Chapter 477 - Passing flames

Evelyne’s heart hammered in her ears as she finished casting Cinderwheel Rampart.

A fan of rotating blades of fire burst into being before her, spreading outward in a broad, shifting arc that pushed the air aside with sweltering force. Heat washed back over her face. Her lips pressed into a thin line as sweat beaded along her brow, threatening to drip into her eyes, but she didn’t dare blink.

The thing in front of them was not quite a knight.

It had the shape of one, perhaps. You could see hints of the joints of its armour. The blade of a sword. The remnants of a posture that belonged to someone who had once known how to stand with discipline and purpose. But all of it was wrong in the way a reflection became wrong when viewed through muddled glass. Its edges blurred whenever Evelyne tried to focus on them, and the hollow space where its body should have been made her eyes ache.

The fiery blades struck it again and again, forcing it back step by step. They didn’t cut it, but that was all she needed.

“Come,” she forced out, turning her head slightly towards the people behind her.

Lorena Withersworth tightened her arm around her mother’s shoulder and pulled the older woman forward. The robes of the Ustrum Assembly hung loose around her, one sleeve burned almost to the elbow, and she looked completely exhausted, but her grip on Lady Withersworth remained steady.

Lady Withersworth winced as her injured foot touched the ground. “Dear, don’t waste your strength on me,” she said, her voice thin but still carrying that same gentle firmness Evelyne had come to know so well. “You should focus on yourself.”

“I won’t,” Lorena replied. “Now you are going to save your breath, Mother. Any more and you will start to make both me and Lady Evelyne mad.”

Lady Withersworth looked as though she wanted to object, but when she saw Evelyne’s expression, she stopped. A sigh escaped her.

Lorena gave Evelyne a brief, thankful nod, and Evelyne smiled weakly in return before turning back to the path ahead.

Their group was moving in an uneven wedge through the ruined court. Evelyne was currently holding the front because she still had the most mana to spare, though that advantage was becoming thinner by the minute. Three Palace Guards covered the sides, while two Solar Knights held the rear, bright gold aura flaring around them as they fended off anything that tried to pursue. Between those points clustered the guests who couldn’t protect themselves, several frightened officials, a handful of attendants, and the mages who had already exhausted most of their mana.

All of them had taken part in establishing the barrier, leaving them exposed when the attack began. Lorena, especially, had spent the last of her mana shielding the group from a Stormglass Deluge that had erupted across half the court, its shards coming close enough that they had nearly blinded Evelyne. The other mages could still rotate in where needed, lending support to Evelyne or the knights in brief bursts, but Lorena could do little more than steady her mother and keep her moving now.

Evelyne threw a worried glance over her shoulder at the Cinderwheel Rampart spell she had left behind.

Threads of fire peeled away from the wheel and vanished into the distorted space around the entity, as if the spell were being eaten from the edges inward.

Cinderwheel Rampart was unique in that its blades would continue to widen and expand in an arc for as long as the spell’s mana allowed. She had infused it with enough that it should have lasted for at least two minutes, keeping the hollow knight in place, but she could tell it wouldn’t last even half that. Then the knight would be free again to either follow their group or hunt down someone else.

There was something about these things that made mana structures inherently unstable.

It was an unsettling fact.

She didn’t understand what they were fighting.

Scarlett had told her stories of impossible places, ancient threats, and monsters that shouldn’t exist in the modern world. Evelyne had listened to those warnings and believed them. She had prepared mentally as much as anyone could prepare for something described in fragments by a sister who treated the impossible as an inconvenience.

But this was different.

These entities weren’t merely strong. They appeared without warning, sometimes from holes in the air, and sometimes from places Evelyne could have sworn were empty a heartbeat earlier. Some moved like beasts. Some stood still like statues. Some wore the shapes of people who had been standing nearby only moments before.

And those who touched them sometimes simply vanished.

Evelyne had seen it happen more than once now. There had been a court official reaching for a fallen woman, only for him to disappear behind a blur of distortion before he could touch her. A guardsman had shoved a noble out of danger, only to vanish mid-motion as the space around him folded in on itself. One of the palace attendants had frozen for half a heartbeat too long, and then simply ceased to be where she stood.

There was never even a scream. No blood or body either.

A cold pressure gathered in Evelyne’s chest whenever she thought about it.

She couldn’t help feeling that she was next.

A sharp cry pulled her attention to the left. An imperial official was crouched behind an overturned table, his face almost grey with fright. The table clearly offered no real protection, but somehow he’d survived until now, and he clung to it as if it were a fortress. When he saw Evelyne’s group passing, his eyes lit with frantic hope.

He scrambled over the table and ran towards them.

Evelyne raised one hand, gesturing him in without slowing. “Stay in the middle.”

It felt weird giving these people commands. She wasn’t a soldier, and she couldn’t boast any great achievements. But somehow she had landed in this role, and she found herself channelling her sister’s assertive tone with the people around her.

The man obeyed without question, nearly stumbling into one of the attendants before a Palace Guard caught him by the shoulder and pushed him along.

Evelyne kept moving.

She had been trying to lead the group somewhere safe, but she wasn’t certain such a place existed within the palace grounds. The expansive court that had been packed shoulder-to-shoulder with nobles, officials, merchants, dignitaries, attendants, knights, guards, and mages not long ago had lost most of its population. Some might have fled. Some had definitely been dragged into those impossible openings. Others lay unmoving among broken stone and splintered platforms.

The rest were scattered in pockets across the court.

Groups like theirs had formed wherever protection could be found. Some sheltered behind conjured barriers, while others clustered around knights or mages. A few—like the man earlier—simply huddled wherever they found themselves, too frightened to move and too exposed to last long if anything noticed them.

The ground between those pockets was a battlefield, though. Evelyne couldn’t even describe it. It was unbelievable how fast this place had transformed. If so many people hadn’t already disappeared, she was sure at least half would have died in the chaos that followed once the first of the arch mages’ magic went out of control.

She wasn’t sure which of the arch mages had lost control, but the Stormglass Deluge had only been one of several powerful spells that could have taken her life today. She could only be grateful there had been mages present who could counter their effects.

Evelyne paused as the air a couple of dozen metres in front of them distorted. A tree-like shape appeared there. She raised her hands, preparing another spell, but the thing never moved.

A small breath of relief left her.

Not all of the entities hunted actively. Some did, and those were the worst. But many remained fixed in place, like traps left behind by random chance. They only became aggressive when approached.

People had already died because they failed to realise that, so Evelyne kept to the open spaces where she could, even when it forced them onto longer paths.

A sound rose from beyond the palace walls.

Evelyne’s steps faltered.

It wasn’t one explosion, but a continuous, immense grinding. Like storm winds hammering against cliffs, mixed with waves crashing against a harbour wall again and again without pause. It pressed over the court, threaded through with sharper cracks that made the air shiver.

A moment later, something struck outside the wall hard enough to send a tremor through the ground.

Several people behind Evelyne cried out. Someone dropped to a knee, and Lorena would have lost her balance if another mage hadn’t stepped in to help her and her mother.

Evelyne looked towards the outer wall, but the height of the stone and the wreckage across the court blocked most of her view. All she could see were flashes of colour above it.

That frightened her almost as much as the sound itself.

She wished Scarlett was here.

Her sister had been with her at the start. So had Deacon Abram. Then, when the fighting first broke out and several of the hollow openings appeared all at once, Evelyne remembered the pressure of Deacon Abram’s hand against her shoulder as he shoved her aside. She remembered turning, spell not even half-formed, just in time to see the opening close over him.

After that, the court had split apart, and Scarlett had disappeared somewhere as well.

Evelyne’s fingers curled tighter.

She didn’t want to consider the possibility. This was Scarlett, after all.

But what if…

They had never even talked openly about things. Evelyne had thought it was better that way. If they avoided saying too much, they could preserve the illusion they had built between them and pretend the unanswered questions weren’t there.

But thinking that the woman might simply be gone—

No.

Evelyne shook her head.

This was Scarlett they were talking about.

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She wouldn’t die.

Evelyne forced the concerns down and drew on more of her mana.

A blur of movement came from the side.

“Left!” one of the Palace Guards shouted.

Evelyne turned sharply as a hollow figure shaped like a robed mage lifted both arms near the remains of a broken dais. The air above it warped. Pale lances of light formed in a crescent around its head, each one pointed towards Evelyne’s group.

She cast before it could finish.

Emberflurry Salvo.

Fiery bolts snapped into existence around Evelyne and shot forward in a tight spread. They struck the forming lances, detonating several in midair while knocking the rest off course. One spear of pale light hissed past Evelyne’s shoulder close enough that her Mana Barrier flared far brighter than it should have. Another struck a Palace Guard’s shield and sent him sliding back two steps.

One of the Solar Knights at the rear surged past the group in a flash of gold and reached the hollow mage before it could prepare another volley. His sword descended, aura screaming along the edge.

The strike didn’t cut cleanly through. It never did. But it forced the thing down long enough for a Palace Guard to join him, and together they managed to handle it while Evelyne turned her attention towards the rear, watching for another threat as the rest of the group kept moving.

They crossed a stretch of the court near the edge where one of the central marble platforms had somehow landed, buckled upward into uneven ridges. They rounded it slowly, and once they had, Evelyne spotted another group near the inner wall.

At first, she thought they had cornered themselves. The court narrowed there, funnelling towards a covered gallery attached to the wall and presumably leading into the mural passages. It should have been a dangerous place to shelter. Too cramped and too few escape routes. If one of the hollow openings appeared among them, they would have nowhere to dodge.

Three overlapping barriers shimmered over the entrances to the gallery, layered so precisely that Evelyne almost missed the second and third beneath the first.

Was that effective against those hollow entities?

She recognised Grand Wizard Adalicia Mendenhall from Elystead Tower near the centre of the warded area. The woman stood with one hand raised and the other pressed against a line of runes carved into the wall, with two other mages helping her.

Her gaze rose and landed on Evelyne’s group. She immediately signalled to the others around her, and a moment later, three Solar Knights and two Elystead Tower mages stepped out from beneath the wards to help escort Evelyne’s group inside.

Evelyne was hesitant at first, but then she urged the others forward. Once they were inside the relative safety of the gallery entrance, a Palace Guard stepped up to help support Lady Withersworth in Lorena’s place.

Lorena hesitated only briefly before allowing it.

“Lady Evelyne,” Grand Wizard Mendenhall greeted her.

The woman didn’t look much better than Evelyne felt. Her robes were torn in places, her black hair was in partial disarray, and exhaustion showed clearly on her face, but at least she didn’t have any visible injuries.

“Take shelter inside with the rest,” Mendenhall said. “There’s not much space, so be careful. They seem to appear less frequently inside, but you can’t let down your guard.”

“Thank you,” Evelyne replied. “Do you have any more mana potions?”

If this place was safe enough to leave these people, then she was sure most of them would prefer to stay here. As for herself, all she needed was a moment to catch her breath. Then she would go back out.

Mendenhall gave her an uncertain look, but then nodded. “Inside. Speak with Master Docent Rellin.”

Evelyne and the others entered the mural passages within the palace walls, moving carefully through the narrow corridor built into the structure itself. The enclosed space made every sound from outside feel heavier, especially those coming from beyond the palace walls.

There were Palace Guards stationed throughout the passage with swords drawn. There were also two remnants of those hollow entities.

Evelyne kept her distance from them.

She wasn’t sure if they were corpses or something else, but being near them made her deeply uncomfortable.

Eventually, she reached a set of slightly larger chambers within the wall that she assumed normally served as temporary barracks and quarters for soldiers. Here, she found more guards and knights gathered with a significant number of guests, as well as several mages who were carving arrays into the floor and walls.

Evelyne spotted Duke Valentino among them, speaking with a group of officers. Not far from him stood the crown prince, looking pale but composed as he gave commands to the guards. One of the Followers’ deacons was also tending to the injured nearby, hands glowing with soft light as he moved from person to person.

There were also a few hollow remnants, but none that were moving.

Evelyne was familiar with many of the nobles here, but she didn’t approach any of them. As soon as she’d confirmed that Lady Withersworth, her daughter, and the others would be safe here, she found Master Docent Rellin after a brief exchange with one of the Tower mages. He was a thin, balding man who looked harried enough that Evelyne almost felt guilty asking him for anything, but he nodded when she mentioned Mendenhall and produced two mana potions from a satchel that seemed nearly empty.

She drank them both. Mana flowed back into her reserves with a sharp, artificial force, filling the ache that had been growing inside her but doing nothing to ease the exhaustion in the rest of her body. Evelyne clenched her teeth against the strain and waited for the dizziness to pass before asking where she could be of use.

She wasn’t an expert on arrays and couldn’t help Mendenhall or the other wizards maintain the wards, so she offered to go back out and gather more survivors from the court. The crown prince, however, was apparently more concerned about the fighting outside the walls.

The tremors had started coming almost without pause, and some of the impacts had even begun rattling pieces of stone from the ceiling. More than once, the chambers shook hard enough that people fell silent and looked up, as if expecting the entire passage to collapse around them.

After a brief discussion with Duke Valentino and the officers, the crown prince directed a pair of knights to escort Evelyne and several other mages up to the ramparts to assess the situation.

As they climbed higher through the mural passages carved into the palace walls, the stone beneath Evelyne’s feet trembled. She had to press a hand against the wall to maintain her balance. The noise grew louder, and she could almost feel the air itself humming with the strain of whatever was battering the palace from beyond.

When she finally emerged onto the ramparts, she froze.

Rellaria Lake stretched out before her, with Beld Thylelion’s silhouette rising from its waters in the distance, but that was all she recognised of the normally beautiful sight. Even beneath a sky clear of clouds, the lake below looked as though it had been seized by the Blaze of Torment. Waves as tall as multiple buildings hammered against the cliffs beneath Dawnlight Palace, bursting into white foam that climbed almost to the height of the walls.

All of it was caused by a massive beast unlike anything Evelyne had ever seen.

Or the resemblance of a beast.

Like the other hollow entities, it wasn’t quite there. Her eyes struggled to hold its shape, and every detail seemed to shift when she looked at it too closely. It might once have resembled a squid of some sort, except it was nearly as large as Dawnlight Palace, its vast body half-risen from the lake while long tendrils lashed through the water and dragged up the waves.

Floating in the air before it, impossibly small against the creature’s size, were two figures.

It took a moment for Evelyne to recognise that those were Dean Godwin of Elystead Tower and Lady Blackwood, the imperial advisor.

She watched as Godwin swept one arm out, and the air above the lake bent beneath him. A vast crescent of compressed wind formed, almost invisible except where it tore the spray apart. He sent it down, and it cut through one of the creature’s tendrils with enough force to split the lake beneath it.

The severed shape recoiled, but it was already reforming.

A cluster of dark, interlocking sigils opened above Lady Blackwood’s raised hand, then collapsed into a single point of dark light that shot forward and struck the beast’s main body. For an instant, the water around it flattened completely. Then the impact erupted outward, hurling up a wall of foam and spray so high it hid both mages from view.

A moment later, the creature’s tendrils burst through the falling water again.

Evelyne could only stare.

She had never witnessed power like this in person before. Not from her father. Not from any mage she had met.

This was simply beyond her.

And to think she had once considered herself gifted.

It was a bitter, almost shameful thought — and one she had no right to entertain now.

People were dying.

Evelyne tore her gaze away from the lake. If she couldn’t help against the thing outside the walls, then she would help where she could.

She crossed to the other side of the rampart, facing the inner court.

“Lady Evelyne…” one of the mages beside her said.

His voice trembled.

Evelyne understood why.

From above, the court looked even worse than it had down there. It was as if seeing the massive creature in the lake had shifted something in her perception, because now she could make the things below out much more clearly.

There were so many of them.

Far too many.

How had they even made it through that?

“How many of those are from people…?” another mage whispered.

Evelyne didn’t answer.

Her hand shook as she raised it, gathering mana for a long-range Emberlance Barrage. Below, a group of survivors had been driven against the remains of a collapsed platform. One man stood in front of them with golden aura blazing around him, holding the entities back through sheer stubbornness, but he was losing ground.

Evelyne fixed her aim. She didn’t know how they would make it out of this, but—

There was a shift.

Like a world that had been turned upside down had suddenly been set right.

Evelyne blinked, and the court below was filled with people.

Those who had vanished.

“T-They’re back!” someone cried. “They’re not dead!”

Relief struck Evelyne for one brief, impossible moment.

Then horror followed.

“No—!”

The returned hadn’t appeared somewhere safe. They were scattered across the ruined court, among rubble, spell-scarred stone, and all of those hollow entities. Even with all of the knights and mages back, there would be no way to stop things from repeating.

Or worse—

A woman in a ceremonial dress reappeared beside a buckled slab of marble. She barely had time to look around before one of the hollow shapes lurched towards her.

This time, she didn’t simply vanish.

Evelyne’s throat closed up.

She could see everything from here. The trapped groups, the returned knights, the injured guests, and the entities moving between them.

There had to be something she could do.

She wasn’t powerful enough to stop them. But if she could buy even a minute—

A flash of red snagged her attention.

She turned towards it, but it was gone.

A tendril of mist curled beside her.

“Evelyne, I need your help.”

Her head snapped around. “Scarlett—!”

Her sister had already moved past her towards the centre of the rampart, eyes fixed on the clash taking place out over the water. Her hair streamed behind her in the violent wind tearing across the stones from the two arch wizards’ fight.

A curved silver fang set into a circular frame of bone appeared in her hand.

“What are you—?” Evelyne began.

“If you could lend me your hand.”

She turned again and found a purple-haired woman standing there with a mild smile.

Evelyne stared.

She wasn’t following what was happening.

“You’re—”

“Yamina Ward, yes,” the woman cut her off. “And we unfortunately don’t have time for much more than that. Your sister needs your help.”

Evelyne looked from her to Scarlett.

She held out her hand.

Yamina clasped Evelyne’s hand. Then she lifted her free palm, and a thick tome appeared above it, pages snapping open.

“This will hurt, I’m afraid,” she said. “But I only know how to do it through shared blood, and your sister suspects her mana won’t be enough if she wants to remain standing afterward.”

Before Evelyne could ask what that meant, Yamina’s glasses glowed a faint blue. She traced a glyph across the back of Evelyne’s hand with her thumb, then formed a sigil in the air.

Pain burned through Evelyne’s skin.

In front, the same glyph lit on Scarlett’s hand.

Scarlett raised the fang. Somewhere in the distance, a hush of howl-like whispers carried on the wind.

Then Evelyne’s mana was ripped from her.

Her knees nearly buckled. The sensation was nothing like casting. It was much more forceful, like a river being dragged backwards through her veins. At the same time, mana erupted around Scarlett. More than she should have. Enough that it almost seemed to turn physical.

Astonished cries came from the other mages. Their amazement and disbelief barely registered through the deluge of pain shooting through Evelyne.

“Endure it, if you can,” Yamina’s voice sounded next to her.

Scarlett’s mana continued to surge until, finally, it seemed to reach a breaking point.

The howls ceased.

Runes carved into the silver fang lit up.

“Primordial pyromancy,” Scarlett said quietly, almost solemnly. “The First Conflagration.”

For a moment, there was silence.

Then the howls returned.

They didn’t sound distant anymore. They curled around the ramparts and swept across the court below, carrying words Evelyne couldn’t understand but could feel pressing against her bones. The silver fang in Scarlett’s hand burned brighter with each one, its runes flaring in time with the voices in the wind. Flames sparked around Scarlett’s fingers, then stretched outward in wide, curving arcs that climbed into the air above her.

The arcs converged into a single blazing star high in the sky, swelling until the air around it bent and shimmered. Complex runes etched themselves into the fiery core, so intricate that Evelyne couldn’t even begin to make them out. The hollow things below seemed to notice it at the same time. Across the court, distorted heads turned. The massive shape in the lake rose higher from the waves, its tendrils lashing with sudden violence.

Scarlett lowered the fang.

A blinding curtain of power descended upon the world. Countless streams of fire burst from the star.

The court below Evelyne filled with flames.

The fire didn’t linger on the living. It passed around them, close enough that Evelyne saw hair and robes whip in the force of it, but not so much as a thread caught alight. Where the hollow things stood, however, the flames carved deep into the air itself. One after another, those warped forms disappeared beneath the blaze, leaving only searing marks hanging there like permanent reminders.

Beyond the walls, a storm of fire concentrated on the massive hollow.

Arcs descended on it from every direction, curving through the spray and crashing into its vast body with thunderous force. Its tendrils were swallowed first, burning lines racing along their lengths as the lake exploded into steam around them. More fire followed, pouring down from the star in wave after wave until the creature’s shifting shape was almost lost behind the red-orange glare.

For several seconds, Evelyne could see nothing of the lake but flame and boiling mist.

The last of Scarlett’s fire drifted down, and for the first time since the attack began, Dawnlight Palace was quiet.