Thanks for waiting. Got a little held up going over the outline for the rest of this book.
“You can put me down now,” Hump said to Emilia.
Emilia gently lowered him to the ground. The stone beneath him was cool and sharp. Nisha stumbled toward him on unsteady claws, her wings drooped low, tail dragging behind her. She pressed her snout into his side with a soft wine, her violet eyes bright with concern.
“I’m alright,” Hump murmured, resting a hand on her head. It wasn’t entirely true. He was spent. Every limb ached. The cold of essence overuse penetrated to his bones. And yet, the day was not over.
He lay his head back and gazed up at a sky unlike any other—an endless void dusted with luminous particles that floated like embers in the breeze. Not stars or clouds, that much he was certain of. It might have been essence, but it was so far away that he couldn’t even sense it.
Loften rose to his feet nearby, his back to the black gateway rippling behind him. The god’s unravelled his shoulders and stood tall. “We need to move. The gateway will not close, and this traitor of Light will be here in only minutes.”
Emilia turned toward him. “Godfrey can follow us here?”
“Was that unclear?” Loften replied, his voice clipped. “I warned you, once the gateway was open, it would remain so. Not just this one, but all of them. The veil is shattered, and now for the first time in a thousand years, the realms are connected.” He strode past them, not looking back. “If you wish to live long enough to witness this new era, follow me.”
Prince Marcoff stepped forward, his tone desperate. “What about us? I must return home.”
The other altari stood by nervously. Princess Urella and Runesmith Tatsi had their eyes on the abyss beyond this small path of stone they stood on, their eyes wide. Acalin and his party seemed more pragmatic, hands on their weapons and surveying their surroundings. Captain Hadbur’s face like stone, yet there was a burning anger in his eyes. Hump could guess at what was on his mind—his ship was destroyed, his crew dead, and now he was here with them.
“There is no simple route home for you now,” Loften said. “You will come me. Your path home will be clearer from elsewhere.”
“No,” Prince Marcoff said. “Lord Loften, there must be another way.”
“To enter this place, I created a gateway leading away from Ur. To find our way back is no simple task. If you wish, you may go back through that gateway behind us. I do not think you will like what you find. Otherwise, you will speak no more of this.”
He didn’t wait for agreement. The god was already walking into the depths of the tunnel, his eyes on the shadows around him.
Hump drew a deep breath. His body screamed at him to rest, but the urgency pressing down on them was suffocating.
“Where do you think we’re going?” Bud asked. “He didn’t mention Alveron.”
Hump frowned. “No, he did not. I suppose we better find out.”
Hump groaned as he pushed himself into a sitting position.
“Want me to carry you this time?” Celaine asked with a smirk.
He raised an eyebrow at her, pressing his lips tight in consideration. “Tempting, but no. Just… help me up.”
She offered her hand. He gripped it, and she hauled him to his feet. His knees buckled, strength draining from him, but Celaine caught him around the waist before he could fall.
“Maybe I really should carry you,” she said, but her smirk softened.
Hump started after Loften, leaning on his staff. “I’ve had quite enough carrying for one day.”
“You should count yourself lucky,” Emilia said. “If anyone else had come to get you, we wouldn’t have made it.”
“I’m not used to being the damsel in distress,” Hump said.
Bud and Dylan both snorted, only to look at each other and laugh even harder.
“You do a good job of it,” Bud said.
“That you do,” Dylan added.
Hump couldn’t help but smile at the sight of his two friends with some cheer back in them. Soon, the laughter faded, but it was good to see them more their usual selves.
“How can you all be so calm?” Princess Urella asked, her voice higher than usual. “This is madness. Do you not care that we are lost to the world? Surrounded by darkness. I do not even know what we’re walking on.”
“There are more dangerous things than darkness,” Hump said. “As for being lost…” he shrugged. “Your Maker is leading the way. It could be a lot worse.”
“He’s right, Urella,” Acalin said. “Now that we’re here, all we can do is keep moving forward. We accomplished our mission, now it’s time to trust in the Maker.”
Urella drew in a deep breath. “In the Maker, I never had any doubts. It’s just a lot to take in.”
The path ahead looked solid, paved with smooth black stone that glinted faintly beneath their feet. But Hump could feel that it wasn’t real. Not entirely. They walked through a space that defied understanding—a tunnel with no walls, no ceiling, only endless shadow at its edges. The very air shimmered with unstable magic. Light glowed in shifting waves far off to either side, like essence coalescing in thick clouds.
And through those ripples, Hump glimpsed things.
A landscape of jagged rock, a sky painted in fire. Mountains rising impossibly high, then folding into themselves like crumpled paper. Sometimes he thought he saw movement—a distant figure, a flare of energy—but each time it vanished just as quickly.
Pathways. He realised there were many of them, layered upon each other like threads in a web. A hundred routes splintering through the void. Where they led… he couldn’t even begin to guess.
“Do not let your eyes linger in one place too long,” Loften warned. “It would not do for your intent to be detected.”
“Loften,” Hump said as the man came to a stop. “Before we continue, I must know where you are leading us. The deal was that you take us home.”
“We are not returning to Alveron,” Loften said. “Not yet. The Traitor of Light has made that much clear. Waiting is not an option.”
“Then where?” Hump asked, already knowing the answer.
“Where else?” Loften said. “The Path to Heaven is open. We shall follow it.”
Hump tried not to let it show, but the thought made him nervous. He knew that they needed to go there, but in his mind, there would be more time along the way. More rest. A chance to return home first.
“What do you intend to do once we are there?” Hump asked.
Loften met his eyes. “Who is to say? I’m not sure even I know yet.”
With that, Loften stepped through a ripple in reality, passing from this place to another. All Hump and the others could do was follow.
Hump had no idea how Loften chose the portals he did, only that it had something to do with the artifact on his wrist. To his eyes, they were all just ripples in the air, shimmering like heat waves on a summer road, a faint glimpse of the shapes or colour of whatever lay on the other side. But where Loften went, they followed. Each time, Hump felt the now familiar sensation return, like stepping through cold liquid silk. Essence slicked over his skin, clinging for a breath before vanishing entirely.
And then they were elsewhere.
There was no sign of Godfrey trailing them, but if anyone had their ways, it would be him. They had moved through six worlds in quick succession and were not slowing down. This time, light greeted them. Not the sun, but something softer and more diffused. There was the warmth of nature in it, and Hump felt invigorated. His body breathed it in, and the lingering cold was pressed back, along with the weariness in his body.
They stood on a field of vibrant blue grass, much like what was found in dungeon groves. Each blade shimmered slightly, laced with essence. The sky above stretched on in endless bloom, cloudless and strange, like the inside of a crystal dome.
Nishari took to the sky, but she did not fly high or far. Even Loften was cautious of these places and what might lurk in their shadows, and she picked up on it, watching their surroundings from above with a protectiveness that was more mature than Hump was used to from her.
They didn’t linger. Within minutes, they passed through another veil—another ripple, another world.
Hours passed this way.
Through one portal and into another. Across burnt wastelands where black sand whispered beneath their boots. Through a realm filled with towering crystal trees, their leaves humming with barely contained energy. Most unnerving of all was a realm where time itself seemed slower, each movement sluggish and heavy until they emerged once more.
Loften paused only briefly in each space. Sometimes just long enough to orient himself using the artifact on his wrist, other times barely at all. He wasted no energy explaining where they were.
They came to another tunnel of nothing but dark grey stone, and Hump couldn’t help but ask. “What is this place, Loften? I sense no essence in the ground. How can it exist?”
“These paths are all fragments of worlds that have been and worlds that one day might be,” Loften said, not stopping. “Each a place where essence is either gathering or fading. Some are stable enough to support rudimentary life, while others are the echoes of dead worlds, lost to the abyss. Imagine them all like shifting island pathways, connected through the veil.”
Hump shook his head, bewildered. Loften made imagining such a thing sound easy. “But the abyss was empty. Only darkness in all directions. How can these places be connected?”
“Distance and time are a restraint upon our mortal forms, but the abyss does not work within such restrictions. Not even I understand them truly.”
“How can you know where we’re going if these fragments are constantly shifting?” Hump asked.
“With my connected gateways, the paths are clear,” Loften said. “The gateways act to bring together the appropriate rifts so that one only needs to walk in the right direction. In this case, I was forced to form a breach in the network around Ur. The road we walk is untravelled, but the threads of essence that connect the realms can be detected and used to find a path through the maze.”
“What do you mean by dead world?” Dylan asked.
Loften glanced at him, eyes bright. “This is what happens when intent fades and essence is stripped to its most basic form. Nothing remains to hold a world together. Over time, they come apart. Forever separated. Devoured by the abyss.”
“The Remnant Realm…” Dylan said slowly. “Will it become like this one day?”
“Yes.” There was no hesitation in his voice. “When gods go to war, this is the result of their destruction. Without purpose, without intent, this is the inevitable fate that follows. And one day, even this will fade. Not ruin, but nothingness. Stillness.”
Dylan let out a breath, gazing out into the emptiness around them. “What a waste. Think of all that has been lost.”
“You see it wrong,” Loften said with a boyish smile. “Do not focus on what was lost, but what there is still to discover.”
“Do you care nothing for the destruction you and the rest of the Pantheon have wrought?” Dylan asked. “An entire world was already lost.”
Loften came to a stop. The tall man looked over them, white eyes like those of a blind man, but Hump felt as if they peered straight through him. “You still do not understand what was at stake. When gods go to war, the price is great, so you must ask what it is we fought for that was so important. Uvdar could not be negotiated with. He could not be swayed, or satiated. His hunger was so great that nothing would have survived it if we had not stepped in. Given the chance, there is nothing he would not consume. No essence that would be spared.”
“Yet you seek vengeance on the Pantheon that keeps him sealed,” Bud said. “You scorn them. Twist their Chosen. Do your actions not risk setting Uvdar free?”
“The Twelve Seals are destroyed,” Loften said. “The Path to Heaven is open. For things to have reached this stage, the risk is already there.”