Echoed Lands

Lira grasped desperately at the edge of the portal as it flickered violently, light warping around her fingers. Then, in an instant, it vanished. She tumbled forward, crashing to the ground where the gateway had stood just moments before. Her mind erupted in a surge of fury, twisting with a rage so deep it clawed at the seams of her soul.

"No. No. No!" Her breath hitched as a guttural, inhuman roar tore from her throat, echoing across the empty plains like a sonic shockwave. "DAMN IT!" she bellowed, her voice jagged with wrath. She slammed her fist into the earth with a deafening crack, sending jagged chunks of stone and dirt flying in every direction.

She knelt there, shoulders heaving, eyes locked on the empty space where the portal had vanished. "Didn't expect to see those three again..." Her lip curled in disdain. "Not here. Not now."

"I spent decades preparing for this," she growled. "And he... got... away." The words burned in her mouth. She could still see Jerry's smug expression, that irritating little smirk as he slipped through her grasp yet again. Him, and his insufferable little cohort. "That bastard is always interfering with my plans."

Her gaze drifted downward, the fury momentarily replaced by something colder. She was still clutching the severed arm in her left hand.

"Oh, right," she muttered, a crooked, ghastly chuckle slipping past her lips. She lifted the limb, and the reek hit her all at once. Putrid and unnatural, a stench of rotting essence and stubborn vitality that made her wince. "Gods, I hate the smell of Morvyn," she spat. "That mix of life and death? Unnatural. Tastes like shit."

The arm twitched faintly in her grip. Threads of mana pulsed along the dimming blue veins, flickering like dying embers. She watched it with narrowed eyes, her fingers tightening. "Still warm. That might be enough..."

But time was short.

"I can't stay here. I used up all I had for this gambit," she whispered, her voice low and bitter. Her target had escaped, enemies were gone, the portal was sealed, and her chance was fading.

But she muttered, "This just might be enough for what I need," her voice laced with equal parts desperation and resolve. Her eyes locked onto the severed arm, now resting heavily in her palm, still pulsing faintly with dim threads of mana.

"I can still feel it... the trace hints of it. That otherworldly energy. It's fading, but it's still here. Lingering like smoke after a fire." Her gaze grew distant, her breath slow and deliberate. A veil of black crept over her irises, clouding them until they became void-like pits. Mist began to rise around her in silent spirals, thick and dark, as though the air itself were decaying at her touch.

She lowered the arm, both hands now cradling it with a reverence that bordered on obsession. Her mana surged forth, a torrent of raw essence pouring into the cold flesh, wrapping around those alien strands of energy like grasping tendrils. At first, nothing happened. The veins shimmered weakly, barely reacting.

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Then the world around her shifted.

A chilling stillness spread outward. The ground withered further into desolation, blades of dying grass crumbling to ash. Trees in the distance sagged and blackened, their life drained. And yet, in her hands, the arm began to change.

The dormant veins sparked to life, now glowing with a vibrant, unnatural hue. An eerie mix of sapphire and violet that throbbed like a heartbeat. Her grin returned, sharp and feral.

"Perfect," she whispered, teeth bared in satisfaction as the mist coiled tighter around her. Her body trembled under the strain, mana draining faster now, like a dam splitting open. "Almost there," she thought, pushing more power into the ability despite the searing pain now flooding her limbs.

The last drop of her mana slipped away.

There was no warning. Just a sudden, brilliant flash as the arm detonated in a burst of radiant, otherworldly light. The mist recoiled, and then... silence.

The arm was gone. Only ash remained, and a hole in the dirt where the burst of energy had taken the surrounding ground with it.

Lira's triumphant grin faltered as the arm disintegrated into motes of fading light. "NO," she howled. "DAMN IT! NO!" Her voice cracked with rage, echoing across the deadened land. She slammed her foot into the earth, the ground splintering beneath her heel. Mana gone. The conduit was destroyed. And still, he had escaped.

Her fury boiled over, a tempest of raw emotion surging through her decaying veins. But just as she turned away, defeated, something shifted. The remaining fragments of energy from the arm pulsed once more and then erupted in a burst of iridescent light. A swirling array of colors bent reality itself, and from that explosion, a tear in space blinked into existence. A rift.

Her breath caught. The rage that had once consumed her twisted into something else entirely. Ecstasy.

Her eyes widened, black and bottomless, and an inhuman cackle escaped her dry, cracked throat. It echoed like a curse, spreading through the deadened forest like a plague. She staggered forward, drawn to the rift like a moth to flame. It was small, barely wide enough for her to pass, but it shimmered with a purity that made her corrupted skin twitch.

"It smells so pure," she thought, inhaling deeply, "so untainted... so delicious." Her grin returned. Twisted, ravenous, mad.

From the other side, she heard something.

A laugh. Soft. Playful. Innocent.

Her grin widened into something monstrous.

"Fresh meat," she rasped with delight, saliva pooling at the corners of her mouth. With a sickening eagerness, she dropped to all fours and began to crawl forward, her hands scraping against the ground as she slipped through the rift.

Silence reigned, broken only by the sound of faint screams that rippled across the veil like ripples through still water.

And then it closed.