The mood in the camp shifted after the deserters spoke. Fear spread like a crack through ice, quick and unstoppable. The Harbinger. A name few knew, but understood its importance. People whispered in corners, eyes darting toward the horizon where the enemy stood waiting.
Aldric and Lysara had done their best to contain the panic. They'd stood at the centre of the camp, side by side, repeating the same reassurances: We'll find a way. We just need your support. But the words felt thin against the vastness of what loomed beyond the edge of the camp.
The tension bled into every task. Workers hesitated as they reinforced the trenches. Scouts cast wary glances toward the distance, unsure if they'd return from their next mission. Even the Dragles shifted restlessly in their pens, sensing the shift in the air.
By nightfall, exhaustion won. Aldric and Lysara retreated to their quarters, steps slow and shoulders heavy. With the door closed, the pressures of the day bore down more heavily.
Aldric sat heavily on the edge of the cot, unlacing his boots with stiff fingers. Lysara stood in the centre of the room, arms crossed, gaze unfocused.
"Hell of a day," he muttered.
She didn't answer.
He rubbed his temples, trying to ease the dull ache behind his eyes. He expected her to settle into her usual spot—perched on a chair or sprawled across her bedroll—but instead, she moved toward him. Without a word, she sat between his legs and leaned back against his chest.
Aldric froze.
Lysara wasn't one for casual contact. Training together was one thing, but this? Her back pressed against his chest, her scales cool against his chin as they settled around her without conscious thought.
She needed this. He could feel it in the tension still locked in her body.
He tightened his arms slightly around her. "Want to talk about it?"
For a long time, she said nothing. The fire in the brazier crackled softly, filling the silence with warmth and shadows.
Finally, she spoke. "You asked me once... what the war was like. In the Veil."
Aldric's breath caught. He'd asked out of curiosity, never expecting an answer. "Yeah," he said softly.
"It's horrible." Her voice was flat, detached. "There's no beauty in it. No grand cause. Just endless, grinding war. Lightborn and Voidborn. Corrupted beasts. All fighting over the same shattered ground. The same dead fragments of the Veil."
He rested his chin lightly on the top of her head and said nothing, letting her find her way through the memories.
"The Veil belongs to our world," she continued. "The Void belongs to theirs. But over time, they... merged. Became one." Her scales shifted beneath his touch, running colder for a moment. "We fought to hold on to what was left. They fought to claim it. And between us, the ground never stayed still."
Aldric closed his eyes, trying to picture it: an endless war in a realm where land and sky had no rules, where death wasn't permanent, and nothing was ever won.
The brutality of it gnawed at the edges of his mind. War in the mortal world was savage enough—bodies broken on the battlefield, blood soaking into the ground, the dead left behind to rot or be mourned. But what Lysara described was something else entirely. An eternal, unrelenting grind where death wasn't the end but a revolving door, turning soldier after soldier into something less than what they'd been.
"And when you died?" he asked softly.
"Mother brought you back," Lysara said, her voice almost a whisper. "That was the worst part. Death changed you. You were never the same after it."
Her fingers found his wrist and squeezed it, the cool texture of her scales grounding him in the present.
"The Lightborn who died once were different. Died ten times? Worse. We stopped recognising each other after a while. Faces shifted. Voices cracked. We lost... what made us us."
She was quiet for a moment, her breathing steady but shallow, as though the memories themselves stole the air from her lungs.
"Death wasn't clean in the Veil," she continued, voice low. "The battles were... raw. Brutal. When we fought the Voidborn, we didn't just kill them—we tore through them with divine power, tried to burn away their essence before it could crawl into the land and corrupt it. And they did the same to us."
Her scales rippled to a darker hue. "You didn't fall gracefully in the Veil, Aldric. You didn't get a clean stab through the heart or a neat slice across the throat. Voidborn didn't aim to kill you quickly—they aimed to break you apart. They'd rip at your mind while their beasts chewed through your body. They knew we'd come back, so they tried to make sure we came back... broken."
Aldric's chest tightened. "Broken how?"
She hesitated. Then: "Your soul... bends. Every death leaves a crack. The more cracks you get, the more the light slips through. Until eventually, there's not enough of it left to hold you together. You start... hearing things. Feeling things that don't belong to you. And when you come back, you're less of who you were and more of... something else."
Aldric swallowed hard, his grip on her tightening. "You said you ran. That you avoided dying. But..." He hesitated. "You've died before, haven't you?"
Lysara stiffened in his arms. Her breath caught, and for a moment he thought she might deny it. But then she sagged slightly against him, the tension bleeding from her limbs.
"Yes," she said softly. "twice"
The word hung between them, sharp as a blade.
Aldric didn't speak. He gave her the silence she needed.
"The first time I was young," she said eventually. "One of my first battles. I was a support cleric back then, staying close to the backlines. Healing those who fell. Bolstering the shields of the front line." Her eyes unfocused, her mind pulled into a place he couldn't follow. "The Voidborn came faster than expected. We were defending a fracture point—one of the last stable ridges of the Veil that hadn't been swallowed by the void. The enemy surged forward with Trelocs at the front. The ground was slick with ichor. The sky above us was... wrong. Like it was bending inward."
Aldric pictured it: endless, twisting terrain where gravity shifted and shadows bled from the cracks.
"I thought I'd be safe behind the front lines," Lysara whispered. "I thought the paladins would hold. But the Voidborn sent in an Unraveller."
Aldric's brow furrowed. "Unraveller?"
"They don't attack with claws or teeth," she said. "They pull apart the threads of your soul. Tear through your divine connection until your power unspools like frayed rope."
She shivered against him. "The paladins went first. One moment, they were standing strong, shields locked, prayers resonating in unison. The next... they collapsed. Not dead. Just empty. Their bodies lay there, untouched, but their eyes... their eyes were gone. Blank. The connection severed like snapped string."
Aldric's throat tightened. He imagined what that must have felt like. To have mind ripped away so cleanly that even your god couldn't reach you.
"I tried to run," Lysara continued. "But the Unraveller saw me. I felt it the moment its gaze locked on me. My power... it slipped through my fingers like sand. My healing spells sputtered and died. My legs went numb. And then... it unravelled me."
Her voice faltered. Aldric squeezed her hand gently, saying nothing, just letting her feel the pressure of his touch.
"It didn't hurt at first," she said, after a long pause. "Just a strange pulling sensation. Like someone tugging threads from my chest. I dropped to my knees, watching my own soul pour out into the air like mist. And then the pain hit."
Her breath turned shaky. "It's not like a wound. It's... deeper. You feel yourself being torn away from the world, from everything you are. Every memory. Every belief. And the whole time, you hear it whispering to you—why fight? Let go. Give in."
Aldric's pulse quickened. "But you didn't."
"No," she said, voice hardening. "I clung to my faith. I called on Mother, begged her to save me. And she did." Her hand brushed over her chest. "I remember the warmth spreading through me. The agony snapping like a stretched wire. And then... nothing."
"Nothing?" he asked softly.
"I woke up days later in a staging ground. My comrades said they saw me collapse and dissolve into holy power. When I came back, I was whole. But..." Her voice cracked. "But I wasn't the same."
Aldric's heart ached as she spoke. He wanted to offer words of comfort, to tell her she was stronger than she gave herself credit for. But empty reassurances wouldn't change the truth. She'd lived through something beyond his understanding.
"So you ran from death after that," he said.
"Every time I saw death coming after that," she said, voice quiet, almost brittle, "I ran. Not from cowardice. From survival. I swore I'd never let that thing—any of them—touch me again."
She paused, breath catching, the weight of the memory pressing against the silence.
"But I failed." Her grip on his wrist tightened. "The second time... it was quick. Too quick. The Harbinger didn't even notice me. He didn't need to. His aura alone killed me—snuffed me out like a candle in a storm."
She exhaled shakily, eyes distant. "I didn't even have time to pray."
Aldric rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand. "And now the Harbinger's here. A champion from that endless war."
Lysara nodded. "He was there that day. I saw him on the ridge when time froze. He should've been caught in the stasis like everyone else. But he wasn't."
Aldric shifted slightly so he could meet her gaze. "And if he survived...?"
She licked her lips, eyes shimmering with something he couldn't name. "If he survived," she whispered, "then maybe the other Lightborn did too."
Aldric's breath caught. "The ones who died?"
"The ones who were left behind when time froze," she said. "The ones who fought to the last."
Aldric squeezed her hand tighter. The thought of more Lightborn returning should have filled him with hope. Instead, he could sense Lysara didn't feel it was a good thing.
The fire crackled louder, filling the silence.
"How do you think they will judge me? The one who ran"
He shifted slightly, adjusting her weight against him. The scent of salt and cold iron clung to her from the day's flight. "What happened in the end?" he asked.
"The war didn't end. Someone tried to stop it." Her voice wavered slightly. "Time... froze. I don't know who did it. Lightborn? Voidborn? Someone else entirely? But everything slowed. Locked in place." She shuddered against him. "It was like ice spreading across the ground. Soldiers froze mid-strike. Magic hung in the air like mist. Whole battalions trapped in moments they never escaped."
Aldric frowned. "But you got out."
"I woke up here." Her scales shifted to a dull grey, the colour of storm clouds before the rain. "After centuries of fighting, after watching time stop around me... I just woke up in a world that had moved on without me."
Her voice trailed off, the weight of those lost years pressing against the quiet. But then her gaze shifted, tilting her head just enough for her silver eyes to meet his. The tension in her shoulders softened, and the grey of her scales faded to a pale blue.
"When I first saw you," she said softly, "I thought you were just another soldier clinging to broken faith. But you weren't. You carried it like a shield—like something worth protecting, even when the world had given up on it." Her lips twitched, a faint, self-conscious smile. "And somehow... being with you has made me feel like maybe... maybe I'm not just a lost little girl anymore. Like the cracks don't matter as much when you're beside me."
Her fingers brushed against his hand. "Even if the others never come back—even if it's just us—we'll figure it out. We always do. The war taught me how to survive. But you..." Her thumb traced the edge of his palm. "You reminded me how to fight for something that matters."