Chapter 7 Arax
SEVEN
ARAX
Niren Hollow.
I halt at the city’s edge and survey the terrain with professional detachment. Tanith stops beside me, her breathing controlled despite the miles we’ve covered since dawn.
“This was a city.” She says it flat, without grief. Observation only.
“Forty thousand people. Primary export hub for the northern provinces.”
“When?”
“Seven months ago.”
She absorbs this information without visible reaction.
I watch her scan the ruins—the impossible architecture of absence, walls that end in smooth planes—and see her making the same calculations I made when I first encountered the Choir’s handiwork.
How long did it take? How many died? Did they know what was happening before they ceased to exist?
“The Choir did this.”
“Yes.”
“One ritual?”
“One ritual. Twelve hours of preparation. Forty-three willing sacrifices who surrendered their memories to power the framework.” I move forward, picking a path through the unstable terrain. “The city’s population provided the fuel. The sacrifices provided the ignition.”
She follows without hesitation. “Willing sacrifices.”
“The Choir doesn’t coerce. They convince.
Their philosophy attracts those who have already decided that existence is suffering.
” I navigate around a void that was once a fountain—the basin’s edge visible, the water and central sculpture simply gone.
“The Cardinal’s theology offers a solution.
An end to pain through an end to being.”
“That’s not a solution. That’s surrender.”
“To them, there’s no difference.”
We move deeper into Niren Hollow. The corruption here is dense enough that I can taste it—metallic and wrong. The ash lies thick across every surface, undisturbed by wind or weather. Nothing moves in this place. Nothing can.
I’ve been planning our route since before dawn.
The realization surfaces as I guide Tanith through a narrow passage between two truncated buildings, and I examine it with the same analytical rigor I apply to mission parameters.
I planned the route. I selected rest points based on defensible positions.
I identified three separate exit strategies in case of ambush, each calibrated to her movement speed rather than mine.
“We need to cut through the market district.” I indicate the path ahead—a wide avenue that was once the commercial heart of Niren Hollow, now a corridor of erasure and empty space.
“The eastern gate collapsed during the ritual. The western approach is unstable. This is the fastest route to defensible shelter.”
“And the most exposed.”
“Yes.”
She doesn’t argue. Doesn’t question. She draws her magic closer—I feel the shift in the corrupted air as her Termination gift rises to readiness—and falls into step beside me.
Not behind me. Beside me.
I note the positioning and don’t comment on it.
The market district stretches before us in a nightmare of selective erasure.
Some stalls remain intact, their wares still arranged as if waiting for customers who will never come.
Others have been partially unmade—half a cart here, the front portion of a building there, a merchant’s booth missing its left side as cleanly as if cut by a blade.
The randomness is deliberate. The Choir’s rituals don’t target—they consume. Whatever the erasure touched, it took. Whatever it missed, it left. The result is a landscape that violates every instinct, a place where the rules of existence have been suspended.
We are halfway through the district when I sense the trap.
The ash shifts. Not from wind—there’s no wind in the dead zones—but from displaced air. Bodies moving through the ruins, disturbing the accumulated residue of seven months’ stillness.
“Arax—”
They emerge from the truncated shadows of ruined stalls, sixteen of them, their faces blurred by the erasure magic that marks the Choir’s devoted. They have been waiting here. Waiting for us specifically, or waiting for anyone foolish enough to traverse Niren Hollow’s corpse.
The distinction doesn’t matter. The outcome will be the same.
“Termination bloodline.” The voice comes from multiple throats simultaneously, that unnerving chorus effect I’ve heard before. “The Cardinal’s patience grows thin. You will come with us.”
Tanith’s response is a surge of Termination magic that ends the first speaker mid-sentence. The zealot collapses, his connection to the Choir’s hive-mind severed along with the curse he was preparing to cast.
The battle begins.
I move without conscious thought, my domain expanding outward in controlled bursts of erasure. The Choir’s fighters scatter, regrouping with the tactical discipline of soldiers rather than fanatics. They have prepared for this. They know what I am.
Three of them break left, circling toward Tanith’s flank. I adjust my position to intercept, placing myself between her and the approaching threat. The movement is automatic—I don’t decide to protect her; I simply do.
The first flanker reaches striking distance. I erase him.
Not his body—that would be wasteful, and the Choir’s members often carry useful intelligence. I erase the magical framework he carries, the enhancement spells woven into his muscles and bones, the connection to the Cardinal’s network that allows coordinated assault.
He stumbles, suddenly mortal, suddenly alone in his head for the first time in months. I end his confusion with a blade across his throat.
The second flanker hesitates. I don’t.
Behind me, I hear Tanith working—the distinctive absence of sound that marks Termination magic, the soft grunt of physical exertion as she engages enemies her gift can’t immediately end. She’s holding her own. More than holding.
The third flanker attempts a flanking maneuver that would have worked against most opponents. He doesn’t account for my awareness of Tanith’s exact position—twelve feet to my right, currently engaged with two opponents, moving backward toward a partially intact market stall that will provide cover.
I adjust my angle to maintain clear sightlines to her while I engage.
The flanker dies wondering how I anticipated his approach.
“Arax!” Tanith’s voice cuts through the battle’s chaos. “They’re anchoring!”
I see it now—the remaining Choir members falling back, not in retreat but in formation. They’re positioning themselves at specific points around the market district, each one dropping to their knees and beginning a chant I recognize.
Living anchors.
“They’re using themselves as ritual nodes.” I process the tactical implications in fractions of a second. “If they complete the framework—”
“I know what happens if they complete it.”