" Thalen cautioned.
She shrieked — not from fear, but from pain — and forced the staff into the core of the gate.
Magic shrieked.
The gate buckled.
And then — the connection snapped.
The staff fell silent. The gate folded inward, like paper soaked in flame, then vanished into itself with a final, awful sigh.
Lira collapsed.
Kaela caught her.
"It's done," she panted.
But Thalen was staring out the ruin's shattered archway — toward the rising sky.
"No," he said softly.
"It's just begun."