Orath let the offer he made hang in the air for a moment, and I remained silent. Keep talking, the more you speak, the more I understand.

"Think, Arcanist Voss." Rex’s mouth, Orath’s cadence, and that would never not be disturbing to listen to and see. "A continent is a small thing to a man who has crossed centuries. This one is ending, but that is not a tragedy; it is a weather system, and only fools tie themselves to the weather. The Conclave does not. The Conclave outlives weather."

The shrinking face tried to smile and mostly managed it. "We always have room for a man who can walk through a Demon Eruption and find the seat of the conspiracy. The Conclave is the home of the greatest secrets, Arcanist Voss. Don’t you want to know what the pyramids were built for? Power you cannot imagine from where you stand, and you stand higher than most. All you have to do is the easiest thing in the world."

Finally, I whispered two words, because the less I speak, the less chance there is for me to make a mistake. "Which is?"

"Nothing." The smile on his face grew wider. "Stand there. Let the harvest finish. Walk through that door when it opens and let me bring you to the home of magic. You lose a continent you were never going to save anyway."

I no longer said anything because there was nothing worthwhile for me to say. I kept my face blank, and the lightning inside me was building, channel by channel, the Cascade almost ready to release.

"You could be more than an Arcanist," Orath continued. "More than a Mage. The Academy will fall. The continent will burn. The old orders are dying, Voss, and something new is rising. You can rise with it, or you can be crushed beneath it."

The pillar pulsed. Rex’s skinless body twitched, pieces of him still rising into the darkness. The runes on the walls glowed brighter. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

"Join us, Voss, as a partner. The Conclave has room for those with talent. With vision. With the will to do what must be done." Orath’s mouth curved. "You have already killed for us. Commander Rel was a liability. You removed her. That is service, whether you intended it or not... Now, choose."

"That’s a generous offer," I said, and I meant for it to be the last thing he heard from me. "Here’s mine."

I raised my hand. The lightning that had been building inside me, Lightning Cascade, Surge stacked on Surge, enough voltage to crack the pillar, to shatter the runes, to end this...

I struck.

∞

A white-silver bolt left my palm and crossed the distance to Rex’s chest in less than a heartbeat. It should have torn through him, reduced Rex’s body to ash, and sent Orath’s consciousness screaming back to wherever it came from.

A red shield bloomed between my lightning and its target.

The shield was not there, and then it was. A disc of crimson light, faceted like the pyramid’s walls, materialized between Rex and me. The lightning struck it and spread before the shield began to feed on it. It drank the Cascade like water, and glowing symbols on the shield appeared that began to pulse.

The crazed smile on Rex’s face did not shake at my sudden cast.

"You are not the first to try, Arcanist Voss. And you will not be the last."

And behind the red shield, in the centre of the chamber, the air tore open into a red door.

∞

The red door widened, and a moment before the Conclave entered this place, my Storm Sense travelled ahead and saw that they were all Adepts.

They came through in formation. Seven Adepts in grey robes, their faces hidden behind smooth white masks, their staffs already raised. They moved as one, a unit, the kind of coordination that came from decades of fighting together.

I did not need Storm Sense for the eighth. The chamber told me. The red light and even the fog bent toward the figure, and the pulse of everything inside the chamber matched his step.

An Arcanist, a mage who had spent longer than my whole town’s history climbing to the rung above everything I had ever fought, and who looked at me across the chamber the way you look at a stain you have been told to remove before guests arrive.

He was older than the others, his robes black, his face uncovered. He had a beard the colour of iron, and his eyes were the same cold grey as the sea before a storm. He carried no staff, and something told me he did not need one.

Rex’s voice came from the pillar, warm with something that was almost regret.

"A pity. I did mean the offer." A pause. "Take him apart. Mind the pillar, his magic has weakened it."

I had time for exactly one thought, and the thought was: count the graves, get out, come back smarter.

Then the Adepts hit me from seven directions at once.

∞

I want to be honest about this part, the way I have tried to be honest about all of it, because you have been with me a long way, and you deserve the truth even when the truth is that I lost.

This morning, a few loops ago, I was an Acolyte who could hardly cast Spark, and here I stood in the heart of the world, taking the focused attention of seven Adepts and an Arcanist, and they did not know this or care; death came for me.

I threw myself sideways, Lightning Incarnate flickering, carrying me out of the path of the first volley. Seven spells, fire, ice, force, something that shimmered, something that screamed, and something that made my teeth ache, converged on the space where I had been standing.

The metal of the floor groaned under the bombardment, but it was unmarked, and the red fog scattered and reformed.

I blinked again. Half a second of lightning, reappearing behind the leftmost Adept, and I unleashed Lightning Dominion, pushing it to its full radius, sixty metres, and the directed arcs went out, and two of the Adepts had to break their casts to shield, and that was a victory, a real one, four seconds I bought with a spell I had built out of a corpse’s body.

I blinked, Lightning Incarnate, half-second hops, here and gone, and here, and a force-bolt that should have misted me found ash where I had been. I reached for the ground-discharge that had shattered the earth when I fought the Khaazim... and there was no ground.