The crunch of bone as Rufus's two-handed greatsword beheaded the desert shrew was a sound Lyra doubted she would ever get used to. They had been killing monsters relentlessly, without pause or reprieve. No matter how many fell, the bar barely seemed to move. Hundreds lay dead behind them, and it still felt like a drop in the bucket—barely enough to keep the people of Chronowell progressing.

  The time distortion didn't help. Every day spent outside translated to a little over a month inside. That was both a blessing and a curse. Lyra had lived nearly three years within Chronowell's walls, long enough for it to become what she thought of as home.

  And yet she was here, pushing herself at a grueling pace, trying to gather cosmic energy as fast as it was being consumed. The monsters were weak. Pathetic, really, and it only made her wonder what Dane had endured to sustain so many for so long. He had almost single-handedly gathered the Skan before entering the Crucible. Now, in his absence, the gap he left behind felt impossible to fill.

  "We need to prepare for a resupply," Rufus said. "We're nearly out of potions. Rachel... how's your mana?”

  "The same as the last three times you asked," Rachel replied. “I am running on fumes, Rufee.”

  Rufee? Lyra thought. She was pulled from her thoughts, not by what they said, but by how they said it. There was something unspoken between them, and she was beginning to feel like a third wheel.

  She wiped the sweat from her brow and headed toward the cat-beast twins. She still couldn't tell them apart, so she didn't bother trying.

  "Hey... Sable, Nyx," she called. "Where were you during that fight? We had to take it down ourselves."

  They answered in unison, a habit that still unsettled her.

  "It's boring, killing all day."

  "We took this mission for a change of scenery," Sable added.

  "But this is worse than the dungeon," Nyx finished with a whine. "I forgot how hot it gets out here."

  Lyra exhaled, glancing across the endless sands. They weren't wrong. Out here, only a handful of creatures could survive, making for the same basic encounters over and over again. But if they needed to resupply, at least they would be able to spend a week in Chronowell before coming back out here. I could really use some time in my bed. She had bought something called memory foam, and it always remembered how she liked to sleep.

  A painful spike brought her to her knees. She didn't know what was happening, but her insides felt like they were about to rupture. Lyra gasped, fingers digging into the sand as the pain surged. It came from her mana reservoir.

  Pressure tore loose in her chest, invisible and absolute, as something snapped. Heat flooded her veins fast and violently. Mana surged without direction, cosmic energy ripping through her nervous system in jagged, uncontrolled waves.

  She screamed.

  The world fractured. Her vision blurred into streaks of color as the ground beneath her shimmered, grains of sand fusing into glass as the excess power spilled from her. Her muscles locked, spine arching as if pulled taut by invisible hooks.

  Her status pane tried to manifest and failed.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  It flickered at the edge of her vision, numbers cascading too fast to read, warnings that began collapsing in on themselves. Experience flooded her all at once, crushing her.

  "Lyra!" Rufus shouted, rushing to her side.

  The pressure doubled. She felt herself lift an inch off the ground before gravity slammed her back down. Her breath came in broken, panicked gasps as the surge finally began to collapse inward, coiling beneath her skin instead of tearing free. It hurt.

  When it was over, Lyra lay shaking in the glassed sand, throat raw and limbs numb. The power didn't fade, like a storm trapped behind her ribs; it came and went in waves.

  Rufus knelt beside her, hands hovering uncertainly. "What happened?"

  She swallowed hard. "I… I don't know." Her voice shook. "It felt like everything hit me at once. Like years of progress just dumped into me."

  That shouldn't be possible. Before anyone could respond, the air above them split.

  A precise, angular tear opened in the sky, edges glowing faintly as a box punched through reality and slammed into the ground between them. The impact sent a ripple through the sand. The crate was small.

  Rufus stiffened.

  He rose slowly and approached it, eyes narrowing as the Chronowell seal shimmered across its surface. With a soft chime, the locking runes disengaged. The lid fell away.

  Inside rested the Chronowell core.

  Its inner light pulsed weakly, like a wounded heart struggling to beat.

  Lyra sucked in a breath. "Rufus…?"

  He didn't answer.

  There was a folded note tucked against the core, edges singed. Rufus hesitated, then picked it up. His hands were steady, and he read. Then again, as if the meaning would change in the re-read. The desert wind tugged at his cloak as his face drained of color.

  "What is it?" Lyra asked, already dreading the answer.

  Rufus exhaled slowly, like a man bracing himself before delivering a death sentence.

  "It's from Tomas," he said.

  Her chest tightened. "And?"

  He looked up at her, jaw set, eyes hard with the kind of resolve that came only after something precious had already been lost.

  "Chronowell has fallen," he said quietly.

  The words sank into the pit forming in her stomach. No. It was the only thing she could think of. The years she had spent there. The people. The routines. The sense of home she had.

  Her knees gave out again.

  "Oh," she whispered.

  And for the first time since leaving the legion, Lyra understood exactly what she had wanted from life. The moment it was ripped away.

  Lyra swallowed, steadying herself as the pain faded to a dull, lingering ache. The storm beneath her ribs hadn't gone away, but it was contained, for now.

  She looked at Rufus. He was still standing over the core, gauntleted hands clenched at his sides, eyes fixed somewhere far beyond the desert.

  "What do we do?" she asked quietly.

  Rufus exhaled through his nose. As if he were trying to extinguish a fire, Lyra could see a flame igniting behind his eyes. He folded Tomas's note carefully and tucked it into his cloak.

  "Tomas said in the note that we are free of our contracts," he said.

  A long moment passed between the five of them. Rachel broke the silence first.

  "Free of our contracts," she repeated, disbelief threading through the exhaustion in her voice. She let out a humorless laugh and rested her hands on her knees. "That's one way to say the city died."

  Rufus didn't correct her.

  Rachel glanced at Lyra. "So that's it, then? Chronowell falls and we… walk away?”

  Lyra opened her mouth, then closed it again. She didn't have an answer. The storm inside her shifted restlessly.

  "We don't walk away," Rufus said evenly. "We finish what we started."

  The cat twins padded closer, ears flicking, tails lashing in opposite rhythms.

  "In the wilds," Sable said, squinting at the cracked core, "when a den collapses, the survivors scatter."

  "But some stay," Nyx added quickly. "To see if anything can be salvaged."

  Rachel snorted. "You cats are getting philosophical."

  "We've always been philosophical," Sable replied.

  "Just sometimes it gets lost in hunger," Nyx said.

  Lyra managed a weak smile, then looked back to Rufus. "And Dane?"

  Rufus's jaw tightened. "If Tomas was right, Dane needs this." He nodded at the core. "More than any of us."

  Rachel straightened, resolve bleeding through the fatigue. "Then I'm in. A free agent or not.”

  The twins answered together, voices sharp and confident.

  "We don't abandon our pride."

  Lyra took a slow breath and pushed herself to her feet. The pain flared, then settled. She looked at Rufus again.

  "Then tell us where to go."

  Rufus turned toward the horizon.

  "The Coliseum," he said, facing the direction of the Shattered Reach.