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Chapter 10 - Aftershocks

Chapter 10: Aftershocks

The stone chamber crackled with residual magic. Wisps of burnt air clung to the edges of every rune, every statue, every breath.

Lira lay sprawled on her back at the center of it all — staff beside her, eyes half-lidded, hair singed, tunic scorched.

She groaned softly. "If anyone touches me without snacks, I swear I will scream."

Boots echoed down the tunnel. Kaela's voice rang out:

"LIRA!"

Lira blinked. "Oh. I am hallucinating."

Then arms were around her — real, shaking, plated in battered steel.

Kaela's voice broke. "Gods, you're alive."

"Barely," Lira rasped. "Tell me I look cool."

Kaela leaned back, eyes burning. "You look like a half-burnt potato."

"Perfect," Lira croaked. "My signature aesthetic."

Thalen knelt beside her, hands glowing faintly with healing light. He looked… older. Not in age — in weight.

"I felt it," he whispered. "When you closed it. The gate. It screamed into the Weave."

"Yeah," Lira said. "It screamed a lot. It was rude."

Kaela's eyes flicked to the staff.

It no longer pulsed. Its glow had faded, the bones dulled. But power still hummed inside it — quiet, like a secret waiting for the right moment.

"We can't leave it here," Kaela said.

"No," Thalen agreed. "But if we take it… we paint a target on our backs."

Lira coughed. "Joke's on them. They already hate me."

---

Camp of the Bone Queen — Northern Blight Marsh

The sorceress's mask shattered in her hands.

She screamed, flinging the shards across the tent. Fire erupted from the brazier beside her, black and wild.

The remaining officers — a dragonborn general, a half-dead seer, and a shadow mage — stood silent.

> "She closed it," the sorceress growled. "A kender. With no training. No bloodline. No right."

"She awakened the staff," the dragonborn said. "That means it chose her."

"She did not awaken it," the sorceress hissed. "She disturbed it. The bond is thin. Weak. I can still break her."

The seer opened her mouth, but paused.

"…What?"

"There was a mark," she murmured. "In the Weave. A flare — no. A wound. The gate tried to open… but now it leaks."

"Leaks?" the dragonborn asked.

> "Pieces of the other side."

The sorceress smiled slowly.

"Good. Then we let it bleed. The next gate will not wait for another child to close it."

---

Outskirts of Kalaman — Duskfall

The trio stood on a ridge, looking back toward the city.

Kalaman's towers shimmered with lantern light. Soldiers moved like ants far below. But in the distance, across the plains, a new storm brewed.

Dark. Heavy. Spiked with dragonfire.

"We don't have long," Kaela said.

"No," Thalen agreed. "The war's changing. That gate… it wasn't the only one."

Lira stared at the staff in her hands.

"…Then we find the rest," she said. "Before they do."

Kaela looked at her, brow raised. "You're volunteering to do that again?"

Lira grinned weakly. "I'm a very bad patient."

She turned.

The storm loomed.

But so did her smile.

> "Let's give them a war they don't understand."

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