Heir of the Fog

The Light that Swallowed the Shadows

Sjakthar knew Rogara was my avatar, so He knew I was not in the Long Sleep. His gaze settled on me with the same certainty as a blade laid to a throat. He saw me as a threat again, and His response was immediate—relentless pressure hammering the Frostkin line. "I need a distraction," I said, letting the words carry, "something to help me slip into His domain."

Though it came from Rogara's throat, the blessed knew the will behind it. "IT WILL BE MY HONOR," Haldrin replied, stepping forward like a wall deciding to walk.

Nine of his best accompanied him. They were the fiercest to have ever followed Haldrin into crimson-held territories, the spear tip he used to break through domains. In moments, they formed a circle around me as vines slithered toward us, hissing through the mist like thrown whips.

I touched Hazeveil, my silent companion. "I'll be counting on you, buddy," I told it, and felt its form blend into mine, the way it did with my true body. Unfortunately, shadow step in this vessel would deplete an onyx's mana reserves, and what I planned would require every bit of mana Rogara could muster.

"Go," I told Haldrin and the nine, "charge and once inside, act as decoy. Pull Sjakthar's focus. Keep Him busy until I blend in."

I gathered myself to run alongside them.

They rushed forward, their strides pounding the rock until the ground around us quaked. Without hesitation, they crossed the seam, leaving the mist and most of their strength behind.

"Now, make noise. Charge. Anything," I said.

Haldrin looked at me once. "IT SHALL BE DONE," he said, and for this command, he did not defy me. Then he and the others rushed forward while Hazeveil pulled me down into a sheath of shadow.

Vulnerable as I was, without shadow step and lacking the mobility of crimson, all I could do was run, clumsy in legs longer than I was used to. Hazeveil's invisibility was complete within the shadow domain. Still, without a decoy to distract Sjakthar and absorb His strikes, everything within a mile of my entry point would be torn to pieces.

Guilt tugged at me for using my creations as decoys, but Guile demanded its due. With an onyx core, the path narrowed to a single line. Each time one of my creations fell, dread pressed against my ribs, a feeling I tried to hide but couldn't, and it hurt all the worse because Haldrin was among them, one of the first to stand at my side in the earliest days of the Frostkin.

Yet their deaths carried with them something even fouler: a surge of joy and the intoxicating weight of power. I now understood that the purpose of both blessed and warlocks was to nurture that power, but every time the truth pressed on me, it made my stomach turn. I would never see my creations as cattle.

Behind me, the army of shadows rose once again. Not tiny beings this time, but giants ready to face the invading Frostkin. Haldrin met them head-on. His spear pierced the first one through the chest; his comrades rammed and hewed, and frost-blades split shadow limbs that reknit even as they fell. The Frostkin pressed forward despite everything, smashing through whatever stood in their path.

With an aura, one could force the shadows to stay solid long enough to truly kill them, a simple feat for a crimson, much harder for those without their own aura. My Frostkin lacked such a shield. Weakened as they were, the first of them staggered, and then the giants of shadow encircled him.

Tendrils and limbs of night engulfed him completely, smothering plate and spear alike until his form vanished in the tide. For a heartbeat, his outline still thrashed inside that mass, then the darkness pierced through, reached his core, and swallowed the light from it. Another of my creations was gone.

***

In this vessel, being onyx meant that five long minutes passed before I reached what I dared call close enough for what I was about to attempt, five minutes of careful, measured steps while the world thundered.

Outside the shadow domain, a strange sight caught my eye. I looked back and caught the elf next to Ella, their figures faint from that distance. The Frostkin around them had pulled away from the clash, not all, but enough that it showed. Some still pressed the fight, but a broad swath had shifted, forming a circle, shields raised, with their backs turned to the battle as if protecting something hidden at the center.

I frowned. That didn't seem right. Why pull back now? Why form a ring? What are they… doing?

The question nearly escaped my lips. Whatever the elf told Ella, it convinced her and with Haldrin gone from their side, the Frostkin must have accepted her orders.

Inside, Haldrin still fought. What started as ten was now three, Haldrin and two others, holding against a God. They would not last. The nightmarish titan born from the corrupted mist, the one with twisted-trunk legs and hanging tendrils, was faltering. The ground beneath it softened, ready to swallow him whole.

When that creature died, Sjakthar's focus would shift entirely to Haldrin. There was no time to unravel what Ella and the elf had planned. I prepared myself for one last, probably hopeless, stand.

I had seen Rogara do this only once, against the lava hounds, to save the one she loved—before his betrayal. It was a spell created by my warlock, born of reckless, passionate will pressed against impossible odds. Following what I had seen her do, a sphere took shape in my hands and white heat began to blossom.

I had finally reached a close enough distance to believe this could affect Sjakthar, but as soon as the sphere formed, His gaze landed on me. His whole body turned to face me, with that chasm that opened only into the void.

"NO!" Haldrin's voice tore across the domain. He and the two remaining Frostkin charged directly at Sjakthar, and their shout carried for miles as the Frostkin pushed through the army of shadows. Even the titan facing Him heaved itself up for one last, staggering lunge before earth could swallow him whole.

"Thank you," I said, hoping Haldrin and the others would hear it. I knew what they were buying me: seconds. But those precious seconds were all I needed.

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I fed the blaze. The white flame swelled, expanded outward, and pushed against His darkness. It drank from my sleeping body through the bond like a starving creature and pushed Rogara's vessel to its limit in moments; veins stood out like cords, blood flowed hot, and vision narrowed to red.

I kept pouring mana until control slipped from my grasp.

White bomb.

When the flame broke its leash, light swallowed the shadows as if they had never been. For a blink, I saw only white; the next brought the hammer of the blast wind as it launched me, my body flung weightless across the darkness. Only then did sound arrive—a thunderous roar rolling through the Abyss.

A heartbeat later, stone stopped me. I struck hard, wall rock shattering bone, spine and most of Rogara's frame breaking at once. Blood filled her mouth, and no muscle answered.

Even so, the sight before me was beautiful. His shadowed domain had diminished; during those bright moments, there was only light.

Sjakthar reacted instantly. He turned the ground into liquid and let it flow like black water, swallowing everything in His domain—Frostkin, debris, and even the titanic beast that had faced Him a moment earlier. Bodies and boulders spilled down a throat He created from the earth.

But in those bright moments when the shadows broke, Winged Death surged forward, fueled by the blaze. The Perfect God, still caught between the veil and flesh, pressed His will through Sjakthar's body and sought to claim it. Stone cracked like torn hide; entire slabs of rock sloughed away, and golden blood flowed from the chasm in gleaming rivers.

For a heartbeat, I believed it—we had achieved the impossible. We had slain the Devourer of Gods.

The illusion shattered as soon as the light dimmed. Shadows recoiled and then surged back, drowning the glow in an instant. His domain stitched itself whole again. Though Winged Death had carved wounds deep enough to stagger even Him, the triumph was brief. Sjakthar's dark will pressed harder, and the light of Winged Death was driven back into silence.

"Shit, shit, shit," I cursed. "Just die. This can't be real."

No matter how many fronts we opened, how many tricks we used, or how many wounds we carved. He endured. The limitations mortality imposed upon me were laughable when faced against His power.

Even so, we made Him bleed. Rivers of golden blood poured from the chasm, flowing like a waterfall. If this were to be my last sight, at least it would show how close we had come.

My vessel couldn't move and held no mana; even if I drew from my own body, she would likely die if I tried to wield any more. I was out of the fight, able to do nothing but watch.

Only then did something strange catch my attention. Far away, more Frostkin had arrived, and the formation had shifted entirely. The elf wove symbols into the air, the Language of the World as she called it, but what she was telling eluded me.

She seized the moment while Sjakthar was completely distracted. In those breaths, none of His vines or strikes reached beyond His domain. The power He used to make the earth swallow everything within His shadows, along with the wounds inside Him, clearly drained Him.

The elf didn't hesitate. Her hands moved in slow, deliberate arcs, and symbols floated in the air like pale embers. The fog itself shifted toward her, curling into the mist as if listening. A Frostkin stepped forward from the ring. He rested his hand on the hilt of his blade and bowed his head, still and resolute. For a moment, all else paused—battle, mist, even my own thoughts. Then, with a single motion, he drove the blade into his core. Light fractured. He collapsed.

I gasped as the will I had given returned to me, and for a moment, I didn't understand what I had seen. Then the next, and the next, did the same. They stood in a circle, and as each fell, I saw my sleeping body at its center.

"Stop this madness!" I tried to shout, but my voice was too faint. At that distance, they would never hear me.

At first, I thought the elf was controlling them, but it quickly became clear she wasn't, and it reminded me of the moments before Winged Death ascended.

A sacrifice ritual. Evoking the attention of the fog, showing grasp over the… third rule. But how? What was it? Dominance? Conquest? Ruling? No, it can't be.

While I felt certain it was related, it made sense since the crimson beings knew how to control and maintain territory. However, it wasn't that simple. The true third rule still eluded me.

As Frostkin after Frostkin fell, their will poured back into me, all the life blessings I had given. But not upon my body; it came directly into my soul, which became so heavy that I felt it as a physical weight, simply too much to bear, and the strain bent me inward.

Then, the elf etched even more symbols into the air, but this time their meaning reached me. "You master demands your life to prove he is not bound." The words were clear but confusing; the elf certainly wanted me to hear them.

It made me think she was misleading them, thinning our numbers for a reason I couldn't quite understand. Yet, the one beside her was Ella—one of the Isari. She wouldn't be fooled so easily, no. Whatever the elf said to convince Ella was not a lie.

The Frostkin willingly sacrificed their lives. As their wills merged with mine, I sensed the reward of everything they had cultivated—all that power, something it would take another crimson beast, centuries, perhaps longer, to gather.

I tried to move, to reach them, to beg them to stop this senseless offering. To tell them I was not ready. Winged Death had accepted sacrifices to sharpen His will, but it was not through them that He proved Himself worthy of godhood. It was something else.

Time slipped through my hands like water. My soul strained, torn by the weight of the power given upon me. The elf was forcing me toward ascendance, ready or not. Yet without the missing insight, the step forward remained closed.

At last, I saw Haldrin step out of Sjakthar's domain, torn and badly injured but still alive. He had survived the earth attack that devoured all, even the army of shadows. He stood alone. His back was to the fallen, his gaze only on those still alive.

It was only then that I understood the third rule.

Claim.

"You see it now. Good," the elf said, noting the change in my demeanor.

Claim was much more than dominance, much more than to leave a mark, but also to claim an aspect. Godhood wasn't simply a step forward, but the solidification of the connection that began in onyx.

Winged Death tried to land a claim upon perfection with Sjakthar's help. But no matter how close he got, he never truly achieved it. Sharn told me he could have ascended long ago, and she was right.

But those were just words she had heard from her God. She never truly understood what was holding Him back, nor could Sjakthar reveal it, because knowing before understanding would have hindered the insight itself.

Only when he understood that the claim was controlling him and he denied it did he truly reach perfection—his claim was complete. By then, the only thing left was the will to push through, which Sjakthar provided through many sacrifices.

"I see now," I said, loudly despite the wounds my vessel carried. "I laid a claim upon creation."

My claim had been clear from the first days my territory formed, yet I let it rule me. These sacrifices were not only meant to empower me. They were meant to teach me the cycle of my claim, to make me understand that everything I create will inevitably meet its end.

And only by accepting endings can new creations emerge.

There were many Frostkin, and despite the sacrifices, most would survive. Accepting their ending and retrieving the power from the blessings was the only way I could push forward, ensuring that even more of their kind would rise in the future.

Claim was a mere concept, yet it acted upon reality. The elf forced the choice, but in the end, I understood. And the fog saw it.