The City of Cities was silent.

  Not the hush of sleep, nor the peace of dawn. A different silence. The kind born of ruin. A hush that follows screams too loud to echo, footsteps too frantic to remember. The City had been beaten before, besieged, broken, blistered by magic and war and monstrous ambition. But never like this. Never hollowed.

  Fissures lined the districts like broken veins. Towers lay in heaps of quiet stone, and canals ran thick with ink where spellbooks had fallen open and bled their words dry. The sky above, still blackened by Null having been there, showed the faint glimmer of the Weave’s absence. Magic was gone. Entire neighborhoods now leaned awkwardly, suspended mid-collapse by forces no longer present to uphold them. Runes once etched into cobblestones fizzled without purpose. Floating markets had crashed into alleyways. Crystalline lights once tethered to the arcane now hung dull, cracked, inert.

  People sifted through rubble, looking for homes, for family, for meaning.

  No one could say why the Weave had truly vanished, or why he had done it. But it was his spell that had triggered the collapse. And so it was decided.

  Krungus would leave.

  Even his old friends said nothing as he began to gather the few scrolls still usable from the scattered heap his bag of holding had become. The same bag that had vomited nine thousand years of collected madness onto the streets.

  Bahumbus, still twice his normal height thanks to a misfired scroll, squatted low and handed him a brittle, half-unraveled parchment. "You sure this one ain’t gonna make me explode?"

  Krungus didn’t answer. He looked tired in a way that transcended years. Not old—worn. Reduced. Not by battle, but by loss.

  The Number watched in silence until Qlaark finally spoke up, "So... we done then?"

  Brenna stepped forward, removing the gilded vambraces from her arms. Without the Weave, they were just metal. "We’re done."

  Rent looked like he might protest, but Griddle placed a hand on his shoulder. "We can’t protect the City anymore. Not like this. We were Paladins in name, but our strength was from the Weave. Now we're just people."

  People. In a city that no longer believed in magic.

  Rebuilding would be hell. Banks couldn’t enforce magical loans. Currencies enchanted to track theft or fraud had gone blank. Magical hospitals were graveyards now. And scrolls—those old curiosities of a less refined era—were now priceless artifacts. Only a handful could still be cast at all, and even then it could kill the caster if not done properly.

  Which left Eugene.

  Eugene, who had once been ordinary. Now the only magus who could still feel his power, his Jennies. The only one who still glowed.

  He didn’t glow because he was powerful. He glowed because he still believed. In the Jennies. In what magic meant before it became infrastructure and politics. And in Krungus—not as a perfect man, but as the only one who had ever told Eugene the truth, even when it hurt. Everyone else had power. Krungus had purpose.

  Eugene had seen the way Krungus looked at the city—not like a conqueror or a founder, but like a father who had outlived his children. That grief couldn’t be faked. That sorrow meant something.

  And if everyone else was walking away from it, maybe it was time someone walked toward it.

  He stood beside Krungus, unflinching. “I don’t think you're responsible for this,” he said quietly. “And even if you are, I don’t think I'd make it in this world without you.”

  Krungus gave him a look. Not one of gratitude. Something gentler. Something like hope.

  He turned back to the Number. His voice cracked once, then cleared. "You want to leave. I understand. But please. Before you go. Let me speak."

  And so he did.

  Krungus spoke not as a wizard, not as an archmage or a legend. He spoke as a man who had loved this City, and who had believed in the Number. He told them he still did.

  "We found the Weave. We made it work. We changed the world. We took ideas once scrawled on parchment in basements and turned them into roads, hospitals, lights in the dark. But this... this was never about power. It was about stewardship. About taking something immense and terrifying and tending it like a garden. And now that garden is scorched. Now the world needs stewards more than ever. Not builders of walls or wielders of flame, but caretakers. Custodians. People who still believe this place is worth loving."

  No one interrupted. A few lowered their heads.

  "I made mistakes. I know that. I've overreached. I've trusted the wrong people. I've tried to fix things too fast, or too late. And I know you don’t have to forgive me. But don’t abandon the City. Not now. Not when it has no one else to stand for it. If we walk away, what’s left? Just ruins. Just regret."

  Silence.

  Utopianna stepped forward first. Her veil fluttered, hiding the age that had rushed back into her cheeks when the Weave fell.

  "I still love you," she said softly. "But I can’t follow you into another ruin. Not until I believe in you again."

  She left.

  Bahumbus gave a shrug. "I just want to build stuff. That’s all I ever wanted. I don’t care if it’s magical or not. But I can’t do that around you anymore, brother."

  He left.

  B’doom didn’t speak. The ancient pachyrin just touched Krungus on the shoulder. There were tears in his eyes, but he didn’t look back.

  They all left.

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  Except Eugene.

  "Guess it's just us now," Eugene said, trying to sound upbeat. "You, me, and whatever half-baked disaster bait is left in that scroll pile."

  Krungus almost smiled—almost. Then something shifted in his expression. His brow twitched. His mouth parted as if to speak, but no words came. For a moment, it was as if he'd heard a tune he hadn’t known he missed, or remembered a door he had once sworn shut.

  He blinked, then looked sharply toward the canal. The glimmer of something forgotten had just returned.

  "Come on," he said, breath catching slightly. "Back where my bag tore. I think... I think there might be something still there."

  The canal was quieter now, most scavengers having already come and gone. Muck and broken gear lined the bank. Krungus dropped to his knees without ceremony and began pawing through the mud.

  "It was small," he muttered. "Looked like nothing. But it hummed—barely. Pre-Weave lodestone. Used to ignite unstable scrolls when power was still theory."

  Eugene rolled up his sleeves. "You're saying it can light a scroll now?"

  "If it still hums, yes. It might be the only spark left in this world."

  Minutes passed. Then Eugene froze. He held up a dull stone, perfectly round.

  Krungus took it, wiped it gently. It pulsed once in his hand.

  "That’s it."

  They sat on the broken canal wall. "So," Eugene said, "what spell do we cast?"

  Krungus looked out over the ruined skyline. "One that gets us out. Maybe further than we mean to go."

  Eugene raised an eyebrow. "What kind of scroll?"

  "The last one I ever wrote," Krungus said. "It’s a banishment scroll. Meant for something bigger than a single person. I didn’t label it because I never wanted it used. But now... maybe it’s the only way."

  He looked at Eugene. "If we cast it together, it might send us both. Somewhere else. Anywhere but here."

  He looked down at the stone.

  "Might be time."

  He looked up at the broken city.

  "Good," he whispered. "That might be enough."

  "Do you really think its a good idea to be doing more experimental magic?" Eugene said, gently. "Do we know what will happen?"

  Krungus didn’t answer right away. He held the lodestone in both hands, staring into it as if seeing it for the first time. The glow cast deep shadows across his face, but behind the shadows, something stirred.

  He inhaled sharply. A flicker of disbelief crossed his expression, then something like grief—because he had forgotten it, and because remembering it now meant something had changed.

  For the first time in days, Krungus looked like a man who might have a way forward.

  "No, Calhoun," he said at last, voice dark but steadier than before. "We don’t. But this is more than nothing. And more than nothing... might be just enough."

  Na’atasha lay where she'd fallen.

  Sharrzaman's platform had disintegrated mid-spell, sending her tumbling through the air like a broken ornament. She'd struck three rooftops on the way down, each one reducing some part of her mobility. Her legs were shattered. One was twisted at the hip, the other bent clean backward. But her arms still worked. Her mind still burned.

  She was alive.

  The Weave was gone, but she had never leaned on it the way others had. She didn't ride the currents—she forced her will through them. And now that they were gone, she would force her will through anything.

  She bit through the pain, crawled with her elbows across splintered stone, dragging her ruined body like a serpent through rubble. A single thought repeated like a mantra:

  I will not die here.

  Blood smeared behind her. She barely noticed.

  The sky above shimmered with the faint echo of Krungus's lingering scroll-light. Somewhere nearby, she had seen him and the boy—Calhoun—moving toward the canal. She would remember that. Mark it. Weaponize it.

  The city was broken. The Weave was gone. The Number was disbanded.

  And yet she remained.

  "You think a spell gets to decide when I'm done," she rasped aloud, laughing bitterly through bloodied teeth. "I've outlived ten empires. I'll outlast you all."

  With one arm, she pulled herself into the shadow of a toppled balcony. Her breath was shallow. Her vision doubled. But she smiled.

  There was still time.

  And she would find a way to take it back.

  Not far from the canal, Krungus spread out a ragged bit of cleared stone, smoothing it with his sleeve. He began arranging components with a reverence that bordered on religious: chalk, thread, bits of ink-drenched parchment that once belonged to formalized rituals now mostly lost to time. Eugene helped, careful not to disturb the shape of the forming sigil.

  The scroll lay open between them, its runes shifting faintly as if deciding whether or not to wake.

  "You sure about this?" Eugene asked, watching Krungus measure a final circle.

  Krungus didn’t answer at first. He traced the sigil with a trembling finger.

  "Banishment was always the last resort," he murmured. "But if we stay here, we’ll be hunted. Blamed. Maybe killed. This sends us away. The scroll doesn’t choose where. It just sends."

  Eugene squinted. "So we could end up anywhere."

  "Anywhere but here," Krungus repeated. "That’s all that matters."

  He set the lodestone gently at the scroll’s center. It began to pulse, slowly at first, then faster. The runes on the parchment twitched like sleeping nerves.

  Eugene looked up. The sky above the ruined city was starting to lighten. Dawn, or what passed for it now.

  "If this works," Eugene said, "what happens to the City?"

  Krungus looked at the skyline—shattered, sagging, burned.

  "It heals. Or it dies. Either way, we’re not the ones deciding anymore."

  He offered Eugene a hand. "Ready?"

  Eugene nodded. "Let’s see where broken magic sends two broken people."

  From the shadows behind a heap of broken stone, Na'atasha watched.

  She had followed them—dragged herself inch by inch through alley slush and gutter filth. Her hands were torn open. Her breath came in ragged gasps. But her eyes stayed fixed on the runes taking shape on the stone.

  A banishment circle.

  She didn’t need to hear the whole spell to understand what it was. She'd helped invent half of its core mechanics millennia ago. And now Krungus was casting one. A powerful one. One she could use.

  As Krungus began the incantation, his voice low and precise, Na'atasha summoned what remained of her strength. She pulled herself across the last few feet of debris, timing her crawl with the rhythm of the spell.

  Eugene was focused on the scroll. Krungus was focused on the stone.

  Neither of them noticed the ruined figure dragging herself into the edge of the circle.

  She got halfway in.

  Krungus spoke the final word.

  Light flared.

  Eugene’s lantern flared.

  The sigil ignited like a burning vein. For one long, blinding second, the entire world went silent.

  And then the spell took hold.

  Krungus and Eugene vanished in a spiral of light and folding space.

  Na'atasha didn’t.

  The spell, sensing her incomplete position, tried to split the difference.

  She screamed—a raw, high, gurgling thing—as the magic tore her in two. Her upper body hurled through dimensions she couldn’t comprehend. Her legs remained, twitching violently on the broken stone.

  The circle collapsed.

  And the canal was quiet once more.