“I told him not to touch it.”
He stared at her.
The barrier between them hummed with magical energy.
His sword was in his hand now, though he didn’t remember drawing it, and his knuckles were white around the grip.
“You told him,” Garret repeated.
“You told him not to touch it.
And you just — you let him walk right up to it.
You—”
His eyes went wide.
“It needs a sacrifice.”
See said nothing.
Her expression remained serene, innocent, the picture of a blonde-haired adventurer who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But behind that facade, her heart was hammering, and not with fear.
With excitement.
The seal had reacted.
It had consumed.
That meant it was still functioning, still active, still holding — but weakened.
Weakened enough.
‘The Hero’s seal degrades over centuries’, the old manuscripts had said.
‘It feeds on life force to maintain itself.
When it has not been fed in too long, it grows thin.
Brittle.
A sufficiently powerful magical catalyst can fracture the remaining barrier.’
She had the catalyst.
A small obsidian disk, carved with dissolution runes, tucked into the inner pocket of her leather armor.
An artifact passed down through seven generations of the cult, designed for one purpose and one purpose alone: to break seals.
Garret was still staring at her.
“You’re from the cult,” he said, and it was not a question.
“The dragon worshippers.
The ones the Adventurer’s Guild warned us about.
You’re—”
“I am the last of them,” See said simply.
“And I apologize, Garret.
Truly.
Your brother’s death was not intended.
But the seal required life force to weaken it further, and I—”
“YOU USED HIM!”
He charged.
The sword came down in a wild overhead arc, fueled by grief and rage, and it struck See’s barrier with a sound like a bell struck by a hammer — a sharp, resonant ‘crang’ that rang through the cavern and sent cracks of light racing across the magical shell.
See stumbled back.
The barrier held, but barely.
Garret was stronger than she had anticipated, and his grief gave his swing a ferocity that bordered on the inhuman.
“I’ll kill you!” he roared, drawing back for another strike.
“I’LL KILL YOU, YOU BITCH!”
‘Crang!’ The second blow sent more cracks through the barrier.
See grit her teeth, pouring more mana into the shell, feeling it drain from her core like water from a cracked jug.
She was not a combat mage.
She was a scholar, a priestess, a woman who had spent her life studying texts and chanting prayers.
Direct confrontation was not her strength.
Garret’s third blow shattered the barrier.
The magical shell exploded outward in a shower of fading light fragments, and See staggered, thrown off balance, her boots skidding on the uneven stone.
Garret’s sword came around in a horizontal slash aimed at her midsection, and she threw herself backward, feeling the edge of the blade pass within an inch of her stomach, close enough that the displaced air tugged at the fabric of her tunic.
She hit the ground rolling, came up on one knee, and thrust her palm forward.
“Flare Bolt!”
A lance of fire erupted from her outstretched hand, a concentrated beam of thermal magic that crossed the distance between them in an instant.
Garret twisted, tried to dodge — the bolt caught him in the left shoulder, spinning him halfway around, his sword arm going limp as the flesh beneath his armor charred and split.
He cried out, a raw, guttural sound of pain, but his right hand — his sword hand — still functioned.
He swung blind.
A backhand strike that See barely avoided, the blade whispering past her ear.
She scrambled to her feet, putting distance between them, her hands already weaving another spell.
“Garret, listen to me—”
“SHUT UP!” He turned, face twisted, left arm hanging useless and smoking at his side.
“You killed my brother!
You — you sacrificed him to that — that THING on the wall!
And for what?
A dragon?
A DRAGON?
Are you insane?”
See’s next spell was already forming — a binding circle of hardened light, designed to restrain.
She slammed her palm against the ground, and the circle expanded outward, chains of luminous mana erupting from the stone and wrapping around Garret’s legs, his torso, his sword arm.
He fought them.
Gods, he fought them.
The magical bindings groaned and strained as he thrashed, his physical strength exacerbated by adrenaline and anguish, and See felt the mana cost tearing at her reserves like hooks in her flesh.
“Stop,” she hissed through gritted teeth.
“Stop fighting.
You’ll kill yourself.”
“GOOD!” He wrenched his sword arm free — the binding around his wrist shattered — and he charged again, closing the distance before See could react.
His sword came up in a thrust aimed at her chest.
See twisted.
The blade scored a line across her ribs — not deep, but enough to tear her tunic and draw a hot, sharp line of pain across her side.
She grabbed his sword wrist with both hands, holding the blade away from her body, and headbutted him.
The impact sent Garret reeling, his nose crunching under the blow, blood spraying across his chin and chest.
He stumbled backward, and See used the opening.
She raised both hands.
“Thunder Lance!”
A spear of crackling electrical energy materialized above her palms and launched forward, striking Garret square in the center of his chest.
The impact lifted him off his feet.
He flew backward, hit the cavern wall with a sound like a sack of grain dropped from a height, and crumpled to the floor.
Smoke rose from the charred hole in his chest.
His eyes were open.
They saw nothing.
See stood in the center of the cavern, panting, blood trickling from the wound on her ribs, her hands trembling.
The magicule exhaustion was already settling in — a deep, bone-level fatigue that made her joints feel like they were filled with wet sand.
She looked at the two heaps on the floor — one pile of abandoned equipment where Maren had stood, one body crumpled against the far wall where Garret had fallen — and she felt a pang of something.
Guilt, perhaps.
She pushed it aside.
‘Forgive me’, she thought.
‘Both of you.
What I am doing, I do for something greater than any single life.’
She reached into the inner pocket of her armor.
Her fingers closed around the obsidian disk — smooth, cool, heavier than its size suggested.
The dissolution runes carved into its surface pulsed faintly at her touch, as though recognizing her intent.
She walked to the sealed wall.
Up close, the runes were even more impressive.
Each symbol was precise, mathematical, carved with a level of magical mastery that she could barely comprehend.
The Hero who had placed this seal — she did not know their name, only that they had been powerful beyond measure, a figure of legend whose magic had endured for centuries without significant decay.
Until now.
See pressed the obsidian disk against the center of the wall, fitting it into a depression she had only ever read about in manuscript descriptions.
It fit.
Perfectly.
As though the wall had been waiting for this key.
The disk sank into the stone.
The runes flared — not the cold white of before, but a deep, angry red, the color of heated iron, spreading outward from the point of insertion like infection through a wound.
The wall shuddered.
A sound like cracking ice filled the chamber, deep and resonant, and hairline fractures spread across the surface of the seal, splitting the runes apart.
The door — the wall, the barrier, the seal — opened.
Not fully.
Not completely.
A fissure, three feet wide and seven feet tall, split down the center of the wall, and through that fissure poured a wave of magical pressure so dense, so overwhelming, that See was driven to her knees simply by standing in its presence.
The air turned electric.
The crystals on the walls blazed with sudden, furious light.
The ground trembled.
And through the fissure, she saw ice.
An enormous wall of ice, clear as glass, stretching back into darkness.
And within that ice —
Eyes.
Vast, golden, slitted eyes, each one larger than her entire body, set in a face of dark scaled magnificence that extended into shadow beyond the limits of her vision.
The Storm Dragon.
Veldora Tempest.
See collapsed to her knees.
Tears streamed down her face.
Her lips moved without sound, forming the words of the Psalm of Awakening, the prayer she had memorized before she could walk.
‘Lord Veldora.
I am here.
Your faithful servant.
I—’