The medical wing was a cage of white silence. I woke to the sterile scent of healing herbs and the low hum of containment spells. Cindy was at my bedside, her face pale, the usual light in her eyes dimmed with worry.
"You're awake," she whispered, her hand finding mine. "Thank the gods."
My body felt like a shattered vase, clumsily glued back together. Every muscle screamed, and my magical core throbbed with a hollow, aching emptiness. "What… what happened? Did we win?"
Cindy's gaze dropped. "You won the battle… but lost the war." Her voice was heavy. "The tournament committee disqualified you. Using the Circle of Hell violated their sacred rules."
The truth was a cold blade twisting in my gut. "Disqualified? But we defeated the Council's own team!"
"That's exactly why they disqualified you," she said, her voice hardening with a bitterness I'd never heard from her before. "The Council can't have rebels proving they're stronger than their elite forces. Norton and Aria are in other rooms. They'll recover, but their magic cores are badly damaged."
"And Shibai?" I asked, dread coiling in my stomach. "Is he… angry with me?"
"He saved your life," Cindy said, her eyes glistening. "When the Council tried to arrest you for using forbidden magic, he fought them off and got you here. But he had to go into hiding. The Council has issued warrants for all of you."
The full weight of the catastrophe settled upon me. We had won the greatest battle of our lives and lost everything for it—our chance at the wish, our safety, our mentor. We were fugitives, hunted by the very power structure that ruled the world.
"So we won the battle but lost everything else," I murmured, the words tasting like ash. "Our future…"
"Not everything," Cindy insisted, her grip on my hand tightening. "The whole world saw what you did. They saw the Council's corruption firsthand. You've started something, Kael. A revolution."
Her words were meant to be a comfort, but they felt like a heavier burden. A revolution needed a leader, and I was a broken boy lying in a hospital bed.
We fled the city under the cover of a magically-conjured fog, a desperate, ragged group. Norton moved with a pronounced limp, his connection to the earth frayed. Aria was wraith-thin and silent, her ice magic now laced with a brittle, painful quality. I felt like a stranger in my own body, the God Limitation having scraped my soul raw. The unleashed darkness, once again locked down, now felt like a sullen, wounded beast sleeping fitfully in my core.
Cindy, to our stunned surprise, refused to stay behind. "The Council will brand me a traitor for helping you," she'd said simply, her light magic a small, defiant beacon in the growing gloom. "My place is with you."
For weeks, we traveled through the blasted hinterlands of the Fire Nation, moving by night, hiding by day, always listening for the sound of pursuit. The dream of the tournament, of a wish that could change everything, had curdled into a nightmare of survival. Our spirits, once burning with purpose, were guttering like dying candles.
It was in this state of exhausted despair that Zephyr found us.
He descended from a leaden sky on currents of wind so subtle they barely stirred the dust, landing before us with an unnerving grace. He was tall and lean, with eyes the color of a storm-washed sky and hair the grey of morning mist.
"Looking for someone?" he asked, his voice carrying the whisper of distant winds. "Or just enjoying the scenic wasteland?"
I pushed myself upright, my body protesting. "Who are you? Council hunter?"
"Quite the opposite," he replied with a wry smile. "Name's Zephyr. Wind mage, former Academy instructor, and… recently excommunicated. When I heard what you did at the tournament, I knew I had to find you. The Council's corruption ends now."
Cindy studied him, her head tilted. "He's telling the truth," she confirmed after a moment. "I sensed him following us for days. His intentions are pure."
A new ally. A flicker of hope. But trust was a currency we could no longer afford to spend lightly.
"Prove your loyalty in battle first," I said, my voice rough. "Then we'll talk about joining."
Zephyr gave a curt nod. "Fair enough. Actions speak louder than words."
We didn't have to wait long for his test. They emerged from the shadows of a crumbling canyon—the Dark Triad. But they were different. Stronger. Their auras pulsed with a corrupted, amplified power. At their head was Black Cloak, the one who had killed my grandfather.
"Well, well… the famous Fire Brigade," Black Cloak's voice was a venomous purr. "The Council pays handsomely for your heads."
"Three against five?" Norton growled, cracking his stone-knuckled fists. "Those aren't great odds… for them!"
The battle was joined. Zephyr proved his worth instantly, his wind magic a whirlwind of razor-edged blades that harried the Triad, while Norton's earth and Cindy's light provided a solid defense. But Black Cloak moved with a new, unnatural speed, his power clearly augmented since our last encounter. He flowed through our attacks like smoke.
"Child's play," he mocked. "Let me show you true power." His hands wove a complex, sickeningly familiar pattern. "SOUL SEPARATION!"
He wasn't aiming for me. The bolt of pure, soul-rending darkness shot past my defensive shadow and struck Aria square in the chest.
Her scream was a sound I will never forget—a raw, agonized shriek that was more than physical. It was the sound of a spirit being flayed. She convulsed violently, collapsing to the ground as a faint, screaming apparition of her soul was visibly torn from her body, trapped in a vortex of torment.
"Her body will writhe in eternal agony while her soul burns in the deepest hell!" Black Cloak crowed. "A fitting end for traitors!"
Something inside me broke. The careful control, the wary balance, the rational fear—it all vaporized in an instant of pure, incandescent rage. My vision tunneled, turning the world a bloody red. I saw my grandfather's kind eyes, I saw Aria's trusting smile, and I saw this monster who had taken them both from me.
"NO! ARIA!"
Shadas's voice was a glacier calving in my mind. "LET THE RAGE FLOW, CHILD OF DARKNESS! EMBRACE MY POWER COMPLETELY!"
I didn't need his encouragement. The sullen beast of my darkness, provoked beyond endurance, awoke. And this time, I did not try to cage it. I let it out.
The world slowed. The very light seemed to die around me as I embraced the shadow god's power fully. Ancient knowledge, not of creation or balance, but of endings and voids, flooded my mind. I remembered a name, a concept my grandfather had only whispered about in his most secret teachings.
"The Nullifire…" I breathed, the words tasting of ashes and oblivion.
"THE NULLIFIRE CANCELS ALL EXISTENCE! BUT THE COST IS YOUR VERY SOUL!" Shadas's warning was a distant echo.
I didn't care. The cost was already being paid. Aria was paying it.
A blade of pure nothingness formed in my hands. It wasn't black; it was an absence, a slit in reality that drank the light and sound around it. It was the opposite of the Circle of Hell. Where the Circle was ultimate creation leading to destruction, this was ultimate destruction, period.
Black Cloak's confidence vanished, replaced by primal fear. "What is that?! I've never felt… nothingness before!"
"YOU TOOK EVERYTHING FROM ME!" I roared, my voice layered with the silence of the abyss. "NOW EXPERIENCE TRUE NOTHINGNESS!"
I swung the Nullifire. It didn't cut through the air; it un-made the space it passed through. A wave of absolute cancellation swept forward, not destroying, but erasing. Magic disappeared. Matter vanished. Reality itself was rewritten in its wake.
Black Cloak screamed as his own dark magic was unmade before it could protect him. He managed to retreat into a swirling portal, but not before the nullifying wave caught his arm. It didn't sever it; it erased it from the wrist down, as if it had never existed.
The remaining Triad members fled in terror.
The Nullifire vanished as I collapsed, the energy drain absolute. I crawled to Aria's side, holding her convulsing body in my arms. Her soul's faint, agonized screams still echoed from the dark vortex.
"Aria… I'm so sorry… I couldn't protect you…" My tears fell on her face, sizzling against her fevered skin.
Cindy's voice was thick with horror. "The Soul Separation spell… it's one of the most forbidden dark arts. Only the caster can reverse it."
"We have to find Black Cloak!" Norton snarled, his face a mask of fury and helplessness. "Make him undo this!"
"I'll track him," Zephyr said, his usual calm replaced by a grim resolve. "Wind carries all secrets, even those hidden in darkness."
That night, as we made a desperate camp, the mood was funereal. We had gained a powerful ally and I had unlocked a terrifying new power, but the victory felt more hollow than any defeat. Aria suffered because of my failure, her soul and body torn between hell and eternal pain.
As I stared into the campfire, numb and broken, a familiar voice spoke from the shadows.
"I felt the Nullifire's awakening."
Shibai emerged from the darkness, his face etched with a grief deeper than I had ever seen. He looked from Aria's tormented form to me, his expression one of profound, heartbreaking recognition.
"And I see you've repeated your grandfather's greatest mistake."