Nyxia gasped, blood bubbling from her lips as she rolled to her knees. Her polearm lay a few feet away, gleaming mockingly in the dirt. Her right shoulder—useless. Her ribs screamed with each breath. The void surged in her chest, pulsing in a rhythm that was not her own.
"Let me in, let me heal, let me consume."
Tharn stomped toward her, triumphant, swinging his slab lazily now, taunting. "You look good in red, small ting. But I think I'll break yer legs next."
Nyxia's hand clawed toward her weapon. Sand and blood slid between her fingers.
And then she looked up—past Tharn, past the cheering mob—to that shadowed figure. The acolyte.
He wasn't even trying to hide now. His lips moved in that ancient tongue. His eyes glowed faintly with stolen magic.
They're watching me.
Even now.
Even broken.
Something snapped.
A scream tore from her throat—not of pain, but of fury. Voidlight exploded behind her eyes, and for a heartbeat, the crowd went silent.
The sand beneath her trembled, lifted, shivering like it remembered war.
Her body moved without permission.
Her left arm seized the polearm—black tendrils of void coursing down the haft—and in one unnatural, inhuman motion, she spun and drove the bladed tip up into Tharn's thigh.
He roared in pain—but it was more than pain. He looked down and saw the void leeching into his leg like ink in water.
Nyxia staggered to her feet, polearm still embedded in his flesh. "You picked the wrong fucking elf."
At the scrying pool
"Did you feel that?!" one of the younger acolytes gasped, stumbling back from the scrying pool. "The void—it answered her!"
"She's not controlling it!" cried another. "It's riding her!"
The elder's voice was grim. "No. Not yet. But it knows her now."
"Is she—becoming one of us?"
"No," the elder whispered. "Something else."
They pressed in closer. Some with reverence. Others with horror.
Then—a creak.
A floorboard.
They all turned.
Within the outer halls of the Temple
Perseus had been wandering the ancient, empty temple for what felt like hours. Doors were closed. Hallways were shadowed. The usual murmurs of prayer and movement were absent, and the silence pressed in like fog.
He'd almost given up when he heard them.
Whispers.
Low, frantic, barely restrained.
He followed the sound, pressing his ear to the heavy oak door. The voices inside spoke too fast, too softly. He caught only flashes:
"—unleashed—"
"—void-touched—"
"—the pit—"
"—Nyxia—"
His blood went cold.
And then he shoved the door open.
The sight hit him like a fist.
Dozens of acolytes stood in a wide circle, a ritual array of runes and smoke surrounding a glowing scrying pool. Floating within its depths—Nyxia, in real time. Her bloodied body, her weapon clenched in one arm, her opponent towering above her, void leaking from her hands.
One of the younger acolytes gasped. Another flinched.
The elder didn't turn.
"Perseus," she said, voice calm as a blade. "You shouldn't be here."
He ignored her. Took a step toward the pool. "What… what is this? Why are you watching her?!"
"She is an anomaly," the elder said. "And a danger. We have been observing to protect her… and ourselves."
"You've been spying on her?! Cursing her with your fear?"
"She opened the door," another acolyte whispered. "Not us."
Perseus stepped closer. The voidlight flickering from the pool bathed his face in a sickly lavender. He saw Nyxia slam her polearm into Tharn's gut with a roar—and saw the black tendrils leap from her arm, hungry.
"No…" he murmured. "She's fighting for us."
And then—his voice cracked.
"She's alone out there."
The Pit
Nyxia's eyes were burning.
Her vision blurred. Her veins felt like fire and ice. Tharn staggered back, shrieking as the void burned up his leg. She ripped the weapon free with a wet, sucking sound.
But the price came fast.
A surge of power.
Then—her knees buckled.
Blood poured from her nose, her mouth. Her arm spasmed. Her polearm slipped again, but this time… she didn't rise.
She crumpled.
And the crowd gasped.
Boo stood—screaming her name.
Darj lunged to the edge of the stands.
From above, a hooded figure narrowed his eyes, a slow, wicked smile curling at his lips.
"Well," he murmured. "Looks like she's ready."
Nyxia couldn't move.
Pain throbbed in pulses that matched her fading heartbeat. Her face was pressed against the warm sand, now thick with her own blood. Her fingers twitched, trying to hold onto the polearm that had once been an extension of her will.
And then—
A presence.
A chill.
It wasn't the crowd. It wasn't her friends.
It was something other.
A voice, smooth as velvet, laced with power and poison, slid against her mind.
"You did so well, little shadow."
Nyxia's eyes fluttered open.
A face hovered over hers. Pale, too pale, with hair that shimmered like an obsidian sky dusted in distant stars. His gaze bore into hers—intimate, knowing, ancient.
"So much rage… so much beauty in your destruction," he whispered, crouching beside her as if this were a dance, not a battleground. "You bleed stardust, you know. Like the ones who came before."
She tried to speak, but all that came out was a cracked, half-choked gasp.
"Shh. No need to speak now," he cooed, brushing blood-matted strands from her cheek with cold fingers. "The void sees you. I see you. And soon… they all will."
Back in the stands
Boo's elbow jammed into a troll's gut as she forced her way forward. "Move it or lose your fangs!"
Darj had drawn a dagger—not to fight, but to threaten those too slow to step aside.
And Loque'nahak was no longer calm.
He snarled, tail lashing, spectral fur bristling like frost under starlight. He surged ahead, scattering a small knot of goblins, letting out a roar that silenced a swath of the pit.
They reached the ring just as the hooded figure rose to his feet, looking down at Boo with that slow, too calm smile.
"She'll be fine. She just needs… time. And a little guidance."
Boo drew back her fist as if to punch him on the spot, but Darj grabbed her arm.
"She needs us, not riddles," he snapped, stepping between them.
The hooded figure's smile deepened. "Of course. But some paths are darker than others. And she's already taken the first step."
With a flicker—gone.
Vanished. Like shadow in fog.
Boo dropped to her knees beside Nyxia, pressing trembling hands to her shoulder, her hip, her blood-soaked side.
"Don't you dare die on me," she hissed. "Don't you dare."
Loque curled protectively around her, licking her face, purring low and frantic.
Back at the temple
"You used her!"
Perseus' voice cracked against the stone walls of the inner sanctum.
"You watched her bleed, break, and burn for your curiosity?! What in the Light is wrong with you people?!"
The elder remained seated, her tone infuriatingly calm. "She is not one of us."
"She was! And maybe she still could be, if you hadn't treated her like a threat!"
Another acolyte stepped forward, timid. "We… we didn't know it would be so violent—"
"She needed help, not eyes in the dark!"
Perseus turned sharply, storming from the chamber. His boots struck the stone like hammer-blows as he marched down the halls he had once wandered in peace.
He reached the roost.
The temple gryphons screeched and ruffled their wings at his sudden presence—but one, a silver-feathered beast with intelligent eyes, stepped forward like it knew.
Perseus didn't hesitate.
He threw a pack together from the racks, grabbed a cloak, and strapped in.
"Forgive me," he whispered to the creature. "But I can't stay here."
And in the next breath, he was airborne—soaring away from the mountaintop temple as the skies darkened behind him.
Back at the Pit
The crowd had begun to disperse, murmurs and the echo of clinking coin still hanging in the air like smoke after battle. Blood stained the arena floor—most of it Nyxia's—and Boo knelt in it, uncaring, clutching her friend's arm with trembling fingers.
Darj hovered beside her, his expression guarded but his hands shaking slightly as he helped stabilize Nyxia's battered form.
Loque'nahak was not calm.
He paced in frantic circles around Nyxia's body before shoving his massive spectral head against her ribs. Again. And again.
"Wake. UP. Wake up. Wake UP!"
His growls were punctuated by piercing yowls, his tail lashing violently, brushing sand into the air. His glowing eyes bore into hers like he could will her spirit back into her body with sheer force of will.
"Nyxia. NYXIA. Please—"
Boo winced, looking down at her bloodied hands.
"She's gonna be okay," she muttered—more to herself than anyone else.
"She's tough," Darj replied, kneeling opposite her. His voice was quiet, yet steadier than hers.
"You didn't see the way he looked at her." Boo's voice cracked, raw with panic wrapped in fury. "Like he knew her… like she was already his."
Darj reached out, placing a hand over hers, grounding her.
"She's not anyone's but her own. You know that."
Loque gave a sharp, almost desperate cry and nudged her chest again, claws scraping the ground beside her, spectral light flickering with panic.
Then—
A breath.
Shallow. Rattling.
Boo's head snapped up, heart lurching into her throat.
Nyxia's lashes fluttered. Her lips cracked open, and her voice was barely more than a croak—but it was there.
"Where's… my money?"
There was a beat of stunned silence.
Then Boo let out a choked laugh, halfway between tears and relief. "You bitch."
Loque yowled in something dangerously close to joy and practically threw himself on top of her, purring and growling and whining all at once as if yelling at her never to do that again.
Darj wiped blood from her cheek with the edge of his sleeve. "Only you would bleed out in the dirt, break a rib or four, and wake up worried about your damn purse."
Nyxia winced as she tried to shift under Loque's weight, groaning. "Do you know how much coin I pulled in? I better be able to buy a house after that."
Boo grabbed her by the wrist, squeezing tight. "You're not buying anything except a damned healer and a month of rest."
"And a steak," Nyxia rasped. "Maybe two. Real rare."
Darj smirked, but his eyes were damp. "You scared the shit out of us."
"I scare everyone." Her voice softened. "But thanks… for being here."
Loque licked her bloodied jaw, nose twitching as if to say Don't ever do that again, before curling beside her, purring so fiercely it vibrated through her bones.
Above them, storm clouds loomed… and far away, a stolen gryphon sliced across the sky, bearing a man who had felt her fall.
The wind howled as the gryphon cut through the ash-laced skies, its wings snapping like war banners in a storm. Perseus leaned forward, eyes narrowed, knuckles white around the reins. His hair was soaked from flight, cloak torn at the edges—but none of it mattered.
He had seen her.
Bleeding. Writhing. Falling.
And that thing—that man—at her side like a serpent whispering in her ear.
He didn't know how the elders had cast the spell, or who the hell the acolyte was that served as their eyes, but he had seen it all through the shimmering veil in the temple's hidden chamber. Their secrets. Their spying. Their lies.
Now, he was going to find her. And gods help anyone who stood in his way.