They moved through the palace like a blade through silk, if silk were made of screams, shattered crystal, and spurting black blood, or bluish blood if the Bergians were foolish enough to get in the way.

  Koronos was the point of the wedge, his attuned spear a blur of contained lightning, shearing through corrupted flesh and Bergian plate alike. He fought not with anger, but with a terrifying, focused inevitability. Every step south was a step toward the Array, toward home. Anything in the way was merely an obstacle to be removed.

  Corvannafax was his shadow and his sledgehammer. The glowing crystal sword was unfamiliar, but her strength was not. She used it like a cleaver, shattering limbs, hacking through formations, a red tide of violence meeting the grey tide of corruption. Each Bergian guard she cut down felt like a petty repayment for the cold blue walls of her cell.

  Pericles anchored the left flank, a bulwark of grim efficiency. He fought in near-silence, his grief for Hybornyesis transmuted into a mechanical precision. He didn't roar; he measured, stepped, and killed. Every fallen enemy was a tally mark against the debt he felt the world now owed. Corvannafax didn’t ask what happened, she knew he was gone, or he would be there with them.

  Zeyzey was the wild variable on the right. She fought not with a warrior's grace but with a predator's cunning and her new, unsettling gifts. When a pair of corrupted soldiers rushed her, she didn't raise her stolen blade. She made a sharp, twisting motion with her hand. The air between them shimmered, and for a second, each soldier saw the other as a shambling Frostwight. They turned on each other with silent, mindless fury, tearing themselves apart. She smiled, a cold, thin thing on her beautiful face, and moved on.

  Daggeroth and Shelove wove through the chaos. The lad's arrows finding gaps in armor, the pantera's sheer mass breaking lines and ending threats with a snap of her jaws or a powerful swipe of her huge paws.

  They were not heroes liberating a palace. They were a localized disaster, carving a path of carnage toward a single goal. Loyalist guards who tried to stand their ground against the "barbarian invaders" died as quickly as Ultramar's corrupted husks. The distinction was meaningless to them. All were in the way.

  The corridor ended in a pair of soaring doors, not of wood and iron, but of seamless, polished white crystal, etched with intricate, glowing sigils of warding, that were failing. The Sanctum. Before it, the air itself froze into jagged patterns.

  A Frostwight stood guard, but this one was different. It was larger, its form sculpted from clearer, darker ice, shot through with veins of the same oily blackness as the Anchor. In its chest, a shard of pulsating obsidian glimmered; it was a piece of the wounded Anchor itself. It turned, and the temperature plummeted. Rime raced across the walls toward them.

  "Clear the chaff!" Koronos barked, not taking his eyes off the guardian. "This one is mine."

  The others fanned out, engaging the dozen corrupted elite warriors that flanked the doors. Shelove's roar shook dust from the ceiling.

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  The Frostwight lunged, not with a shambling gait, but with terrifying speed and strength, a lance of solidified frost extending from its arm. Koronos met it, not with a block, but with a deflecting strike from his spear. The impact rang like a bell, and a shock of supernatural cold shot up the shaft, numbing his hands. The attuned weapon glowed hotter in response, fighting the entropic chill with arching yellow energy.

  This was a creature of the Whisper's heart, far stronger than the one in the cavern. It fought with intelligence, herding him with walls of ice, striking at his footing. Koronos gave ground, not in retreat, but to study. He saw the rhythm in its attacks, the way it favored the side where the obsidian shard pulsed.

  He feinted high, drawing a sweeping, frozen claw. As it overextended, he dropped low and thrust the spear not at its body, but at the floor at its feet. The spearpoint, blazing with energy, shattered the crystalline tile. The Frostwight staggered, its footing compromised for a split second.

  Koronos exploded upward inside its guard. He drove the spear in a short, brutal arc, not at the core in its chest, but at the major joint of its icy arm. The attuned weapon sheared through the majikal ice with a screech. The limb fell and shattered.

  The creature reeled, a silent scream in its posture. Koronos didn't pause. He reversed his grip and, with a two-handed blow, brought the spear's haft down on its leg, collapsing it to one knee. Before it could react, he placed the glowing spearpoint against the obsidian shard in its chest.

  "This isn’t your world, it belongs to the living," he growled, and channeled a surge of his Everliving will through the weapon.

  The shard exploded in a shower of black, freezing splinters. The Frostwight imploded into a heap of inert, dead ice.

  Behind him, the last corrupted elite fell to Pericles's sword and Corvannafax's furious follow-through. The corridor was suddenly, eerily quiet, save for the panting of the living and the crackle of dying majik.

  Koronos turned to the crystal doors. The sigils still glowed, but faintly, erratic after the majikal shockwave. He didn't look for a mechanism. He nodded to Corvannafax and Pericles.

  Together, they put their shoulders to the glorious, opulent barrier. Muscle and will strained against ancient majiks. For a moment, nothing. Then, with a sound like a mountain groaning, the sigils flared and died. The doors gave way, sliding inward with a heavy, grating scrape.

  They stumbled into the Sanctum.

  The gigantic room was circular, the ceiling a distant dome of crystal showing the chaotic, smoke-choked sky. In the center stood the Crystal Array that the amethyst throne was part of. A complex, geometric structure of interlocking golden rings and humming crystalline nodes, throbbing with captive energy. The promise of home.

  But before it, the scene was one of betrayal and ruin.

  Emperor Xerxes lay slumped at the foot of his amethyst throne, his white furs stained a violent, spreading black around a dagger buried in his side. The weapon itself seemed to writhe with shadow, leaching the life and color from his ancient blue skin. Nightlands poison.

  And from the shadows behind the throne, Lord Ultramar stepped into the Array's pulsing light, a satisfied, hungry smile on his face. In his hand, he held not a weapon, but the Sword of the First. Its usual radiant glow was subdued, choked by the same verdigris of Bergian majik, but it was unmistakably the blade. Normally the sword dominates weaker wills, but Ultramar’s will is strong enough to hold it back, although he cannot access the sword’s Everliving amplification powers. However, it’s still an amazing sword and deadly sharp.

  "The specialist returns," Ultramar said, his voice smooth and cold. "And just in time for the culmination. I trust the Whisper's welcoming committee was… instructive."

  Koronos the Kazarian | Royal Road