56. His Numen’s Call
His Numen's Call
Blood streaked down Lu’ma’s forearms where Reskala steel had split her skin, but she did not feel it. Nothing mattered except finding His Quintessence.
Her Radiance was gone—stolen. Shackled. Blindfolded.
Her feet hammered the stone, braid unraveling, tunic torn. She crashed into the Resh’Agar’s wing—empty. Panic clawed her throat. She ran harder. The Umbral Archives: silent. The Axis Hall: empty. The training ring: dust. Empty.
She collapsed to her knees in the sparring ring, pounding the floor, screaming voicelessly.
Footsteps. Zarrek. His eyes swept her bloodied form, his face hardening.
“What happened?”
Her hands flew. 'Reskala. Tribunal. They took her. '
Zarrek tore the key-sigil from his neck. Light split the air. The world folded, and a portal tore open into the Varrow District. Within, the Crucible Yards should have been alive with drills, sparring steel, the bark of commanders.
Instead—chaos. Shouts. Weapons abandoned. Recruits scattered like frightened birds. The air churned, thick with smoke and blue fire.
The Resh’Agar’s magic was spiraling. Raw power tore through the ring in waves, lifting sand and ash into a storm stinging skin and eyes.
Runes seared across the air like brands, flickering in and out of control.
The ground itself groaned beneath the weight of him, fissures spidering through the marble floor.
Zarrek halted at the threshold, every instinct warning him back. But Lu’ma didn’t even pause. She ran headlong into the storm, her braid whipping, her arms bleeding, her eyes wide and half-mad with desperation. She pushed through the whirling mana and seized the Resh’Agar by the wrist.
Her blood smeared his skin.
'Resh’Agar—! Quintessence!' Her hands signed furiously, almost incoherent with panic. 'Her Radiance taken! Shackled! Tribunal! '
He looked down at her. Blue light bled from his eyes, so bright it seared. As he spoke, blue mist curled from his lips like vapor from a forge.
“Where is… S H E …” The last word broke like thunder, elongated, inhuman.
Zarrek hurled himself into the maelstrom, cloak whipping, cobblestones lifting and splintering around him.
Blue fire spat from the ground, runes crackling like lightning across the walls.
He ducked a flying slab of stone, shouldered through a gust of mana that seared his skin, and bellowed through the roar:
“Tribunal! Resh—get to her NOW!”
The word struck like a blade. The Resh’Agar’s head jerked up. More azure mist poured from his lips, curling like smoke from a dying forge. His gaze locked on Zarrek, inhuman, blinding, the storm itself answering his fury.
He raised his forearm. The dagger at his waist flashed. Steel bit skin. Blood lifted into the air, but it did not fall—it spun. It twisted upward in arcs, forming runes throbbing with sickening light. The Crucible Yards howled with the force of it, reality itself bending to his will.
Behind him, the air split. A portal ripped jagged and raw through the marble, its edges burning azure, spilling frost and fire in equal measure. From its depths—screams. Echoes of agony, torn from somewhere no mortal should hear.
The Resh’Agar’s voice rumbled, each word slow, distorted, carried on a breath of mist. But it wasn’t his voice alone.
“S H E … calls …”
The sound shook the air, more echo than speech, as if the storm itself had learned to speak. He stepped through the portal, the cataclysm following in his wake.