The world after the Spire felt unnervingly thin. For seventeen years, I had lived with a constant roar in my marrow, a static that hummed behind every thought. Now, there was only the sound of the wind whipping across the salt flats and the ragged rhythm of Aiden's breathing. The silence was so heavy it felt like a physical weight, pressing against my eardrums. It was the sound of a world that had forgotten how to exist without its crutch.
We walked for hours through the ruins of the bone-fields. The Great Wall, once a symbol of eternal separation, was now a jagged, mile-long scar of rubble. As the sun climbed higher—a real, pale sun that didn't need a filter of enchantments—the landscape revealed its true face. Without the blue-tinted magic of the Arcanum to mask the rot, the earth looked weary. The bone-dust was just dust; the shattered crystals were just glass.
Aiden walked beside me, his hand occasionally brushing mine. He was different now. The boy who had moved with the fluid grace of a high-tier Mage now stumbled over the uneven terrain. His "anchor" was gone. Without his mana, he was just a human boy with a bleeding hand and a heart full of secrets.
"You're quiet," he said, his voice cracking. He stopped to adjust the makeshift bandage on his palm. "Even for someone who just rebooted reality, you're awfully quiet."
"I'm listening to the nothingness," I replied, keeping my fist clenched tight. The gold shard of the Archon's mask was still there, buried in my flesh. It felt like a hot coal, a tiny, pulsing reminder that the "nothingness" was a lie. "It's louder than I thought it would be."
"It'll take time for people to adjust," Aiden said, looking back toward the horizon where the city of Eden once stood. "The Air-Galleons are all grounded. The lights are out. People are going to have to learn how to light a fire with a flint instead of a flick of the wrist. There will be chaos. Hunger. But at least it'll be ours."
I looked at him, and for a fleeting second, I wanted to open my hand. I wanted to show him the gold spark and ask if it meant the nightmare wasn't over. But the look of pure, exhausted relief on his face stopped me. He had sacrificed everything—his status, his future, his very blood—to free me from the cage. How could I tell him that I had simply brought a piece of the cage with me?
"Where are we going, Aiden?"
"North," he said, pointing toward the jagged peaks beyond the flats. "There's a settlement there. Non-magical. They've lived without the Arcanum for generations. They'll know how to survive the winter. We can disappear there. No one will know you as the Anomaly. You'll just be Rowen."
Just Rowen. The words tasted like ash.
As we approached the edge of the flats, where the grey dust met the first signs of stunted vegetation, I saw a movement in the shadows of a collapsed watchtower. I froze, my instincts screaming. Even without the Wasting, my body remembered how to recognize a predator.
"Who's there?" Aiden shouted, reaching for a sword that was no longer etched with light. He held the bare steel with a shaky grip.
A figure stepped out. It wasn't an Inquisitor, and it wasn't a warbeast. It was a man, dressed in the tattered remains of a merchant's robe. But his skin... his skin was the color of a bruised plum, and his eyes were wide, bloodshot, and frantic. He was clutching a small wooden box as if it were a holy relic.
"It's gone," the man whimpered, staring at us with unseeing eyes. "The hum. The sweet, sweet hum. I can't hear the Mother anymore."
"The magic is gone, friend," Aiden said, stepping forward cautiously, his voice softening. "The Spire fell. You're free now."
"Free?" The man let out a jagged, hysterical laugh. He opened the wooden box. Inside was a handful of crushed Ether-stone, the kind used to power household trinkets. He began to rub the grey dust into his forehead, his fingers trembling. "There is no freedom in the dark! There is only the Crave!"
He lunged at Aiden with a sudden, feral speed. Aiden tried to parry, but the man didn't use a weapon. He threw himself onto Aiden, clawing at his throat, his teeth bared. He wasn't trying to kill him; he was trying to scent him. He was looking for a trace of mana like a starving dog looking for a scrap of meat.
"Aiden!" I screamed.
I didn't think. I didn't have time to wonder if I still had power. I reached out and grabbed the man's shoulder. The moment my skin touched his, the gold shard in my palm flared with a blinding, white-hot intensity.
A pulse of energy—darker and more concentrated than anything the Spire had ever produced—shot through my arm. The man didn't just fly back; he imploded. His body collapsed inward as if a vacuum had opened in his chest, and then he vanished into a cloud of fine, purple soot.
Aiden scrambled away, gasping for air, his eyes wide with horror. He looked at the spot where the man had been, then at me.
"Rowen..." he whispered, his voice trembling. "What was that? You said... you said the magic was gone."
I stood there, my hand still smoking, the gold shard now glowing with a steady, malevolent light beneath my skin. The lie was dead. It had lasted less than a day.
"I thought it was," I said, my voice sounding like someone else's. "I thought I pushed it all back."
I slowly opened my hand. The shard wasn't just a piece of metal anymore. It had grown. Thin, gold filaments were spreading like a spiderweb across my palm, weaving themselves into my veins. It looked like a crown of thorns, etched into my flesh.
"It followed me," I whispered. "The Archon... she didn't die, Aiden. She just changed her address."
Before Aiden could respond, the purple soot on the ground began to vibrate. It didn't blow away in the wind; it started to crawl, seeking out the shadows. From the ruins of the Great Wall, more figures began to emerge. Dozens of them. They were the citizens of Eden—the people who had been the most addicted to the "sweet hum" of the Arcanum.
They weren't warbeasts. They were something worse. They were the Hollowed. Their eyes were empty pits, and their bodies were distorted by the sudden withdrawal of the energy that had sustained their very biology. They were the "Crave" made flesh.
And they could smell the gold shard in my hand.
"They're coming for the spark," Aiden said, his face turning pale. He grabbed my arm, ignoring the heat coming from my palm. "We have to run. Now!"
But as we turned to flee, a cold, familiar voice echoed in my head—a voice that sounded like a thousand chimes being crushed under a boot.
The Spire was only the bottle, Rowen. You were always the wine. And now, the world is thirsty.
I looked at the horizon. The sky was no longer clear. A thin, violet haze was starting to rise from the cracks in the earth, where the magic I had "distributed" was starting to fester. I hadn't saved the world; I had turned it into a graveyard of addicts, and I was the only fix left.
"Aiden," I said, stopping in my tracks as the first of the Hollowed reached the edge of the salt. "You have to leave me. You have to go to that settlement and tell them to seal the gates."
"I'm not leaving you!" he roared, his eyes fierce.
"You have to!" I screamed back, the gold light from my hand reflecting in my tears. "I'm not the Anomaly anymore, Aiden. I'm the Sovereign. And as long as I'm with you, they will never stop coming. I am the scent of the hive, and they are the swarm."
I pushed him away, a wave of kinetic force knocking him back several feet. It wasn't a violent push, but it was absolute.
"Go!"
I turned to face the Hollowed. My hand was no longer just a hand; it was a beacon. I could feel the power of the Archon's shard calling to the violet haze in the earth, pulling the poison back into me. If I was going to be the only source of magic in a dying world, then I would be its most terrifying ruler.
As the first of the Hollowed lunged at me, I didn't flinch. I let the gold thorns grow. I let the static return.
"You want a taste?" I whispered to the approaching swarm. "Come and get it."
In the distance, I heard Aiden's voice one last time, a desperate cry that was swallowed by the wind. I didn't look back. I couldn't. Because in the reflection of the purple dust, I saw my eyes.
They weren't grey anymore. They were gold.