The night the magic broke, the wind changed first.
It slipped down from the northern ridges with a smell no one could name—sharp like iron, old like dust trapped in forgotten rooms. Farmers standing knee-deep in their fields paused, hands hovering over sickles. Dogs stopped barking. Even the river slowed, as if listening.
In the city of Lareth, bells began to ring without hands to move them.
For centuries, magic had been the world's quiet spine. It healed the sick, lifted stone upon stone to build cities that defied gravity, kept the seas gentle and the skies predictable. It was not wild. It was taught, measured, taxed, and sworn to rules older than the oldest throne. People feared swords and kings more than magic, because magic had never betrayed them.
Until that night.
Aren Vale was awake when the first scream tore through the streets.
He sat by the narrow window of his rented room, boots still on, cloak folded with soldier's care at the foot of the bed. Sleep had refused him for days. Lareth always did that to him—too loud, too many lives packed into one place, too many memories hiding in corners.
The scream was followed by another. Then another. Not fear alone—pain. Real pain, the kind that scraped the throat raw.
Aren was moving before thought caught up. He grabbed his sword and shoved open the door, boots striking the stairs two at a time. The innkeeper was shouting behind him, words lost to panic. Somewhere below, glass shattered.
Outside, the street writhed with confusion. Torches flared. People ran without direction, clutching children, knocking into one another. Above them, the sky shimmered—not with stars, but with something wrong. The air bent, folded in on itself, like heat rising from a forge, except it was cold. Bitterly cold.
A man fell to his knees in front of Aren, clutching his chest. Blue light leaked between his fingers.
"No," the man whispered. "I didn't— I followed the forms. I did everything right."
The light burst outward.
Aren was thrown back, slamming into a vendor's cart. Wood cracked. His ears rang. When his vision cleared, the man was gone. In his place lay scorched stones, glassed and glowing faintly, like the ground remembered fire even after it was gone.
Magic backlash, Aren thought, dread curling in his gut.
That shouldn't happen.
Magic was not supposed to explode its bearer.
Across the street, a woman screamed as her lantern twisted in midair, metal bending like wax. The flame turned white, then black, then vanished, leaving darkness so thick it swallowed sound. From that darkness came a wet, tearing noise.
Aren drew his sword.
The blade hummed softly—steel reinforced long ago by spellwork done properly, by masters who understood restraint. He had never trusted magic fully, even when it behaved. Growing up on the borderlands taught you that anything powerful enough to protect could also destroy.
Aren!"
He turned at the voice. Kael was pushing through the crowd, his dark hair loose, his mage's mantle half fastened. His face was pale, eyes too bright.
"It's everywhere," Kael said, breathless. "The circles are collapsing. Spells are turning inside out. The towers—"
Something roared above them.
They looked up together.
From the High Conclave Tower at the city's center, a column of light speared into the sky. It wasn't the clean gold of sanctioned magic. This was jagged, fractured, pulsing like a wounded heart. Symbols burned through the air, twisting into shapes Aren had never seen, letters that hurt to look at.
Then the tower screamed.
Stone does not scream. But the sound came anyway—deep, shuddering, filled with centuries of stored power being ripped apart. Windows shattered across the city. People fell, clutching their heads.
Kael dropped to one knee, blood trickling from his nose.
"The Anchor is failing," he whispered.
Aren felt the weight of those words settle like a grave marker.
The Anchor was the heart of the world's magic. A vast construct of spellwork and sacrifice, bound beneath the Conclave Tower, designed to stabilize magic itself. It was why spells followed rules. Why magic flowed instead of flooded. Why the world had survived its own power.
If the Anchor failed—
The ground heaved.
A fissure split the street, running like a black vein between buildings. From it rose a sound like a thousand whispers speaking at once, voices overlapping, pleading, laughing, screaming.
Aren grabbed Kael and dragged him back as the fissure widened, swallowing stone, stalls, bodies. Something moved inside the darkness, too large, too wrong.
"Up!" Aren shouted. "We get to higher ground."
Kael nodded weakly. "The Conclave— they'll need help."
"They might already be dead."
The truth of it tasted bitter, but Aren had learned not to soften reality. Reality did not soften itself for anyone.
They fought their way through the streets as magic continued to unravel. A healer's spell rotted flesh instead of mending it. A child's harmless spark turned into a blade of light that cut through brick. Wards flickered, failed, then inverted—trapping people inside burning circles meant to protect.
This wasn't chaos.
It was betrayal.
At the edge of the plaza, they found the first of the Changed.
It had once been a man. Aren could tell by the shape—two arms, two legs, a head bowed too far forward. Magic clung to it like frost, blue and black veins crawling across skin stretched thin. Its eyes glowed empty, mouth opening and closing as if chewing on air.
Kael froze. "That's— that's Master Relin."
The creature lifted its head.
When it spoke, its voice came from several mouths at once.
"Magic was promised," it said. "Magic was bound. Magic is free now."
It lunged.
Aren moved without hesitation. His sword cut cleanly through corrupted flesh, but the thing did not fall. It shrieked, sound splintering, and struck back with an arm that dissolved into raw energy mid-swing.
Pain exploded through Aren's shoulder. He staggered, teeth gritted, barely keeping his grip.
Kael raised his hands, chanting instinctively—then stopped, horror flooding his face.
"I can't," he said. "It won't obey."
The creature laughed.
Aren adjusted his stance, ignored the burning in his arm, and drove his blade through the thing's chest, twisting hard. The spell-reinforced steel disrupted the unstable magic. With a final wail, the creature collapsed into ash and fading light.
Silence fell around them, broken only by distant screams and the low, constant groan of the city dying.
Kael sank to the ground.
"This can't be fixed," he said quietly. "If the Anchor breaks completely—"
"Then we survive," Aren said. "And we protect who we can."
Kael looked up at him. "You sound like you've already accepted it."
Aren didn't answer. Acceptance had come years ago, on a different battlefield, under a different sky. He had learned then that the world did not need permission to end.
They reached the steps of the Conclave Tower as dawn tried and failed to rise. The sky was a bruised gray, light bleeding through cracks in thick cloud. The tower itself was fractured, runes flickering erratically along its surface.
Bodies lay everywhere—mages, guards, scholars—some burned, some frozen, some twisted into shapes that should not exist.
At the top of the steps, an old woman stood alone.
Her hair was white, her back straight despite her age. The High Arbiter's staff rested in her hands, its crystal cracked, leaking light. She looked at Aren and Kael as if she had been expecting them.
"It has begun," she said.
Aren met her gaze. "What did you do?"
The question was not accusation. It was necessity.
Her lips trembled. "What we believed we had to."
Behind her, deep beneath the tower, something broke completely.
The world screamed—and magic answered, turning against everything it had ever sworn to protect.