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> "When the ground beneath you becomes the void, trust not your eyes, but the will that holds you together."
> — Fragments from the Desert's Edge Lore
>
The ground beneath their feet didn't just crack or crumble; it silently, horribly unraveled. A spreading blackness, like ink on water, consumed the rocky plateau, dissolving stone into pure nothingness. The air itself grew cold in these spreading patches of oblivion. Captain Valerius, standing at the edge of the Void-Rift they had just crossed, watched them with cold, triumphant eyes, his hand where the Core of Binding's fragment pulsed. He was literally making the world disappear.
"It's the Core of Binding!" Master Elara shrieked, his voice laced with pure terror. He stumbled, staring at the spreading void. "He's using its power of Unmaking! It's a localized void, created by pure Will!"
"Move! Don't let it touch you!" Lyra yelled, grabbing Ash's arm. She pulled him back, away from a patch of dissolving ground that had appeared just inches from their feet. Panic threatened to overwhelm them.
Kael, his face grim, drew his sword. The cold detachment of his Path of Frost gave him a terrifying clarity. He could feel the unmaking, a profound negation, but his own will for Preservation pushed back against it, allowing him to stand firm even as the ground around him crumbled. "It spreads too fast! We can't outrun it!"
Ash clutched his Core of Binding, its power now mirroring the unmaking spreading from Valerius's side. His Shard of Harmony and Chaos pulsed with desperate intensity. He saw the cold, determined Will of Valerius flowing through the Ley Lines, directing the oblivion. This was a direct test of Wills, a battle for the very existence of the ground beneath them.
"Selene! Kael!" Ash yelled, his voice strained. He focused on the Core of Binding in his hand, pushing his own Will into it, not to unmake, but to resist the unmaking. He remembered the Temple's test of Patience, how he had imposed Order on distorted time. Now, he would try to impose Order on nothingness. He would define a path through the void.
Selene responded instantly. Her Path of the Hollow surged. Instead of throwing shadows, she projected waves of pure negation directly at the expanding void. Where her power hit, the unmaking faltered, slowing its spread, creating tiny, shimmering pockets where reality briefly solidified, like bubbles in a torrent of oblivion.
"These are temporary safe zones!" Selene yelled, her face pale with effort. "Ash, guide us! Kael, protect them!"
Ash, seeing Selene's negation, understood. His Path of Flame surged, mixing Harmony with Chaos. He would use his Will to command the Core of Binding to connect these fleeting pockets of existence, to impose a temporary path across the dissolving ground. He saw the Ley Lines, twisting in agony, and subtly shifted them, trying to bridge the gaps being created by Valerius.
"Follow my steps! Precisely!" Ash roared. He took a daring leap onto one of Selene's negation bubbles. The sensation was terrifying—like jumping onto pure willpower. It held, shimmering precariously. Kael pushed Lyra and Elara onto the next bubble, his own Path of Frost lending an eerie stability to their footing.
Valerius, seeing their impossible escape, roared in frustration. He intensified his assault, lashing out with more black energy threads, trying to surround them, to cut off their path. The void spread faster, consuming the plateau from all sides.
Ash leaped again, then again, guided by his shard's precise sense of where the Ley Lines could be momentarily coerced into stability, where Selene's negation held strongest. Each leap was a desperate gamble against oblivion. They moved like ghosts across a vanishing stage, dancing on the edge of nothingness.
Finally, with a last, desperate jump, they cleared the spreading void, landing hard on a narrow ledge overlooking a deep, winding canyon. The ground behind them collapsed into the churning oblivion of the newly expanded Void-Rift, the air filled with the chilling hiss of reality unmaking itself.
They were safe from the direct threat. Ash lay panting on the ground, the Core of Binding heavy in his hand, its power a dull ache. He had done it. He had imposed order on nothingness, using his Will to defy the very unmaking. He had truly mastered a new facet of the Path of Flame, and the Fragment Wielder tier.
But as he looked back at the chasm, now wider, deeper, and swirling with permanent blackness, a new understanding settled in. The Core of Binding, in both his and Valerius's hands, was not just a key to reunification. It was a terrifying weapon of ultimate Order and Unmaking. And Captain Valerius, driven by his twisted sense of duty, was now a far more dangerous foe than ever before. He possessed the power to unravel the very ground beneath their feet.
"We have to get out of the Shifting Sands Pass," Selene said, her voice strained, looking at the scarred landscape. "This place is too volatile. And Valerius..."
Ash felt it. The Core of Binding pulsed, drawing his gaze to the western horizon. The Queen of Sorrow's presence was stronger now, a dark, magnetic pull towards the Drowned East. But there was a different pull, too. A subtle, desperate plea from the other primary shard they had been seeking: the Shard of Order and Preservation. The destruction they had caused in the Icefold, the Temple's collapse, and their desperate escape... it had somehow agitated the Shard, making it call out, not with patience, but with an urgent, overwhelming need for stability, for balance.
They had escaped Valerius's ultimate unmaking, but they were caught between a relentless hunter with newfound power, and a desperate plea from the very shard they needed to collect. The desert heat gave way to a chilling sense of dread.