Crimson Ascension

The whispers of a conversation travelled muted to Draven's ears—he couldn't make sense of the words. Light shone under his eyelids, signaling a new day, but he didn't remember sleeping. The last thing he remembered was the Erratic Mountain and the Ruler of Shadows.

Draven woke up with a gasp.

"Where is he?" He leaped from the floor, urging hexion to enhance his body, but his astra held nothing. Not one drop.

"Take it easy. We've just got here. Wherever this is." Finn said, his back facing Draven.

Elevalein looked at the distance, his body still as if he were frozen in time. He uttered no words, yet Draven felt the spikes of worry in his heartbeat. Whatever he saw did not reassure the Evoker in the slightest.

"I… the remnant! Where is it?" Draven asked, remembering the cube. It was his sole source of knowledge about the runes.

Finn nodded to the ground without speaking, looking away a moment later. None of his quick remarks or joviality were present. His mood was somber and quiet—an unusual sight Draven only remembered seeing a few times before.

Next to him, a red-hot broken piece of metal lay forgotten, as if it were but a mere rock amidst rubble. Some runes were damaged beyond repair, while the majority just hid under a sheen of dust and fizzling smoke.

Draven doubted he could use the remnant again. He was surprised that it had activated at all. He understood the cube needed an anchor of sorts: a point in space it connected to for transporting its wielder, using hexion as fuel. But he had activated it without ever binding a place to its workings.

What's going on? Draven tried to wrap his head around the situation. If I didn't do it, someone else did. Did Helvan do it? It had to be him.

The more he thought about it, the less sure he became. Helvan sometimes knew of future events before they unfolded, but even his knowledge was not spotless. He had been confident in hunting the Ruler of Shadows, certain the creature was no more than a Lesser Ascendance, but he turned out to be wrong.

This isn't the place we die… The Sovran's words were cryptic, conflicting with the dire situation he had been in. He knew something, perhaps the many prophecies of Korvax. Even the malfunction of the cube might have been foreseen. Guided.

"Finn, you're a Dreamer. Do you know what's going on?" Draven asked.

"No clue," Finn answered, shrugging his shoulders. "I was hoping you could tell me."

A small, minute tremble in the man's heartbeat said otherwise. Finn was lying through his teeth. It did not take a Mender trained in the art of interrogation like Travor had been to understand that. What Draven didn't understand was why his friend would hide the truth in the first place—he expected that from Helvan, but not from someone who grew up in the same conditions as him.

"I know you're lying, Finn," Draven sighed. The disappointment in his tone must have been audible, for his friend flinched. "Sometimes, people forget that I'm a Mender. But I didn't expect you to forget that I'm your friend."

"I didn't. Never will." Finn turned around to face him, but quickly turned away with a wince. "Cover that thing on your face, man. It's hard to talk with a damned rune on your face."

The mask was nowhere in sight; he had taken it off to fight the Ruler, hoping the ignite the rune, but Helvan's word had been convincing. He ripped a piece of cloth from his pants, wrapping it around his head in a makeshift bandage.

"You want to know the truth? So be it. I told the old man I wouldn't hold it from you for long, anyway." Finn spoke, glancing with uncertainty at Elevalein's silent figure before shrugging. "We're here because I fucked up."

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"What do you mean?" Draven asked, genuinely confused. What did Finn have to do with the remnant? The unsighted could not activate the runes, it was common knowledge.

"After I saw you become a Greater Reverence, I was… jealous. Abyss take me, man. It felt like yesterday when you couldn't even hold your own in a fight." Finn looked away, shame on his face. "But suddenly you can wipe the floor with me? Dammit, that pissed me off. If it kept going, I'd be nothing but a dead weight."

The revelation took Draven aback. He had taken his unnatural progress for granted, but he never considered the impact that it had on those around him.

"So you know what I did? I trained, Draves! I stopped fucking sleeping like a normal person, and dove into Daesvor every damn night." Fear filled the Dreamer's eyes, a sort of primal terror one only faces when hopelessly outmatched.

"It worked, you know. I wasn't about to jump from Lesser to Greater in a few days, but maybe I could do it in a few months. It worked until the Maker took notice."

"He what?" Elevalein blurted out.

"That's right. I thought he was hunting for Draven alone… I was wrong. When he came for me there, I thought that was it. Dead, just like that. Lesser Reverence against the Empyrean who lived for thousands of years? There's no other outcome."

"You got that right," Elevalein said. "I never saw him, but he came to Varn'Kess when I was young. The moment he entered the city, every single soul felt it. It was like the air had become solid, like someone much stronger was suppressing me with their Presence. I couldn't even use hexion."

Elevalein fell silent for a second, recollecting the memory.

"But worst of all? He never even unfolded his Presence that day, according to his father. Not once." The Evoker's face became somber. "If he did, half of the city, the ones who are not heightened, would have died."

"I believe it." Finn nodded. "The only reason I escaped was Korvax."

"What?" Draven exclaimed. "He's dead. I saw the execution!"

"I'm afraid my brother is right." Elevalein raised an eyebrow. "I had father's soul beacon; I felt the moment his soul departed this world."

"Daesvor isn't this world. If you have enough strength, you can bend reality to your will, remake it as you see fit," he said.

Finn wove hexion in his hand, molding it into a spherical shape. Sweat dripped down his forehead, a deep frown settled on his features, and suddenly, as if appearing from nowhere, a lightsphere materialized in the palm of his hand. Its light was weak, its shape all but transparent, but there was no doubt about it. He had created an object out of thin air.

Draven remembered the little rat that jumped out of the attunement liquid.

"Talent limits what one can do there, but if you're born gifted enough—say, the most powerful Dreamer, second only to the Maker himself—anything is possible." Finn clenched his hand, and the sphere vanished. "My best guess is that Korvax somehow anchored his consciousness to Daesvor. Like an echo. A dream echo."

"That's great and all." Draven tried to suppress the excitement in his voice. His father was alive, in a way. He never thought he'd have a chance to speak to him again. "But what does that have to do with why we are here, stranded in the middle of nowhere?"

"Your father told me to come. It was the only place the Maker couldn't track me through Daesvor. A place where you would have time enough to grow stronger." Finn looked around and shrugged. "Helvan probably knows more, but that's as far as I know."

"It's always him! Full of abyss-damned secrets." Draven snarled. "Next time I see him, I swear I'll—"

"Maker's mercy…" Elevalein whispered in horror as he looked into the distance. "Oh, father… if you saw this far, why would you have sent us here?"

Draven followed his gaze, finding the statue of a gigantic woman half-buried on the ground. She wore bulky robes, like a priestess of an ancient religion. One arm, broken at the wrist, pointed towards the sky, while the other held a book. A spiky crown adorned her head, the sort of which only a figure of high esteem had rights of possessing.

"Do you know what's that?" Draven asked.

"I'm surprised you don't." His voice trembled. "That's the First Queen, the herald of the Old World collapse, according to the legends. That we see it means we're already dead men walking."

"Come on! Why are you being so dramatic all of a sudden—" Finn started, but Elevalein cut him off.

"If you see the First Queen," he recited as if reading from a passage in a book. "Ready yourself for death. Turn back, if you must, but know you will never escape. No one who enters Untaak'Dor's domain ever has."

In the distance, a wrathful howl echoed amidst the stale wind. Draven's hair stood on end, for he knew it belonged to The Ruler of Shadows. The hatred, fury, and fear in its shout were unlike the gleeful thirst for battle it exuded before.

No, it was a vow of revenge—the cries of a beast who knew its fate was death.

Draven silently began to refine hexion in his astra, for he knew the ruler would come, and that he would not survive facing it this time.