The last of the light from Lyren's teleportation faded, and Kaelen's hand, still outstretched, trembled from the power he had consumed.
The Aether still thrummed under his skin, and Tiara was at his side, gripping his arm to steady him. Her touch was the only anchor in the swirling tempest of his thoughts.
"Kaelen," she said urgently. "Are you alright? The Aether you took…"
"I'm fine," he lowered his arm slowly. The power receded, sinking back into the wellspring within him, leaving him feeling hollowed out and weary. "He's gone. For now."
"For now. But he's a Lord's son, Kaelen. He'll be back. And he won't come alone next time." Tiara replied. "Lyren's pride is shattered. He will go straight to his Father, and he will paint you as a heretic, a monster who has mastered some forbidden magic. He will twist what you did into an act of aggression."
Kaelen pushed aside the tent flap, the canvas scraping loudly in the sudden quiet. He ran a hand through his dark hair with the exhaustion finally hitting him.
"He doesn't need to twist anything, Tiara. To them, that's exactly what I am. I defied the Conclave. I defied my own blood."
He paced the confines of the tent like a caged animal.
"Father will not send a small detachment next time. He will send the Flame Guard. All of them. He will make an example of this place of me to ensure no one else ever questions his authority."
Tiara's expression was resolute.
"Then we fight. We have to."
"Fight?" Kaelen stopped turning to face her. "Fight the entire Conclave? With what? With the Aether? I siphoned one fireball, Tiara. One. What happens when a hundred are launched at once? What happens when Father himself takes the field? Staying here is suicide. We would be martyrs for a cause that dies with us."
"So we leave?" she challenged. "We turn our backs? Is that who you want to be?"
"That's the point!" he countered. "The world is burning! And my family is holding the torch! Fighting them here in this valley is a distraction. It's a pointless battle in a war we've already lost unless we change the battlefield."
"What does that mean?"
He softened his tone, the anger draining away, replaced by a deep despair.
"It means this isn't just about my pride or Lyren's. It's about the Blight. It's about the source. Wasting my strength here against my own brother is exactly what the true enemy wants."
Tiara's expression shifted from defiance to understanding. She moved closer, her voice dropping to a whisper.
"You're right. And I think… I think I've found it. The source."
Kaelen froze.
"What? How?"
She gestured for him to sit, her own excitement barely contained. For weeks at his request, she had been meticulously charting the flow of the world's Aether using her innate sensitivity and the ancient maps they had recovered.
"It's the patterns, Kaelen. Just as you suspected," she began her words coming faster now. "The Blight isn't a plague that spreads on its own. It's a wound. It's a vacuum. The Aether, the life force of the land, is being drained away, and the Blight is the corruption that fills the void."
"I know this," he said impatiently. "But where is it being drained from?"
Tiara took a deep breath as if the words themselves were dangerous.
"Everywhere. But the ley-lines, the great rivers of Aether that flow beneath the earth they all show the same thing. They are being pulled and siphoned towards a single point. A focal point of immense power."
She looked him directly in the eye, her gaze unwavering.
"The drain isn't coming from the Blighted Wastes, Kaelen. It's coming from the opposite direction. The source… the heart of the Blight's creation… is Luminis."
Luminis. The capital city. The seat of the Conclave. His home.
"No," Kaelen shook his head. "That's… that's not possible. The Citadel is the most protected place in the world. The Aether there is stronger than anywhere else. It's the source of our family's power."
"Exactly!" Tiara insisted, leaning forward with her hands flat on the table. "Don't you see? It is the source of your family's power because they are taking it. Not just from the ambient air like every other mage. They've built something deep beneath the Citadel that is tapping directly into the ley lines. They are siphoning power from the entire world to fuel their own. They've been doing it for generations. The Blight isn't some ancient evil we're fighting; it's a consequence. It's the price the world is paying for the Conclave's supremacy."
The pieces came into place in Kaelen's mind. The secrecy of the Conclave. Their obsession with maintaining control of Aetheric knowledge. The way their power seemed to grow even as the world withered. And his own ability… the siphoning. It wasn't a mutation or a curse. It was a purer, more direct version of what his entire family was doing in secret.
"That's why I can feel it," he whispered with a cold dread seeping into his bones. "That's why the Blight seems to… respond to me. My power is a reflection of theirs." He looked at his hands, no longer seeing them as his own. "They are draining the world to extinction to maintain their rule."
"And they will kill anyone who discovers the truth," Tiara finished grimly. "Lyren coming here wasn't just about stamping out a perceived rebellion. It was about silencing you before you could figure it out. Before you could tell anyone."
The choice was suddenly stark and horrifying. It was no longer simply about staying to fight or leaving to survive.
He could stay. He could stand with these people, fight his brother and his father, and die a noble but ultimately meaningless death, buying this small community a few more days or weeks before they were annihilated and the Blight consumed all.
He could travel to the heart of the enemy's power to Luminis itself and find a way to sever the Conclave from its parasitic source. To save the world, he would have to sacrifice his honor and the lives of those who called him their leader.
His loyalty to his family was a shattered ruin. They had cast him out, and now he knew they were the architects of the apocalypse. His loyalty was now to the world itself. But what of his loyalty to these people, the ones right here, whose faces he saw every day?
"I don't know what to do, Tiara," he admitted. "Either way, people die because of me."
"People are already dying," she replied softly. "The question is which path gives the world a chance to live?"
He needed air. He pushed past her and walked out of the tent into the fading twilight.
The air grew unnaturally cold with a deep chill that had nothing to do with the evening. The remaining light in the sky didn't just fade; it was being swallowed.
A shadow vast and silent fell over the valley, plunging everything into an oppressive, premature night. It wasn't the shadow of a cloud but a tangible wrongness, a draining of color and warmth from the very fabric of existence.
Panic began to ripple through his mind, but Kaelen was frozen, his attention seized by something else.
A voice echoed in his mind. It was not his own thought, nor was it Tiara's or any human voice he had ever heard. It was ancient, vast and utterly calm, like the crushing pressure of the deepest ocean.
'You see the rot in the tree, little siphon. You quarrel over a single blighted branch.'
Kaelen staggered back a step, his hand flying to his head.
"Who's there?" he whispered to the empty, darkened air. "Who are you?"
The voice continued patiently, and immense disregard for his question as if he were a child asking about the wind.
'You believe your war is with your kin. You believe your enemy is the decay they have sown. But you do not see the axe at its root.'
Fear colder and deeper than anything he had felt, facing the Blight or his brother, seized him. This was something else entirely.
'I have watched you since you first touched the aether. I have watched you grow. The Conclave is a fleeting shadow. The Blight is a passing fever. They are nothing.'
The voice paused, and in that silent moment, Kaelen felt an unseen gaze upon him. It was the thing that had been watching him all along.
'The true war is about to begin. And you… You are the fulcrum…'