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Book 2: Chapter 22: Pain That Shapes
🕑 Added 2025-08-26 17:25:27 +0000 UTCChapter 22:
Pain That Shapes
2nd of Liriane, Year 646 of the Seventh Era.
That was the date. The fracture point, six centuries ago. Their fate would be decided there—and here—at the same time.
Krayden crouched on the bare rock of a mountain ridge a few miles outside the Academy for Imperial Magicians in Tyranore, his chalk-stained hands steady as they carved the last delicate arcs of the circle into the earth. The runes pulsed faintly, awaiting his will. He had been working for hours, checking the stars overhead, adjusting his lines against their slow movements, calculating again and again until everything aligned.
Now he stood within the pattern, letting his null-magic seep outward, filling each channel, each etched rune, with its pale, soundless glow.
Beside him, Elen Trivielle watched in silence.
She hadn’t changed in ten years. Her crimson hair was hidden beneath her travel-hood, but her eyes burned through the shadow, brilliant green, never blinking. Her massive sword hung loosely across her back, the black steel whispering a faint, unnatural aura into the night. He had never seen her swing it, but just looking at the weapon unsettled him, as though the blade itself resented being at rest.
An idle thought crossed his mind, absurd in its quiet bitterness: I am probably older than her now, at least in appearance. She is still in her early twenties.
He tore his eyes from her and returned to the circle. The lines hummed faintly under his feet, threads of null-magic weaving into the void between worlds. His heart beat faster with every passing second.
“All right,” he said finally, his voice rasping. “The runes are set. Are you sure, Elen?”
She inclined her head, her hood slipping back just enough to catch the faint moonlight. The certainty in her eyes was infuriating.
“Go ahead, Krayden,” she said. Her tone was calm, and unyielding. “It’s time to leave this godforsaken timeline.”
Krayden swallowed. His throat felt dry. The chalk crumbled in his hand as he clenched it too tightly.
But he nodded.
Then he placed both hands on the circle’s heart and let his mana flow.
The runes blazed to life, cold light stretching outward, the air itself twisting under the strain. The stars above seemed to tremble.
This was it. No turning back.
“All right,” Krayden said, forcing his voice steady. “It’s ready.”
He and Elen stepped into the circle together. The light swallowed their shadows, and for a moment the world outside felt impossibly far away.
Krayden turned once, looking down the mountain toward Tyranore. Toward the Academy. Its spires rose faintly in the distance, tiny against the horizon. He knew he would never see it again. Not in this life.
The Academy had been his microcosm, his refuge. A place where the Empire’s suffocating grip seemed almost to vanish. A place where he could lose himself in books and students and the illusion of peace. For him, it had been the perfect world.
The runes flared brighter. The air cracked.
Reality blurred.
Krayden checked the stars above one last time, clinging to the reassurance of his calculations. They were right. They had to be right. But even so—if they weren’t, there was nothing he could do now.
Another crack ripped across the circle.
It wasn’t smooth, not like teleportation. No clean fold of space, no shimmer of displacement. The circle was engulfed in raw brilliance, and inside, reality fractured like a mirror struck with a hammer.
He looked down at his hand—only to see it displaced, floating a hand’s breadth beside where it should have been. His arm was split, the edges jagged and wrong.
He turned to Elen. Her face was divided into two halves, one hovering slightly higher than the other, her emerald eyes doubled and misaligned.
Another crack.
And then something shattered.
Panic spiked hot in his chest. Did I make a mistake?
A deafening boom answered him.
The circle collapsed inward. Light roared outward. And in a single breathless instant, both Krayden and Elen vanished into nothingness.
The mountain was silent again. Only an empty scar remained where they had stood moments ago—a hole burned into the world itself, as if reality had swallowed them whole.
--::--
Elen was sobbing.
Everything was too much.
Her first real battle hadn’t been glorious, hadn’t been the shining tale she’d imagined in her head. No banners in sunlight, no clean victory. Only mud and smoke, blood and gore. Screams. And silence after screams.
She had lost her friends—Faren and Jarl. Only Ser Quen might still be alive, but she didn’t know. She didn’t know anything.
The last hours blurred in her mind like a fever dream. One moment she was shoulder to shoulder with them, the next she was alone. Soldiers had picked her up when she collapsed, someone carrying her like a child in their arms, setting her in this tent she now sat in.
Her hands still trembled. Every muscle ached. Her mana core felt wrung dry, hollow as an old husk.
This was not what she had imagined battle would be. There had been no glory. Only primal fear, rage, and… something else she couldn’t name. She couldn’t even remember who she had killed first. But she had killed. She had cut men down. And still, the pain hadn’t vanished. It clung to her, raw, heavy, and still unbearable.
Her tears wouldn’t stop.
Why hadn’t Lirien helped her? Why hadn’t the goddess protected her friends? Why had she been led into this—this nightmare?
“Let it out,” a deep voice rumbled behind her. “I won’t lie and say it will get easier. But the pain… it won’t cut so deep, later.”
Elen scrubbed her cheeks with the back of her hands, though it only smeared dirt and blood across her face. She looked up.
The man stepping into the tent was the Marshal. The same man who had pulled her from the slaughter. She remembered it in jagged pieces—his greatsword rising and falling, three soldiers cut down in the space of a breath, and then his arm around her middle, lifting her off the ground like she weighed nothing. She had fought him, thrashing, screaming to go back for the fallen man she’d tried to shield. But his grip hadn’t budged, his voice rough in her ear: “He’s already dead. Stop.” She remembered her small fists beating at his vambrace. She remembered the blood-soaked yard spinning past as he ran her behind the shields. And she remembered the way the enemy line had folded after that, how the Gate had been theirs by the time he set her down.
Now that same man stood before her again, broad-shouldered, armored still, his face marked by scars and grime but steady, like stone that couldn’t be shaken.
Elen looked away, voice small. “You didn’t need to rescue me…” she mumbled.
The Marshal crossed the tent without hesitation. He knelt beside her, the iron weight of his armor creaking softly. “I remember my first battle,” he said, voice low and calm. “I lost my elder brother that day. But we won. And because we won, I lived to see the next sunrise.”
Elen glanced back at him. “...Sorry for your loss.”
He chuckled, the sound rough but not unkind. “That was more than thirty years ago, girl. It’s fine.” Then he stopped, studying her with steady eyes.
Elen didn’t look away this time. She held his gaze, even as her chest ached.
“I asked my men why a child was fighting in our ranks,” he said. “They told me they found you in the woods. So tell me—how did they find you there?”
“No,” Elen answered simply.
The Marshal blinked. A few seconds of silence stretched, then he laughed again, full and booming. “That’s fine. That’s fine… Maybe I would’ve cared before,” he said, shaking his head and gesturing to her bloodstained hands, “—but it’s too late for that now.”
His smile faded as he stood, straightening with the slow weight of a man already calculating the next march. “We’ve not much time. We move south soon. Reinforcements will be on us before long, and we can’t hold the Gate forever.”
Then he paused, his voice softer. “Do you have anyone who will take care of you, when we’re back?”
Elen bit her lip. Her mind flashed to Faren’s laugh, and to Jarl’s hand on her shoulder—both were gone. “I… I don’t know. I was with Faren and Jarl, but they’re dead. Maybe Ser Quen…”
The Marshal’s eyes darkened. He shook his head slowly. He knew every knight in his ranks. “Sorry, lass. We lost many good men today.”
Her lips trembled, but she forced her teeth down on them, holding the tears back. “Then… I’ll take care of myself.”
“That, I can see,” the Marshal said with a faint smile. “But a little girl like yourself shouldn’t need to take care of herself.”
He pulled off one gauntlet, the iron clattering softly as he set it aside, and stretched out his bare hand toward her. “My name is Dareth. And if you want, you can come with me. By chance, I’m in need of a new, competent squire.”
His grin softened the words. For reasons she couldn’t name, that grin felt strangely comforting.
Elen reached out, her small hand slipping into his. “Elen… Elen Trivelle.”
Dareth raised an eyebrow at the name, but only gave a nod. “Glad to make your acquaintance.”
--::--
Everything had turned into pain in the last hours.
Not sharp pain, not something she could scream at and then breathe past—it was total. It was everywhere. Her body spasmed against the floor, every nerve burning like a forge too hot to touch. But even through the pain, there were voices. Urgent voices, tight with worry. They circled her, fussing, desperate, pulling mana pearls one after another, burning their cores to try and steady hers.
Clara almost laughed. It was almost comical.
She didn’t know when she had first realized it, but she had always wanted this—attention. To be seen.
Back in Bellgrave she had never been. She was just the youngest child of Bellgrave, easy to like, easier to overlook. All her siblings shone brighter, louder, more talented. Clara was the kind one, yes, but kindness made no waves. No one noticed kindness until it was gone.
When she came to the Ashford Estate, that changed.
Far away from Bellgrave, she was no longer stuck in their shadows. At first it was lonely. The rooms were too big, the halls too long, the people too careful. But then… she found friends. Real ones.
Or so she thought.
Elen had been the first. The other girl had slept beside her for more than a week, shared bread with her, whispered in the night. Clara had trusted her. And then Elen was gone—no word, no goodbye. Vanished like Clara had never mattered. Later Clara had learned the truth: Elen had never been her friend. Worse, she had tried to turn Clara against Grace, her best friend, her anchor.
Clara’s heart twisted even now.
She hated Elen for that. Hated her for using her kindness like a rag, wringing it dry and tossing it away.
Everyone around Clara was special. Elyne, who carried herself like a mountain. Grace, who bent the world with a look. Even Elen—yes, even Elen had been special, with her bloodline and her nature core. Clara had always been fine with not being special. Fine with being overlooked. Fine with just being Clara, the kind girl everyone liked but never remembered.
She had thought she was content with that.
Her body spasmed again, harder, her back arching until her nails dug against the floorboards. A scream tore her throat raw.
But through the pain, there was another feeling, something deeper, something alive.
Grace.
Clara had watched Grace. Watched the way people respected her, the way she never stepped back even when she was only six years old. She had seen how Grace handled problems—not like a child, not like anyone else in Nyras. With composure, with steel. And somehow, impossibly, Grace had chosen Clara as her best friend.
Her.
Someone like Grace, a princess, had chosen her.
That thought burned hotter than the pain.
Maybe Clara wasn’t just the boring girl everyone liked but ignored. Maybe she could be more. Maybe she could dream of being more.
Her vision blurred. She could faintly hear Elyne outside, her voice hard and strained, speaking with some man she didn’t know. Orders, worry, panic. Clara didn’t care.
She had already learned it in Gatewick. She wasn’t just anyone. She was someone who could make people stop and look. Someone who mattered.
Make them see you.
Grace’s words cut through her mind as clear as sunlight through glass. Clara clung to them.
"Make them see you."
Her groan turned into a growl. The pain doubled, then tripled, searing through her lungs. Her body wanted to break. But Clara clenched her teeth until they hurt.
Yes. She would make them see her.
Her mind reached outward, instinct sharper than thought. The burning light around her wasn’t just pain. It was mana—pure, unfiltered, unending. She could feel it like strands in the air, threads tugging at her from every direction, trying to rip her apart.
She seized them.
Her vision went white. The strands of light were hers now, coiling around her arms, her chest, her heart. She pulled, not gently, not patiently like a scholar would. She dragged them into shape, into something that was hers.
Her screams turned into a wordless roar. Light bled out of her skin in ribbons, painting the walls in blinding glow. Her hair lifted from her scalp as if weightless, her eyes wide and wild.
The mana coalesced, clashing, grinding, trying to break free. Clara forced it inward, shaping it, commanding it. Not Elen. Not anyone else. Her.
She wasn’t just Clara anymore.
She wasn’t going to be ignored.
The runes hovering over her body twisted, flickered, then snapped back, brighter. Elyne’s voice shouted something, panicked—but Clara barely heard.
She was too busy making them see her.
