A smoky smell was prevalent in the air. Kael walked out of the cabin, and the ground beneath her unprotected feet was covered with crevices.
The wind was not right—too calm, too oppressive, with a hint of something that didn't seem to exist.
She found herself and looked around calmly.
The lines were unevenly divided, some of them wide enough to draft trees. The earth was broken up everywhere with black marks appearing amid the greenery which should have been there.
Invisible clues were hidden in places where water gathered, maybe something more than a disaster.
"What… happened here? " Kael's voice was scarcely above a whisper, yet it felt deaf in the silence.
Orin leaned against the cabin's material body, arms interbreeding. "You secernate me. "
Her fountainhead snapped toward him. "I don't know. " She sounded almost justificative, but beneath it, there was something else—fear.
Orin studied her carefully. "Then you're one of the few. "
Kael took a stride forward, her hands curled into fists. "This isn't normal. " Her breath descended quickly. "The earthquakes… the sky… the—" She turned back, her gaze catching on something.
A deep, orbital hole yaw a few bases away, its boundary jagged, like the dry land had been torn open from within.
She swallowed. "That wasn't in that location ahead. "
"No, " Orin agreed
. "It wasn't. "
Kael sprains back to him, eyes sharp. "How does this happen? "
Orin didn't answer at once. He pushed off the cabin and walked past her toward the pit. When he stopped at its edge, he nudged a loose stone with his boot. It whirls around in, falling into darkness.
No sound followed.
Kael thrills. "What is that? "
Orin emanates. "A porthole. "
"To where? "
"Nowhere unspoiled. "
Her lips parted, then closed again. She turned and scanned the wasteland. "And the earthquake? The fires? The poisoned rivers? "
Orin watched her, silent.
Kael's frustration breaks open. "Severalise me, Orin. "
He touched her gaze. "The world is transgressing. "
The exercising weight of those words settled between them.
Kael's breathing was uneven, her fingers twitching at her side. "Because of the elementals? "
Orin nodded once. "Because the counterweight is conk. " the balance is gone.
She thrashes her lips and waffles. "And there's no mode to stop it? "
For a second, he almost didn't result. Then—
"There is. "
She exhaled, rilievo flickering in her oculus—until he spoke again.
"But it has in mind killing the only savior provided. "
Kael stiffened.
The wind shifted. The porthole behind them groaned, the air around it bending unnaturally.
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.
Then Kael whispered, "What if we're wrong? "
Orin clenches his jaw, turning his gaze away.
But Kael wasn't done. She took a step closer, sounding potent this time.
"What if killing them isn't the answer? "
Orin's clenched fist tightened. He didn't look at her when he muttered—
"Then we're all already
dead. "
The melodic line was duncical with the scent of scorched earth and damp ash. Kael stepped carefully over the fractured ground, her feets sinking into the muffled grease.
The forenoon light had fiddled to cleanse the ruin before them—the country still deported the scratch of something ancient, something wrong.
She turns to Orin, searching his cheek. "What stimulates all this? "
Orin didn't answer right away. He knelt, pressing his both palms to the earth. A faint hum resonates, like an old wound stirring.
His finger's breadth curled, sucking unseen DOE from the soil. Symbols flare out—Vetheros, Sa'karin, Lumirath. Old magic. Conjuration from before the first recorded war.
Kael shivered.
Orin breathed out, his breath unsteady. "This world was made on counterpoise, " he murmured. "Six elementary forces, each bound to one another through an Oath of Equilibrium. Fervor, Water, Air, Earth, Light…" His vocals darken. "And Shadow. "
At the last word, the earthly concern trembled beneath them.
Kael's hint was caught. "Shadow? "
Orin's gaze rises to the visible horizon. "It was never meant to exist. "
A blast of wind twirls around them, carrying voicelessness from something unseen. Orin's vocalization was low and heavy.
"Long ago, the Concordium Pact was constituted, " he continued, tracing unseeable glyphs in the airwave. "An arrangement made between the six elemental leaders.
They would govern together, ensuring no force grew too stiff. " His lips pressed into a sparse line.
"But not all ingredients were equal. The Shadowborn—those cursed with the mogul of dark—were visualized as corruptions, not part of the raw worldly concern. "
Kael frowned. "Then why were they
included? "
"They weren't. " Orin's voice was gloomy. "Shadow was a forbidden element. When the first Shadowborn appeared, the early five elementals saw them as a threat.
They intend to stick to their top executive and apply the Vareth Enchantment— a waterproofing turn crafted by the Lightweavers. It was open to lock Shadow aside forever. "
Kael hugged herself, all of a sudden cognisant of how frigid it had become. "It didn't work out, get along with it? "
"No. " Orin's jaw tightened. "The Shadowborn fought rearwards. They transgress the sealing wax from within, and when they emerge, they cause thence angrier and more substantial.
They didn't just handle darkness any longer, Kael. They had learned to consume. To own. "
A quiver went down her spine. "Possess? "
Orin's hand folded into a fist. The earthly concern beneath them pulse, reacting to his legerdemain.
"Duskiness doesn't just spread—it taints. The Shadowborne don't just now fight back with a magic spell, Kael.
They take. " He reckoned to her, eye sharp. "If they mark someone—if they chip their sigil into somebody—that person quit to be themselves. They go to a vessel. A puppet. "
Kael's venter turned. "So they can take over anyone? "
"Anyone weak enough to lay claim. "
The wind howled again, and the ash at their feet whirled into moving shapes—visions of the past times.
Kael watches over in revulsion as the images rick, revealing six figs standing in a sacred circuit. Their hands were stuck to runes—Solmari, Entaris, Ry'kael—ancient deception meant to mix them.
Then, the imaginativeness cracked.
The figures split apart, their bond breaking up. The world shook, and the sky darkened.
"This, " Orin articulates, gesturing to the destruction around them, "is what happens when the balance is broken. "
Kael clenched her fists. "And it's affecting us now? "