Mehandi stepped into the Wailing Barrows, and the world went silent. It was a realm of perpetual decay, where the air tasted of ancient dust and the only sounds were the whispering of malevolent spirits on the wind. The hills were not made of soil, but of piled bone, and the spires that scraped the bruised sky were petrified spines of some long-dead, colossal creature. This was not a place where magic simply worked; it was a place where magic was devoured.
He felt his own aether-veins, so vibrant and strong in his manor, flicker with a desperate energy, a candle flame in a hurricane. He was a force of life in a place of death, and the necromancer's power was a cold, suffocating blanket.
From atop the tallest bone spire, the necromancer's voice, dry as parchment, drifted down. "The little Volkov has come to play. Your brothers told me you were soft. All light and no fire. They were right."
Mehandi looked up. On the pinnacle, the hooded figure of the Lord of the Wailing Barrows stood, and at his side were Leo and Ivan. But they were changed. Their auras were no longer their own; they were a sickly green-and-black glow, a mockery of their former power. Their eyes, once so sharp, were now hollow pools of darkness. They were not allies of the necromancer; they were his tools.
"We gave you a chance, little brother," Leo sneered, his voice devoid of his usual bluster, a mere echo of the necromancer's will. "To be powerful, to rule. You chose to be weak."
"We chose to live," Ivan added, his words a dry rustle of leaves.
The necromancer raised his hands, and the very ground of the barrows groaned. From the bone hills, countless spirits—not the anguished souls Mehandi had freed, but vile, malicious shades—rose from the earth. They were not bound; they were commanded, their forms a swirling mass of shadowy claws and gnashing teeth.
Mehandi felt the pressure of their malice, the cold weight of their hatred. The star spirit's voice was a mere whisper now, almost lost in the wail of the unquiet dead. He couldn't just heal them. They had to be fought. His very essence, the magic of life, had to clash with the magic of death.
He didn't wait. He met the charge, and for the first time, he used his power with fury. He raised his hands, and the barren ground beneath him shuddered. He didn't pull on the corrupt energy of the barrows; he pulled on the ancient, forgotten ley lines that ran deep beneath the soil, the very roots of the earth that the necromancer had tried to drain. With a roar, Mehandi unleashed a wave of pure, concentrated life.
The wave of light slammed into the spirits, not with explosive force, but with the searing pain of a poison. The shades screamed, their forms dissolving like smoke in the sun. The power of death could not stand against the power of pure life.
Leo and Ivan, seeing their minions fail, acted. Leo launched a dark, corrupted spell of fire, but Mehandi's magic, now fueled by his righteous rage, simply consumed it. Ivan raised a bone shard, a new artifact of necromancy, and sent a tendril of dark energy to pierce Mehandi's heart. But Mehandi met it with a shield of living stone, a pure, unyielding shield of his aetherial power.
The battle was not a duel of spells; it was a clash of philosophies. Mehandi fought with the aether of life, creating and restoring, while his brothers and their master fought with the magic of death, consuming and destroying.
Finally, Mehandi stood before the necromancer. The ground beneath their feet was a battlefield of bone and aether-infused stone. The Lord of the Wailing Barrows smiled, a cruel, cold expression that stretched his shadowed face. "You cannot defeat me, boy. I am the master of death. I am immortal."
Mehandi didn't respond. He looked past the necromancer to his brothers, to the hollow cruelty in their eyes, and he knew what he had to do. He reached out, not with his rage, but with a profound, terrifying sadness. He didn't attack the necromancer; he attacked the source of his power, the very core of his being—the corrupted hearthstone of the Wailing Barrows.
With a powerful act of will, Mehandi reached for the stone, drawing on the deepest parts of his star-given magic. The stone of death and decay was no match for the aether of creation and light. With a final, agonizing pulse, the hearthstone shattered, its dark energy dissipating into the wind.
The necromancer shrieked, his form crumbling to dust. And with him, so did the power that held Leo and Ivan. The sickly glow around them faded, and they fell to the ground, no longer puppets of shadow, but simply two men, defeated and broken.
Mehandi stood over them, his magic a final, gentle glow. He had avenged his parents and defeated their dark ally. His brothers were alive, but stripped of their power and their pride. He looked at them, not with rage, but with a chilling, cold finality.
"You took everything from me," Mehandi said, his voice flat. "But you took more from yourselves. You chose this path, and now you will live with it."
He turned and walked away, leaving them on the boneyard floor. He was a new man, a true guardian of the light, but he carried a new burden—the quiet understanding that some things, once broken, can never truly be healed. He had won the war, but he had lost his brothers forever.