Chapter 51

  The world returned in pieces.

  Not all at once. First came the weight—a dull, dragging heaviness pressing against his chest and limbs, like soaked cloth wrapped around cracked stone. Then sound, muffled and distant—the caw of a carrion bird, the crackle of embers, the hiss of something cooling in the rain.

  Ren stirred.

  Pain flared through his ribs, sharp and needling. He hissed and instantly regretted it. The air was thick with smoke and copper, heavy with rot. He opened his eyes.

  Redvine was gone.

  Or nearly. The market square, once teeming with vendors and bright canopies, lay flattened. Ash powdered the cobblestones. Burnt-out buildings stood like broken teeth around the edges. What remained of Maela’s tavern were two charred beams, leaning together like mourners. The rain hadn’t doused the fires—just made them smolder.

  He sat up with a groan. His body felt like someone else’s—stiff, slow, but undeniably alive. Muscles ached. Bones throbbed. His mana stirred faintly, but the core of him—the part that had lit up with impossible gold—felt quiet. Changed. He looked down.

  His arms were scored with healing cuts. New skin had begun to knit over the worst of them, faintly gold at the edges, though already fading. His tunic was half-dissolved, soaked and torn, and his boots barely clung to his feet. But he was here. Still breathing.

  That shouldn’t have been possible.

  He remembered the end—blood, screams, the crush of bodies and claws dragging him down. His Threads, used to the brink. Every last one spent in desperation. And then—

  Gold.

  A light like nothing he’d ever touched. Not mana. Not Aether. Something else. Something his. And then, nothing.

  Ren exhaled slowly. He didn’t understand what had saved him. But it hadn’t left. Not entirely. He could still feel it, somewhere deep beneath the surface—silent, watching. Waiting.

  He pushed to his feet. Stumbled. Swore. Then forced his legs steady. There wasn’t time for weakness. Not now.

  Half the town had been wiped out. Bodies lay half-buried in rubble. Others—gone entirely.

  But there was nothing he could do for them now.

  What scared him more was the quiet. The kind of silence that meant he was alone again.

  He turned toward the forest’s edge.

  Somewhere out there—Sinclair’s squad.

  He’d seen what was left of them.

  He closed his eyes. Bit down the wave rising in his throat. He didn’t have the right to cry. Not yet.

  The rest of Sinclair’s team had survived—hadn’t they?

  They had to. They’d retreated. He remembered that much. A flare in the sky, right before he’d blacked out. A signal.

  He clung to that.

  Hopefully, they’d made it out.

  He headed toward the edge of Redvine. Past burnt-out homes, over collapsed fences. Past a makeshift barricade where someone had tried to hold the line. The forest loomed beyond.

  Sinclair would be close.

  And Ren would find them. He had to.

  Not just for them.

  For Farin.

  For Ethan.

  For all of them.

  ____________________________

  The forest greeted him like a wall of shadows.

  Blackened trunks, damp earth, and a low mist clinging to the underbrush. It wasn’t the dense, ancient kind of forest he’d seen deeper in the Shardlands near the Order’s camp, The forest greeted him like a wall of shadows.

  Blackened trunks, damp earth, and a low mist clinging to the underbrush. It wasn’t the dense, ancient kind of forest he’d seen deeper in the Shardlands—it was younger, fragmented, like it didn’t quite remember what it wanted to be. Still, it wrapped around the outskirts of Redvine like a shroud.

  Ren paused at the treeline, taking a slow breath through his nose. His lungs burned. Something inside still felt wrong—shifted, cracked, realigned in ways he didn’t yet understand. The golden light beneath his skin had dimmed entirely now, locked behind some unseen barrier. If it stirred at all, it did so in silence.

  He reached inward, cautiously testing his Threads.

  His mana was responsive, if sluggish.

  His Threads were still active but stiff with overuse.

  But that golden energy was dormant. Not dead, but sealed. Quiet, like something sleeping with one eye open.

  Ren clenched his jaw. He’d lived. Somehow. But that didn’t mean he’d come out of it whole.

  His memories of the attack blurred at the edges. Sensory fragments—flashes of claws, the sickening howl of that lead abomination, the desperate last push. But one thing stayed sharp: the flare.

  He looked up through the rain-flecked canopy. The sky was a pale smear of gray, but the memory of that shot of green fire lancing into the clouds was vivid. The signal Sinclair’s team had agreed on. Retreat and regroup. He didn’t know how far they'd gotten—but he remembered the angle.

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  Not toward the southern path. Not into town. East-northeast. Into the woods.

  Ren limped forward.

  Each step was a test. He’d been drained to the edge and then pulled back by something he didn’t yet understand. Every ache reminded him that his survival hadn’t been natural—it had been stolen from death, bought by power he couldn't control. Not yet.

  Low branches clawed at his torn sleeves. Mud sucked at his boots. But he moved. One foot, then the next.

  Time slipped oddly in the woods. Ten minutes passed, maybe more. He followed the terrain, trying to retrace the battlefield in his head. Trees grew denser here, but not impassable. There were signs—twisted grass, footprints in the damp earth. Not recent, but not old either. The right kind of boots. Not the clawed indentations of those abominations.

  That was good.

  He paused to catch his breath, resting one hand against the bark of a tree. The golden glow flickered briefly under his skin—reflexive, not controlled. A heartbeat later, it was gone again.

  “Still not mine,” he muttered under his breath. “Not yet.”

  The wind shifted.

  Smoke. Not fresh, but not fully faded either. And something else—iron. Cold, clean. Metal.

  Ren narrowed his eyes.

  Not a forge. Too far from town. Not a ruin. He moved faster now, following the scent. Branches scraped past his face. The trees opened gradually ahead.

  He found it at the crest of a shallow ridge.

  A makeshift camp—hastily assembled but expertly structured. Tarps strung between tree limbs. Defensive sigils etched into the surrounding ground with chalk and thread. A low, crackling fire at the center, shielded by stones. And people.

  Not many.

  He saw five figures. All wore the sigil of the Obsidian Order, but their gear was battered, dulled by soot and blood. Two sat near the fire, whispering over a torn map. One was standing watch, his blade resting against his shoulder. The fourth—a woman with short-cropped silver hair—was rewrapping her arm with mana-treated cloth.

  The fifth—was Sinclair.

  He stood apart from the others, leaning against a tree, staring into the distance with that same weathered calm that had unnerved Ren the first time they’d met. His left hand was missing a gauntlet. His right eye had a fresh scar beneath it, swollen and red. But he was alive.

  Ren stepped out from the trees.

  No fanfare. No words.

  Just presence.

  The silver-haired woman noticed him first. She rose to her feet in a low crouch, her hand darting to her belt.

  “Wait,” she said, frowning. “That’s—”

  Sinclair’s gaze flicked up.

  For a moment, there was nothing but silence. The others froze, their hands half-drawn to weapons, unsure if they were staring at a ghost or a man.

  Then Sinclair pushed away from the tree.

  His boots crunched over the wet leaves. He crossed the clearing in a few measured strides and stopped a few paces from Ren.

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  Sinclair’s voice wasn’t angry. Just tired.

  Ren straightened, trying not to look like he was swaying on his feet. The others behind Sinclair still hadn’t moved—watchful, uncertain. The camp was smaller than he’d expected: a scattering of soaked tents, a few makeshift shelters under the canopy, and a handful of exhausted, wounded survivors tending to each other.

  “I know,” Ren said, his voice hoarse. “But I had to come.”

  Sinclair’s eyes narrowed. “How?”

  Ren managed a weak shrug. “Snuck in with one of the cargo carts. No one even saw me.”

  A faint twitch passed over Sinclair’s face—almost a smile. Almost. “That’s reckless.”

  “I didn’t really have better options,” Ren said. “I ran when I saw those abominations approaching. Toward the city. There were bodies everywhere. Fires.” He swallowed hard and forced himself to keep going. “ T-There were friends. They even got Farin.”

  His voice broke on the last word. He stopped, one hand gripping the edge of the table like it could anchor him. A tremor passed through his shoulders as he lowered his head, jaw clenched tight against the sob threatening to break loose.

  Sinclair’s shoulders dropped slightly. He nodded once, just enough to show he understood.

  Ren drew a shaky breath. Another. Slowly, the tension in his frame eased, though his eyes stayed distant, unfocused.

  He looked past Sinclair. “How bad is it?”

  A beat. Then Sinclair exhaled and stepped back, gesturing for Ren to follow. They moved toward the center of the camp, where a few others finally let down their guard. One woman lowered her bow. A man with a splinted arm gave Ren a grim nod.

  “It’s bad,” Sinclair said. “Worse than we expected. Half our vanguard didn’t make it back. The abominations weren’t just targeting townsfolk—they came for us too. Followed us into the forest. We lost Faye. Ryse. Deren.”

  Ren flinched. The names landed with weight, each one a blow he hadn’t seen coming.

  Faye. Ryse. Deren.

  He didn’t even know who they were. Didn’t have faces to match to the names. Shame coiled low in his gut, hot and bitter. These people had fought, bled, died—and he hadn’t even known they existed until now. He didn’t know what Faye’s voice had sounded like, or whether Ryse had a family waiting for him. He hadn’t noticed Deren in the crowd when he first arrived.

  His eyes dropped to the forest floor, unable to meet the others'.

  “We’re not in a position to hold anything,” Sinclair continued. “Most of our supplies burned. The flare was a signal to regroup, but honestly—we didn’t expect anyone else to make it. Not with what we saw.”

  “And the Divine?” Ren asked. “Why here?”

  Sinclair turned to him, gaze hard. “We don’t know.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “It’s all we have.”

  Ren’s voice rose. “This wasn’t some random attack—it wasn’t just some monster running wild. The Divine isn’t a mindless horde. It’s one of the most powerful beings in this world—maybe the most powerful—and we still don’t even know why it attacked Redvine.”

  “We may never know.”

  “No,” Ren said, stepping forward. “We can’t just abandon the town. There could still be survivors—trapped, injured. Families. Children. There could be answers. We can’t leave yet.”

  Sinclair met his eyes evenly. “We’re leaving by morning.”

  “You’re running.”

  “I’m keeping my people alive.”

  Ren’s hands curled into fists. “Too many people have already died.”

  “Many more will,” Sinclair said, voice low and firm. “That’s the part you’re not ready to accept.”

  Ren took a breath. He wanted to scream. To argue. But he couldn’t—not when Sinclair stood there, soaked and smeared with ash, face lined with exhaustion.

  Sinclair looked away. “We’ll head north. Back to camp. Maybe we regroup, maybe we don’t. But Redvine is gone and you need to accept that.”

  He turned, walking back toward the tents.

  Ren didn’t follow.

  The rain had started again—soft, steady. It hissed against the leaves, whispering through the wreckage.

  Redvine was gone.

  But Ren wasn’t.

  And he wasn’t done.