Chapter 14: The Key and the Broken Sky
—Waking—
Lira's eyes opened onto gray light.
She was wrapped in Kaela's travel cloak, the staff lying beside her, inert and cold. A campfire crackled quietly nearby. Thalen sat cross-legged beside it, arms folded, eyes distant.
You're awake," Kaela said, coming close. Her tone was sharp — but her shoulders slumped with relief.
Lira sat up, groaning. "Did we win?"
Kaela hesitated. "We shut the gate. Temporarily."
"And the Queen?" Lira asked.
Before Kaela could answer, the sky rumbled — low, deep, wrong.
Lira looked up.
Clouds weren't moving right. They coiled, not with wind, but with purpose. Lines of jagged blue light cracked between them. Something enormous stirred behind the firmament.
I saw her," Lira said, her voice soft. "In the vision. She isn't attempting to open gates to allow something in.
Thalen spun, eyes keen. "She's attempting to use them to break out?"
To rise," Lira breathed. "To be greater than a god. To shed Krynn like a dead skin.
The staff flickered. Once. Twice.
It just stopped.
She said I was the key," Lira whispered. "I think. I think the gates open for me.
---
—the Survivor—
Kerris crawled from the temple wreckage, coughing up blood.
His skin was fissured with purple veins, his eyes blazed with the residues of a runaway spell — but he was alive.
More than that.
He was untethered.
The Queen's magic had not incinerated him. It had propelled him through. He had seen the space between worlds. Where gods shrieked and thoughts had teeth.
And something had returned with him.
He didn't know what.
But now it whispered — always just at the border of audibility.
Find the key," it whispered.
He spat blood on stone.
"I will," he said.
And he began walking west — toward the ruin, and the girl who held the staff.
---
—The Sky Fractures—
Above Daltigoth, the skies ripped apart.
The clouds tore apart like flesh, and a lattice of shining threads was revealed. Stars twinkled where no stars ought to be. A second moon winked into being, red and pale.
And the Bone Queen hovered above the highest tower, her broken mask casting long shadows.
Priests knelt in a circle, reciting names that seared the tongue.
The third gate throbbed behind her — half-open, wailing softly like a starving child.
The Queen raised her hand.
A spear of dark energy plunged into the sky.
The clouds broke.
Glassy splinters of sky started to descend — not to the ground, but to elsewhere.
She smiled.
"The gate is a lie.".
The world itself is the lock.
And I am the storm that unbinds it."