Chapter 24: The Threshold of Oblivion
The city was no longer just a skyline of metal and glass.
It was a battleground — its horizon cracked open by seething clouds of Hollow-flame, reality shimmering like a fractured mirror. Red lightning forked down from the churning skies. Magic shields strained across high towers, shuddering with each ripple in the veil.
At the center of the storm, atop the ruins of Old Vantier Labs, a black spire had risen.
Unnatural. Smooth. Silent.
And pulsing like a heartbeat.
The Ritual had begun.
Aria stood on the helipad, wind tearing at her coat, hair tangled, eyes burning.
Ash leaned against the open skiff beside her, still recovering, his wounds patched but his magic drained.
Damien loaded the last of the Arc-blade rifles while Kestrel barked tactical assignments.
Echo stood alone, arms crossed, her body outlined in soft flame. Her eyes were distant — watching something far away, or perhaps just deep inside herself.
"They're anchoring the rift to me," she murmured. "Even now, I feel it."
Aria stepped forward. "Can you stop it?"
"I can slow it," Echo said. "But not alone."
Ash pushed off the skiff. "Then you won't be alone."
She looked at him.
Their eyes met — both touched by Hollow-fire, both shaped by a man who thought they were tools.
Now standing side by side.
Ash extended his hand. "Together?"
Echo hesitated… then placed her hand in his.
"Together."
They launched at dawn.
Five minutes to breach the spire perimeter.
Ten minutes before the Severance spell entered its irreversible phase.
One chance.
One shot.
No second tries.
The skies roared as the skiff wove through Hollow-lightning, shields glowing white-hot. Damien cursed under his breath, dodging debris and arcing energy fields.
"The whole city's fluxed," he shouted over the noise. "If this goes sideways, we're not walking away."
Aria didn't blink. "Then we don't."
She turned to Echo and Ash.
"This isn't just about survival. Cinder is using you to rip a hole through dimensions. If he succeeds, there won't be a world left to save."
Ash nodded. "He's not opening one rift. He's opening all of them."
Echo's jaw clenched. "Then let's burn it down."
The spire loomed ahead.
Dark. Monolithic. Deadly.
And waiting.
As the skiff neared the platform, anti-magic cannons flared to life, firing bolts of Null energy. One grazed the hull, sending sparks flying.
Kestrel leapt out midair, rolled, and took out two sentries with silence rounds.
Aria and Ash followed, while Echo dropped like a flame comet, her body blazing gold.
The shockwave blew a hole in the platform.
They were in.
Inside, the walls were lined with runes pulsing black and red. Floating glyphs anchored the spell — each one linked to Echo's lifeforce. Her presence here accelerated the ritual.
She gasped, clutching her chest.
"They're… draining me—"
Aria grabbed her. "Stay with me. You are more than what they made you."
Ash slammed his hand into a sigil, overriding it with raw fire. "We need to destroy the anchor nodes!"
Damien's voice crackled through comms: "We've got heavy movement inbound. Echo's presence triggered the final phase. You've got fourteen minutes before the breach stabilizes!"
Aria didn't hesitate.
"We split. Damien and Kestrel disable the outer matrix. Ash and I take the control floor. Echo—"
"I'm going to the core."
Aria turned sharply. "No—"
"I feel it. I can find it faster than anyone else. I was made for this." Her voice was calm, but her eyes burned. "Let me do what I was born to do."
Aria stared at her.
Then slowly nodded.
"Be careful."
The team split, vanishing into corridors laced with screaming runes and shifting walls.
Aria and Ash reached the control floor, where they found the main console pulsing with Hollow-flame. Echo's name was branded into the central glyph.
"Even now, he's using her like a battery," Ash muttered. "Her blood, her soul—it's all woven into the breach seal."
Aria lifted her flame-sword and sliced through the glyph.
The console exploded in a wave of heat.
Above, the spire howled.
Reality twisted.
At the core, Echo stood before a spiral of suspended energy — the breach nexus.
Within it, a mirror shimmered.
And in that mirror—
Cinder.
Not in the flesh.
But in reflection.
Watching.
Smiling.
"You're too late, Echo."
She stood tall. "You're not my creator."
"No. I'm your destiny."
He raised his hand in the reflection. Her body jerked, spine arched, flame flaring against her will.
"You are the doorway. You always were. The others were practice. Ash was a blade. You… are the key."
She screamed, trying to resist.
But the pull was too strong.
Until another flame entered the room.
Aria.
"Let. Her. GO!"
She plunged her sword into the mirror, shattering the connection.
Cinder's scream echoed across dimensions.
The breach faltered.
The nexus pulsed.
And Echo collapsed.
Ash caught her.
"She's still tethered. He can still reopen it!"
"Then we finish this," Aria said.
Together, they formed a triad — Aria's fire, Ash's breachflame, Echo's pure corelight.
They thrust their power into the nexus.
The spell screamed.
The runes cracked.
The spire began to collapse.
The breach imploded.
Light and shadow spiraled into nothingness.
And silence followed.
They awoke on the rooftop, the spire gone, the sky slowly healing.
Ash stirred first, then Echo.
Aria exhaled, barely believing it.
Echo sat up, blinking.
"Did we… stop him?"
"For now," Aria said. "But he'll try again."
Ash nodded. "Then next time, we go to him."
And far away, in a prison of flame and void, Cinder smiled.
Because the real game was just beginning.
And his queen had only just awakened.