ADARA

The world had veins.

It slithered out of the air and stretched higher over the city, the nearest bridge blocked off as it followed the draconic vulture tracing the crags above their head. One small reprieve, though Yuven's eyes widened in terror and broke apart the relief. "The bridge!" She ran for the one escape, readying a ball of flames on the edge of her glyph before the strange crimson barrier closed them off from their chance at freedom. Silver lilies rolled across her knuckles when she went to throw all her legendary might into its surface.

"Adara, no!"

Yuven came out of the ripple of truth and her face smashed into his arm and she tumbled inches from the barrier, and the gaps bled closed and continued upwards. Twisted glyphs swirled on a massive circumference, and she rubbed her chin of the pain. "What was that for?" she asked. "Yuven! We need to get out of here! I can break this barrier, can't I?"

Yuven scowled down at her, his front dripping with crimson. "If you touch that barrier—" He wheezed. "You will die." He swung his vicious attention to a swaying draugr humming in their direction, and Adara jumped when he shoved a lance of ice into its stomach. Impaled, it writhed and screamed, clawing at the gap between them as Yuven threw it against the barrier. Red lightning tore through its bones, straight to its marrow and turned the necrotized flesh into little ribbons, until there was nothing left but bony shards at her feet. Adara shuffled away from the sound of its last release, and she stared at Yuven, who tossed the spike to the side and wiped his lips of the blood. Yuven lifted his head to follow the building blood, pulsing with veins.

"Yuven?" she rasped when it spun in the sky, hovering over the city. "Yuven, what's it doing?"

It raised its wings, the tips almost meeting against each other, casting a large shadow.

"We have to get to the Umbral Gate." Yuven grabbed her elbow and dragged her to her feet and returned to Fenrer, who groaned and rubbed his face. "I know exactly what it's doing." He glared at the bridge, where he sent the draugr into destruction.

Over her head, a crackling glyph whispered to life in shimmered space, the axis as the wyvern hovered over it. As the barrier crawled its way along the cradle, Adara helped Yuven lift Fenrer to his feet, though from his unfocused expression, he was in no condition for further heroics. "Well, what is it doing?" Adara asked when they dragged Fenrer through the broken streets, where spots of flames continued to bite the air.

Yuven's gaze lowered in guilt, and he said nothing as they reached the center of the dead city. Music crawled over her shoulders when the barrier connected at the focal points, and her heart dropped when it stretched its wings further with a familiar song. It copied the glyph below its claws to spin along its fiery wings. It buried into her ears when they reached the steps to the broken Umbral Gate, with Yuven setting Fenrer down on the peak of the platform, staring up at it, before closing his eyes and slumping in uncharacteristic defeat.

"Yuven," she whispered. "What do we do?"

He exhaled, the sound soft. "Solise'qen..." Violet irides revealed themselves against the vertical pupils when a horrid, pained laugh escaped his throat and swept down his cheeks in tears, and he clawed at his face. "Of course, why would the universe ever give me peace from this?" He hid behind his hands. "I am sorry, Adara Sazaka... but there is no road we can take. We are to meet the same fate as the people who once lived in this city, who are now nothing but broken remnants." He dropped his hands against his sides.

"What? No, there must be something we can do," Adara pleaded, and a shiver went up her spine at the crack of magick above, and the glyph closed its jaws. Hands of a clock inched across the ticks of time, and the wyvern opened its wings and released the glyph up into the clouds of the blizzard. Fire inched at her fingers, but when she tried to bring it out, it fizzled into worthless smoke. "Yuven." One more snap to ignite the inferno, she continued and longed for it to answer her plea. "Yuven, my magick isn't manifesting."

He gazed at her, then at her hands, then to Fenrer, who remained slumped in exhaustion and bereft of a fight, her crimson shawl wrapped snug around his neck. As the glyph ticked above, the wyvern flew itself upwards, disappearing into the clouds — into the maw of the void with white feathered scales. Adara breathed her own death, and sank to her knees. "No..." In the return of silence, she choked on her lack of acceptance of the end as the barrier throbbed with a heartbeat. Yuven returned his attention to the peak of the cradle, where the barrier counted down to an end. Tebora, in ruins at her fingertips. People, chewed to their bones and their chest cavities swallowed by the monsters of the Echo Obscura. Pain went down her neck when she checked on the axis, and once more tried to expel out loving warmth. Mother's face, nothing more than a familiar blur.

A little child, who wore a wolven headdress too large for them.

Another, trapped in a cell with a sense of wonder in the wings of a wyvern.

In the swaths of doom, an inherent song of golden hope.

But what is this magick in the air that it can so easily stifle mine? Adara held her head and bit down on a sob. Am I truly unable to do anything in these moments? Palm open, she begged for a flicker, and got nothing but silver ash when it tried to gather over her skin. Lost, she placed it back in her lap and sat in her despair, swallowed by the horde. Her fingers dug into her pants as the knights called for her death, and the axe brushed against the hairs on her neck, and she winced when the glyph ticked onwards, slowing closer to the peak. "How much time do we have?"

Yuven stood there in a daze. "Soon."

Another tick of time, echoing from Fenrer's golden-studded pocket-watch.

Bile rose into her throat, and she covered her mouth to stop her vomit. "It won't be quick, will it?"

Yuven shook his head as he stared out into the city streets.

"Adara?"

His voice broke her out of her tormented acceptance. "What?"

"Have you thought of my answer to your question when you asked why I fought when I showed you the barren town? What happened to the sole resident who lived there?" Yuven lifted his gaze to the hidden sky, chewing on his cheek. "And I told you—"

"If I don't, who will?" Adara sighed. "Yeah, I remember."

"And what else did I say?"

Adara grasped for her memories, for a collar buried in the dirt, splattered with bloody love and grief. "I... don't recall."

"Then I'll have you remember, because I am not inclined to repeat myself again." He outstretched his hand. "Give me that crystal, Sazaka."

"What?" Adara pushed it into his waiting fingers, then frowned when he held it out in front of him. "What are you doing?"

"We are going to die," he said. "It will not be painless. I cannot say it will be quick. It wasn't for those who lived and died here, their lives nothing but a spark in the night." He dug his fingers into the crystal, and Adara lurched when he shattered it in his grip, and it spilled out silver cascades mixed with his blood. "Stifled by what I had turned into. A monster. A host to a Husk, with my memories nothing but ash, who is left to remember them but I, the one who destroyed them?" he questioned, softer, then scowled with draconic rage at the ticking glyph. "Their lives. The dreams they had. I ruined it all." He threw the silver mist into the air, and it hushed into the wind and crackled in her ears when the clouds parted with a pitch black glyph. "And still, I'd rather die with a blade in my hand." Crimson droplets flicked off his fingers when he shook his hand, and magick bloomed along the runes. "I'd rather die making right what I could not do back then." He held out his arms, then hissed, "Never again."

Adara tucked her feet off the steps when mist crawled up them, gathering into a gale around the broken gate. In an echo of the glyph below, an icy maelstrom danced through the streets and formed a beautiful glyph in turn. A whole reflection of the one which cast a horrid shadow in the singing clouds. "Yuven!" she said, grabbing onto him. "What are you planning?"

"Giving us one last chance." Yuven kept his gaze trained when magick slithered into the broken pieces of the gate, and Adara edged closer to Fenrer, who shut his eyes tight in apparent acceptance of their doom — or whatever Yuven Traye intended. "I meant it when I said I will drag you kicking and screaming, Sazaka. Ready yourself. Accept what this damned life has given you in your past and fight the rest." Clouds billowed outwards from the glyph, and Yuven threw his hands upwards. "For if I miss, we are going to die for a future we will never see."

Adara shuddered when the shadow came closer through the core of the blizzard, the same screaming song of Euron piercing her ears. Evyriaz, the Traveller of the Echonic Echoes.

We're going to die.

Silver mist wrapped around them, drawing the low-hanging clouds closer into a soft tornado. Another white glyph spread outwards above them, freezing the clock. Plumes of mist left Yuven's nostrils when he lowered his head and his feathers stretched outwards. One last exhale, he scowled when it screamed closer into its nosedive, aiming for the heart of the disrupted, broken glyph. It slowed, a stumble across bloodied fields. Stop their advance, he screamed, and threw himself upon the horde, following his own example, never asking others what he wouldn't do himself.

"It is not the only one who can rip space and time asunder," he hissed with a shining wyvern in his violet eyes and crimson electricity ripped around them when the glyph cracked with its might. It whispered and shrunk with a melodic dream, ghosts came to life, lived their lives, swept away by the current of the flow. The monster roared and the glyph shattered as blood-soaked glass. Pressure burst her eardrums and she screamed with the pain when it dug into her skin, but the glyphs shimmered upwards into the maelstrom of ice. Yuven set his heel down, and threw the force through the entire city, and the world popped with the final count.

It rippled into a twilight expanse of falling stars. Twilight infernos wrapped around her and spread ashes across her body.

The flames of rebirth.

Another emerald star slammed into the starry sea below, fizzling into the darkness. The brightest one careened further ahead, and skipped across the waves before sinking itself. Her back hit clouds, and wings bloomed in her sideview, wasting away into nothing with the beak of the phoenix cracking the mirror once more.

She sank.

Deeper, but when she took a breath, it filled her lungs with light.

Deeper, and she held out her hands, nothing more than blurry limbs when she tried to reach out to the other two fallen stars, dwindling out of their precious existence. Bubbles formed starbursts around her. Lilies bloomed, but her strength waned. She floated into the maws of the Goliath which swallowed the crystal of Tebora. Jisa. Tara. Each of them floated beside her, before the twilight flames cremated their memories in her fingers.

Underneath the waves, birds sang out to the toll of harbor bells, and a beam of sunlight pierced the abyss from below.

Space and time rent asunder.

Thrown out of Irimount's space of existence.

Her final breath expanded into phoenix fumes, and she slipped into the darkness when the other two stars fluttered, out of energy and disappeared from her extended reach along the trail of silver bells.