A Harmony of Ages, page 14
He had to reach her first.
The streets were chaos. The few survivors who were still in the city stopped to gape at the fractured sky. A woman stumbled past him with blood streaming from a cut above her eye where falling debris had struck her down. He dodged around her and around others who were fleeing the eastern quarter in blind panic, their faces pale with terror.
Threnos pushed through the growing stream of people, his body protesting the speed and the strain, but he couldn’t slow.
She blazed across his senses. She sang with a voice he’d thought he’d never hear again.
I’m coming, he thought, hoping the bond between them was stable enough to carry his presence toward her. Hold on. I’m coming.
Whether she heard him through the chaos of her awakening, he didn’t know and couldn’t tell. Their bond flickered and stuttered, made unstable by the presence of two consciousnesses sharing one body, but he called out to her all the same.
He was running toward her like he’d run two thousand years ago, when the corruption had been spreading through their people like a disease. When she’d looked at him with eyes full of grief and love and told him she couldn’t let the madness consume them all, that she would end it before it destroyed everything. That she was sorry for what she had to do.
He’d tried to stop her and failed completely. He’d watched helplessly as she unleashed power that tore their world apart at its foundations, that killed thousands of Arcana in an instant.
Now he was running toward her again, but this time he didn’t want to stop her. This time he just wanted to reach her before it was too late, before she consumed Vesper’s soul entirely, before Fermata and Fortis arrived and forced another confrontation that would end in blood spilled across ash-covered ground.
The grimoire burned against his side. The sky bled light through its fractured wound. And Threnos ran through the devastated city toward the only being he’d ever truly feared, the only being he’d ever truly loved, knowing that after millennia of separation he was finally going to see her again.
Whether that meant salvation or annihilation, he no longer had the capacity to care.
Fermata and Fortis were halfway to the Spirefields when reality convulsed.
The shockwave struck without warning. Beside her, Fortis staggered, his silver eyes blazing. They stumbled to a halt in the ruined streets, and Fermata reached out with her consciousness to identify the source.
What she found made her stop cold.
Tenebrae was gone. The void in her awareness was absolute, as if he’d never existed at all.
“So she broke free,” Fortis said, silver eyes fixed on the fractured sky above the Spirefields.
“She did.” Fermata’s voice came out flat and cold. “Threnody destroyed him.”
He’d been obliterated, removed from existence as if he’d never been. The power required was staggering, and even Fermata’s rage felt small against the magnitude of what Threnody had just done.
“We should retreat,” Fortis said, actual fear creeping into his voice. “She’ll destroy us the way she destroyed him.”
“Coward.” Fermata turned on him, eyes blazing. “You’d run after waiting thousands of years? After surviving when the rest burned?”
“I’d survive.” His jaw tightened. “Which we won’t if we face her now. Not when she’s…” He gestured toward the Spirefields, where the sky continued to fracture. “Look at that.”
“Exactly.” Fermata smiled, cold and sharp. “Which is why we’re not facing her at all.”
Understanding dawned in his expression, followed by hunger. “Through the humans.”
“She’s not just Threnody anymore,” Fermata said, already turning west through the devastated streets. “The Resonant is in there with her. Weak, dying, but still present. Still bleeding her mortal attachments into Threnody’s consciousness.”
“Do you really think Threnody cares about them?” Fortis followed, his fear transforming into anticipation. “After everything she’s done?”
“I think she’s confused and doesn’t understand what she’s feeling. She has endured thousands of years as the Echo, absorbing the memory of all magic.” Fermata walked past buildings that leaned at impossible angles, their foundations warped by too much power pressing down on reality. “She is no longer the same Arcana who destroyed our people. We’ll help her understand and make it clear what will happen if she defies us.”
She saw the result of their awakening and smiled. The city was already broken from the explosion at Saint Aldwin’s, from the merge that had torn reality apart, from Tenebrae’s shadow network spreading through the quarters like rot, from the weight of too much power warping everything at its foundations. It wouldn’t take much to push Nightreach into complete collapse.
“Where do we start?” Fortis asked, eagerness bleeding through the question.
“Everywhere.” Fermata stopped when they reached Market Street, where buildings still stood mostly intact. People had gathered after the explosion, seeking safety in numbers. She could feel them clustered in their shelters, dozens of mortal lives packed close together. “We tear it down. Let her watch through whatever remains of Vesper’s conscience. Let her feel every death.”
“And when she comes?”
“Then we’ll be ready.” Fermata reached deeper, pulling more of her magic forward. The witch’s consciousness screamed somewhere in the depths, still fighting, still refusing to vanish entirely. Irritating, but useful. Her memories held knowledge of the city, of where to strike for maximum devastation. “She’ll be weakened by her vessel’s attachments to these pathetic creatures. Her confusion will be our chance.”
“Yes.” Fortis lifted both hands. Power gathered around him in visible waves, raw and chaotic, the destructive strength that had earned him his name millennia ago.
Fermata touched the fabric of reality and found the weak points where Tenebrae’s anchor had already damaged the structural integrity.
“Make it loud,” she commanded. “Make it impossible for her to ignore.”
Fortis grinned, wild and eager. Then he unleashed his power at the nearest building.
The structure exploded. Stone and wood and glass atomised, and the building ceased to exist, replaced by a cloud of dust and a crater where its foundation had been.
People fled in every direction. Some had been burned by the explosion, others wounded by debris, and all of them were terrified beyond reason.
Fermata watched them scatter and felt nothing. Then she struck, silver light erupting from her hands as she tore through the building’s foundations, her power ripping through stone and mortar until the structure gave way.
A row of shops folded inward, collapsing as if gravity had reversed its pull. The rubble crushed anyone too slow to escape, their bodies disappearing beneath tonnes of stone.
More people ran. Chaos began to spread through the quarter.
“Again,” she commanded.
Another explosion rocked the street. Another building reduced to atoms. Fortis laughed as he worked, the sound carrying too much joy and too much hunger for destruction.
Fermata destroyed with cold precision, the violence a simple means to an end. A warehouse crumbled under her touch. A boarding house collapsed and buried its occupants beneath the wreckage. A market square buckled and sank into the earth.
They moved through the quarter like a storm, leaving devastation in their wake. Bodies littered the streets. Some had been torn apart, others trampled in the panic. A few lay staring at nothing, their minds broken by proximity to what they couldn’t comprehend.
“How many before she comes?” Fortis asked as he brought down another building.
“As many as it takes.” Fermata pulled more power forward despite the strain on her stolen body. “She ended our world. Let’s see if she still cares about its ashes.”
They turned north toward the residential quarters where families huddled in their homes, hoping walls would protect them from what was coming. They were foolish to believe they could hide from them.
Fermata felt no guilt. No hesitation. These lives meant nothing to her. They flickered and died, their existences barely a heartbeat in an Arcana’s consciousness. Why should she care if they burned or bled or begged for mercy?
Threnody had cared once. Cared enough to destroy their people, their civilisation, their entire world. Cared enough to imprison herself for millennia rather than let them rule. But that was before Tenebrae had tortured her. Before she’d tasted freedom after thousands of years of stone. Of enduring the relentless memory of the ashes her magic created.
“She’s taking her time,” Fortis said, almost to himself. “Where is she?”
Fermata reached toward the ley lines running beneath Nightreach and pulled.
Raw power flooded the streets in uncontrolled torrents, overwhelming every ward and barrier in its path. Protective enchantments shattered as their foundations collapsed. Every magical defence simply ceased to function, not that there were many left after such relentless violence.
Buildings that had been reinforced with spellwork collapsed without warning. Streets that had been stabilised with magic cracked open and swallowed whatever stood above them. Where the ley lines surfaced, raw magic erupted like geysers of pure power and consumed everything nearby in purple hued flames.
The destruction accelerated beyond even what they’d started. Fire leapt from building to building with unnatural speed. Each collapse triggered another in a cascading wave of devastation. The city ate itself from within, tearing apart under forces it had never been designed to withstand.
Fortis laughed again, the sound echoing across the ruins. It was wrong, joyful, and utterly without mercy or compassion for the dying.
Fermata stood in the middle of burning streets and waited. Threnody would feel this. She would sense magic tearing apart, the ley lines rupturing, and the mass death spreading like a plague. She would feel it all.
The city would burn until nothing remained but ash and memory. The humans would die screaming in the streets, and the Arcana would reclaim what had been stolen from them.
They would reclaim their dominion over this world. They would seize the power that was rightfully theirs. They would take back their right to reshape reality without opposition from lesser beings who couldn’t comprehend what they truly were.
Fermata smiled as another building collapsed, as more screaming filled the air, as Nightreach tore itself apart in a display of power that would be felt for miles in every direction. This was what it meant to be Arcana. This was what Threnody had thrown away when she’d chosen to end their people rather than let them rule as they were meant to.
Let her come now. Let her try to stop what they’d started. Let her face them and see what her choice had cost these people she’d supposedly birthed with her catastrophic mercy.
The sky continued to fracture above the Spirefields. Somewhere in those ruins, Threnody stood in the remains of Tenebrae’s shattered prison.
“Come and face us,” Fermata whispered to the burning city, to the fractured sky, to the Arcana who had destroyed everything they’d built. “Or watch them all die.”
Chapter 17
Threnody walked through the ruins of Nightreach.
The ground beneath her feet was uneven, broken stone and twisted metal that forced her to watch each step. Each breath brought new sensations. Smoke that burned her throat. Dust that coated her tongue. The acrid stench of burned magic, of ley lines torn apart and left bleeding into the physical world.
The Spirefields lay behind her somewhere in the smoke. She had emerged from the collapsed liminal space and simply started walking, letting her legs carry her through streets she barely recognised. No destination. No purpose beyond movement itself. The simple act of placing one foot in front of the other felt monumental after millennia without form.
Buildings leaned at unnatural angles, their foundations cracked and their wards shattered. Some had collapsed entirely, spilling rubble across what had once been busy streets. Others stood intact but warped, their architecture twisted by magical backlash.
Bodies lay in the wreckage. Some were crystallised, caught in unstable waves of magical energy. Their forms were frozen in terror, preserved in translucent stone that pulsed with residual power. Others had simply been crushed when buildings fell.
Threnody stepped around them without pausing. Death was commonplace on timescales measured in millennia. Civilisations rose and fell. Species bloomed and went extinct, all in the blink of an eye. Individual lives were brief flickers in the vast expanse of existence. These mortals had lived their handful of decades and now they were gone. That was simply how things were.
Except Vesper’s consciousness surged with grief at the sight of each body, and Threnody felt it bleeding through their shared awareness. The Resonant was pushed down deep inside, her control stripped away, but emotions were harder to contain than actions. They leaked through the boundaries between their minds whether Threnody wanted them or not.
A woman lay crumpled against a collapsed wall, her arm outstretched towards a child who hadn’t made it. Vesper’s grief spiked and she felt it twist through her chest, hot and painful and utterly foreign.
She kept walking.
Survivors fled past her in scattered groups, their faces marked by terror and exhaustion. They didn’t look at her. They didn’t recognise the body they saw as anything more than another refugee fleeing the destruction. Good. She had no interest in mortal attention. At least, not until she understood what remained of the world she had woken to.
The streets opened into a broader avenue lined with shops. Most had been looted already, their windows smashed and their contents scattered across the footpaths. A group of men fought over supplies in front of what had once been an apothecary, their violence brutal. One fell with blood spreading across the cobblestones beneath him, whilst the others grabbed what they could and ran.
Threnody watched them go. This was humanity under pressure. Fear breeding violence, desperation stripping away whatever thin veneer of civilisation they pretended to maintain. The same patterns that had consumed the Arcana, playing out on a smaller scale with cruder tools.
Inside their shared consciousness, Vesper pushed back. The Resonant’s thoughts came fractured but insistent, forcing Threnody to acknowledge them even as she tried to maintain distance.
They’re terrified. The city collapsed around them. Everything they knew is gone.
“And so they kill each other over scraps,” Threnody said. Her voice sounded strange in the open air, too loud after so long as formless consciousness. “Fear makes them violent. Violence breeds more fear. The cycle continues until there is nothing left.”
It’s not the same as what happened to the Arcana.
“Isn’t it?”
Vesper’s anger flared through their shared body. Threnody felt it burn along her nerves, making her heart race and muscles tense. Strange how emotions manifested physically. How feelings became sensations the body could not ignore.
No. It’s not the same. These are people trying to survive. The Arcana chose corruption. They weaponised it.
“The end result looks remarkably similar from where I stand.”
Threnody kept walking. The avenue curved past buildings that showed signs of attempted defence. Wards had been hastily erected, their sigils still glowing faintly on walls and doorways. They had failed. The magical backlash from her awakening had torn through them, leaving only burnt stone behind.
Without warning, Vesper’s memories surfaced. They came unbidden, flooding through their shared consciousness with an intensity that made Threnody stumble. She caught herself against a wall, her hands bracing on rough stone as images that were not hers consumed her.
Machinery of war. Aeroplanes dropping fire from the sky. Cities burning on a scale that rivalled anything the Arcana had achieved. News reports showing atrocities, one after another, until they blurred together into a single narrative of suffering. Nations destroying each other over resources, over ideology, over nothing at all.
The otherworld. Earth. Vesper’s home before she had crossed into Nightreach.
Threnody watched through Vesper’s eyes as the memories played out. Greed that consumed everything it touched. Power structures built on exploitation and maintained through violence. The same patterns, repeated endlessly, with mortals who had never heard of the Arcana or their corruption.
The memories shifted deeper. A child moving between foster homes, carrying her few possessions in a plastic bag. Different houses, different families, none of them permanent. The loneliness was profound, a constant ache that Vesper had learned to carry without comment. Each new placement brought hope that this time would be different, that this family would keep her, that she might finally have somewhere to belong.
The hope always died. She was moved again and again, unwanted and discarded, until she stopped hoping entirely.
Threnody felt the pain of those memories as if they were her own. The isolation. The desperate need for connection. The fear that something was wrong with her, that she was somehow broken in ways that made her impossible to love.
The memories released her abruptly. Threnody found herself still braced against the wall, breathing hard, Vesper’s grief and pain echoing through her thoughts.
“Why show me this?” Threnody asked.
Because you need to see it. Not just the violence. Not just the corruption. You need to see what we are.
“I see mortals who destroy each other with remarkable efficiency. You were abandoned to a corrupt world when you belonged here.”
You see what you want to see.
Threnody pushed away from the wall and continued walking. The street narrowed, flanked by residential buildings that had survived mostly intact. Their wards were older, stronger, built into foundations that had weathered centuries. Even the backlash from her awakening hadn’t been enough to fully breach them.
