ADARA

'I believe', you told me. 'I have faith — in our enduring will to survive.'

Atop the navy spire of the Elder convocation, the beacon at its top pulsated in time with the warning bells which sang out from the cardinal points of the city. Red hues filled the scenery drenched in blood as shapes shuffled about the huge courtyard, moving bodies into piles and setting up protected stations for the wounded. Storm Wardens waved people through the gates and closed them shut, sending a giant glyph across the split wood. On the slope of a hill, Derelicts tore through the fields with her powerless to stop them. Magick exploded and landed in the horde, but when she blinked out of the memory, she stood between Fenrer and Blackwall instead.

Arms folded, Fenrer shuffled on his feet, the chained gambison along his gray leathers clinking against each-other with his movement. "Why would the world crystal of Naveera have that information in particular?" His fingers dug into his sleeves, hooking into the band which stood as a testament of someone else's fear. "It doesn't add up, the memories within would mostly be of Naveeran history, at least, a pale reflection of what it witnessed before it solidified." Fenrer refused to look at her, while Reyn lowered his gaze to his knees, flicking from side to side. "That's how world crystals work, you're a Keeper, you should know that."

Blackwall moved his pointer from side to side. "One may labor to erase magick, but it is within the very world. One can try all they like to stomp it out, but the memory of magick is immutable," he pointed out. "And that is the basis of your sacrificial blood rituals. You are not simply making the flow remember. You are creating a point in the echo for it to react to... and that world crystal wasn't your regular world crystal, or else it wouldn't have granted a wish and summoned a demonic entity, a death curse."

"Wait, what?" Adara asked.

Fenrer swung his attention to her, then back to Blackwall, who lifted his shoulders. "Out of the entire world, Naveera shields itself in its own duplicity the most," he remarked. "Avaerilians have forgotten their inner songs, deafened underneath the howl of the blizzard, but it didn't always used to be that way." He tilted his head to her again when Fenrer took a step closer to him, bristled. "You said you wanted information, Fenrer Pyren, and I'm not the one that bore true witness to history's turn and the birth of men and women into gods even at great risk of life."

Fenrer withdrew from Keeper Blackwall, brow furrowed. Bells tolled, distorted underneath a broken shield. "Adara," he said, acknowledging her after a long minute. "What is it that you saw in that crystal in Naveera?" He approached her instead, and Blackwall tucked his hands in his sleeves. "What were you trying to tell me before?" Fenrer's breath left his lips in quiet huffs of uncertainty and anxiety. "When it mixed with your magick, what did its memory show you?" One more step, and she choked on her hypocrisy. "I need this cleared up for me, he's not making any sense and he isn't about to clear things up, please?" He waved his hand at Blackwall, who quirked an eyebrow.

How long could I have lied? Adara sucked in her lips and released her words. "I was floating through the twilight sea." On the top of a mountain peak, a man with hair born of snow whites knelt at the edge and witnessed the death of a newborn Order. "It brought me back to some point a thousand Turns ago, near the end of the Great Crimson Dusk. Like I said, the Storm Warden's were getting slaughtered, they stood their ground but they had no chance at all... and above them all... the being most call Evyriaz."

Fenrer nodded in one quick stroke. "Aye, I'd have to assume the Traveller would be the one to bear witness to that—" He stopped when she raised her hand to him. "What?"

"Fen," Adara tore it out of her throat. "Evyriaz isn't his only name. Two names for two forms." He withdrew from her, brow creasing. "I managed to break through the opening you made when Yuven and I chased after him out into the Frozen Wastes." Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, but she pushed on, "It wasn't Evyriaz he responded to, Evyriaz was corrupted, drowning. I called out his name." Adara took in a heavy breath, then spoke out magick, "Euron Traye, and last I looked Yuven's just an Avaerilian... Euron Traye is his ancestor... the progenitor of his name, where his bloodline magick comes from. He was a Storm Warden, he knew he was sending all those Warden's against an unstoppable foe—" Adara took a step closer when Fenrer shuffled back from her, arms withdrawn. "I watched him leap from the mountains and transform into a wyvern to save them. Maybe he wasn't an Ancient — but he had power, the same power I hold." Her hand smacked against her chest. "And then I saw Ojain walk through the Echo Obscura when the heavens split into two to reveal the sun."

Magick pulsed. Fenrer went still.

"Maybe..." Fenrer drew out. "Maybe he called upon Evyriaz's power? It's not out of the realm of what might've happened." He perked his head up, but the energy died in his face. "Back when the echoes were whole and the Ancients had more effect upon this plane, and their connection to the Otherworld. If their existence was a falsehood then..." He shook his head. "No, you're confused, Adara. You don't know this world as well as you should. You haven't read a lot of our history books, you can't trust Obscura Texts, if you're not an Aurus they have a tendency to drive one into madness. It is not as easy as reading them like books, same with the mind, same with emotions." He waved his arms further. "This. This is why Aurus tread the fine line." Dismay rippled through the greens when he turned to Blackwall, who remained unmoved, and Reyn whose eyes widened long before Fenrer's faith caught up with the truth. "Think for a minute, Blackwall could've easily—"

"I'm flattered, but I'm not that powerful, Fenrer Pyren," Blackwall pointed out. "Certainly not powerful enough to create images into a world crystal for my own ends."

Fenrer ignored him and stared at her. "It doesn't make sense. Only an Ancient could carry that much magick through the split echo and close the hole." Adara shook her head at him once more, pleading for her words to break through the walls upon walls he built to shield his belief. His hand raised to his chest, then dropped to his band when the spirals echoed the opalescent weave. "We didn't live that history — we'd have to ask Evyriaz, the last remnant of that time — the truth."

"Fen... that crystal was holding his memories," Adara rasped. "That is the truth."

"I didn't see it for myself," he argued, faint. "Like I keep trying to say... the Echo Obscura muddles the memories from that time." His hand rested against his chest when his pupils became pinpricks against the swirling jade maelstrom. "Because, let's say I humoured this and the Ancient's aren't real... their presence was tied with the Otherworld in every scripture and book. Do you mean to tell me that..." He waved his hand at nothing, unblinking. "That's not real either? That what I see when I cross the bridge is just... a figment of Aurus magick?"

Adara widened her eyes at what he inferred. "Fen... I-I don't know, I'm not an Aurus, I can't see what you see."

He went ashen, then whispered, "If that's the case... where did I send my father? If the Otherworld doesn't exist, if the Ancients don't exist to guide the wayward souls — do you mean to tell me I consigned him and many others to the Echo Obscura — the one thing we all know is real?"

Assurance rang hollow, and she said nothing but the truth, "I don't know." Fenrer took a step back from her, twisting around to the window. He touched his chin with the bridge of his finger. His eerie silence screamed with the shivering magick in the air when he lowered his head. Adara bridged the gap, "Listen, Fen... so what if they're not gods? It's not like your faith was misplaced! Or was wrong. It wasn't!" she pleaded for his belief. "They were powerful people — they did miraculous things that some may call divine but they were just people."

Fenrer rubbed his fingers together. "Maria did something thought impossible — downright miraculous."

"Yes. It was always just us, Fenrer. Magickae." Adara came closer to him. "I told Yuven about what I saw and intended to tell you but then you two started fighting and—"

"Yuven... knew?"

The bells went silent and darkness descended on the edges of the city, the braziers sputtering out. Shoulders tense, he straightened out his spine with a strangled noise from his throat. Reyn lifted himself to his feet the moment magick snapped through the air. Fenrer twisted on his heel and launched himself with wolven malice at Blackwall, who grunted when his back hit the door. It shook on its hinges from Fenrer's gigantic force. One of the planks split when Fenrer dug in tighter. One punch slammed straight into Blackwall's jaw, staggering the bookkeeper. "You know what?" Fenrer hissed, and Adara shuddered at the rippling torment. "I don't need to be Yuven for this." Another punch cracked bone, and blood oozed to add more into the air. "You, and so many others treat knowledge like some sort of endgame when it's someone's lives and minds at stake." He snarled. "Let me clarify my question into a statement, I hope it was worth it when I break every damned bone in your body for what you did to my Oathbound with no law to stop me from doing that! I hope it was worth it to lie! To hide the truth when it could've changed everything!"

His words struck her harder than he threw his hits at Blackwall. Heatwaves sent pressure into her skull, the air sweltering with a deep, unsettled sizzle born from his fury.

Reyn rushed forward and wrapped his arms around Fenrer's middle. "Enough, Pyren!" He dug his feet in and dragged the taller Warden out of Blackwall's reach, who shambled to the corner, face beaten and bloody. "You've made your retribution. Any further and it will imbalance you more than you already are." He settled himself when Fenrer tried to pry out of his hands, king and Warden wrestling for control. One arm dug deeper into Fenrer's stomach, and the other slipped into a glyph and smacked him in the face to stagger him, causing his feet to flail from the momentum. Adara rushed forward to grab his belt, but her hand touched the hilt of the blade, and she gasped at the scalding of her skin, tugging it back while the two fought. Reyn drove his knee into the back of Fenrer's, using his own size against him to get him onto the floor.

Fenrer hit his hindquarters with a thud, Reyn's black hair flyaway and windswept.

Her finger touched the burn on her palm, but Fenrer trembled and dragged himself to his feet. He threw open the door, almost tearing it off his hinges. Oh no, no! You've barely—! Adara raced after him. "Fen, don't go out there like this!"

"Like what?" he asked, whipping around to face her. "Think about how many people died today, Adara. How many people died at Prunal? How many people died in Irimount and every other infernal's damned place? How many people have prayed to the Ancient's for deliverance?" He bridged the gap once more, his disappointment clear. "You both lied to me. You both lied to me - why didn't you trust me?" His breath came out in short, panicked pants.

"I tried to tell you—"

"You should've told me the moment I returned to you in that damned palace!" Fenrer's screech echoed through her eardrums, and she froze. His scrunched fury died into terror. "But you didn't... you just kept it to yourself. You told Yuven, but you didn't tell me. What difference would that information make to Yuven? He was already set in his ways." Fenrer drove his fingers into his chest and stared at her. "What was the reason for the duplicity?"

"I don't have an excuse," she whimpered. "I didn't want to hurt you, I was trying to protect you."

Fenrer dropped his hand from his chest. "That's all lying does, Adara. If you had told me, I wouldn't have waited. If you had told me, I would've known how to crack Evyriaz's corruption and wouldn't have had to send you and Yuven into a possibly fatal situation. If Yuven had told me maybe we wouldn't have fought... and he wouldn't feel like he does about me — that I'm just a foolish, stupid person who put his faith in the wrong place. A powerful Aurus who did nothing to ease his or our Guardian's pain when they needed it the most." His words fell past his lips with a strangled gasp. He pushed his hand between them. Back to her, he rushed out of the corridor.

"Fen, wait!" Adara called after him and bolted after him.

He sent a glyph to bar her path, and she ran face first into curled vines which carried stone.

Tears ran down her cheeks from pain and fear both, the scorch mark the hilt left on her hand shivering and burning deeper to touch her bones.