The air itself seemed to shudder, not from wind, but from a deeper, internal tremor of the earth. Ash, fine and grey, drifted from a sky the colour of bruised plums, coating the desolate fields they traversed. Ahead, a jagged spire of obsidian-like rock pierced the murk, surrounded by concentric rings of what might once have been an imperial plaza, now a collapsed ruin. Tendrils of pure void-corruption pulsed from its base, making the very stone weep black ichor. This was the Scourge-Spire, the epicenter of the Blight, where Sister Iryna awaited. “She won’t be alone,” Stellan murmured, his hand already on the hilt of his shortsword. His eyes, usually guarded, held a grim, protective fire as he scanned the approaches. “Expect a welcoming committee of her cultists and inquisitor elites.” Ksenia, clad in her battered but still gleaming chased silver plate, spat on the ashen ground. “Let them come. It’s time I spoke to Commander Roric face to face.” Her voice was a honed blade, sharp with a long-delayed vengeance. Vesna walked between them, the two Lacrimae—the bone shard and the obsidian tear—warm against her skin, nestled in a pouch. The Nemesys was a constant thrum at the edge of her awareness, a low, hungry growl that promised oblivion. But beneath that dread, the flicker of hope Stellan had ignited still burned. She had to believe in it. They moved with practiced caution, a triangle of grim resolve. As they neared the first collapsed archway of the plaza, figures emerged from the swirling ash: cloaked cultists, their faces etched with frenzied devotion, alongside a squadron of solar knights, their polished steel glinting even in the dim light. At their head stood Commander Roric, his insignia of office stark against his chest, his face impassive. “Traitors,” Roric boomed, his voice amplified by some arcane device. “And the Vessel. Surrender, and face judgment.” Ksenia stepped forward, her every movement radiating controlled fury. “Judgment, Roric? You speak of judgment when you conspired with a heretic to unleash a void-god upon Ravka? When you sacrificed your own people for a twisted war?” Her words were sharp, cutting through the Blight-thickened air. Roric’s impassivity cracked. “Silence, Justicar Orlova! Your accusations are baseless ramblings! Seize them!” The fanatical heretics charged first, screeching with rabid devotion. Stellan met them with a blur of steel, his shortsword a silver streak, parrying, thrusting, a dance of brutal efficiency. He moved like a predatory cat, fluid and deadly, his body a shield between Vesna and the immediate threat. He didn’t just fight; he *erased* them, each strike precise, economic. Ksenia, meanwhile, engaged the sworn guards. Her longsword sang, a counterpoint to Stellan’s shorter blade. She didn’t rely on brute force, but on a blinding speed and precision that left her opponents reeling. She disarmed one, kicked another’s knee, then spun, parrying a simultaneous attack from two sides. Her fury gave her strength, but her skill, honed through years of training, gave her victory. “Roric!” Ksenia shouted, deflecting a blow from a burly guardsman with a clang that echoed through the ruins. “Tell them of the Shepherdess! Tell them how you delivered Vesna’s location, chapter by chapter, to Iryna! Tell them how you planned to let the Nemesys consume half the world to crush the Kymor!” Roric snarled, abandoning his posturing. He drew his own greatsword, a massive, two-handed weapon, and lunged at Ksenia. “You will die for this insubordination, Orlova!” Their duel was a whirlwind of steel. Roric was powerful, his strikes heavy and relentless, but Ksenia was faster, more agile, her blade a flickering silver ghost. She evaded his wide swings, parried his powerful downward chops, and sought openings with ruthless intent. She moved with a calculated grace, the image of a true Aethel warrior, her movements a stark contrast to Roric’s desperate, heavy blows. Vesna, holding her own, used her growing power to create localized distortions in the air, sending charging fanatics crashing into each other, or conjuring brief, disorienting pulses of void-energy that made them stumble. She watched Ksenia’s battle, a visceral thrill of hard-won justice. Ksenia, with a sudden, devastating lunge, slipped past Roric’s guard and plunged her blade into his armoured shoulder, twisting it. Roric cried out, his greatsword clattering to the ground. Ksenia then slammed the pommel of her sword into his face, sending him sprawling. His helmet rolled away, revealing a bloodied, defeated countenance. “Let his treachery be known!” Ksenia declared, her voice ringing out, momentarily silencing the remaining skirmish. Her eyes, usually so cold, burned with a righteous fire. “The solar order has been poisoned from within!” Seizing the moment, Vesna pushed past the remaining, disoriented zealots and soldiers. The Scourge-Spire pulsed ominously, drawing her in. At its base, a rudimentary altar had been erected, crude and dark. Upon it lay five more Lacrimae, glowing with a malevolent inner light. Standing before them, her back to Vesna, was Sister Iryna. “You came,” Iryna said, her voice soft, devoid of surprise, as if she had expected this. She turned, her face serene, unsettlingly calm. “The final piece. Come, Vesna. Embrace your divinity. The Nemesys awaits.” Vesna stopped a few paces from the altar. The air around Iryna shimmered with a raw, untamed power, a reflection of the void-energy that now clung to her like a second skin. The Nemesys’s low growl intensified, an insistent demand for release. Vesna felt the urge to recoil, to fight, to scream, but Stellan’s words echoed in her mind: *‘Then we don’t sever it. We kill it.’* And she knew how. “No,” Vesna said, her voice firm, resolute. “I will not be your god. Nor will I be its vessel.” She raised her hands, not in attack, but in invitation. Her mind, a fortress she had always feared, opened wide. “You want me, Nemesys? Then take me. But this time, on my terms.” Iryna’s serene expression fractured, replaced by a flicker of confusion, then horror. “What are you doing, child? You’ll be devoured!” But Vesna was already gone. Her consciousness plunged into the spectral sea, not fighting the encroaching darkness, but diving into it headfirst. The tearing, shrieking void from her abbey’s last moments was there, but this time, Vesna was not a victim. She was an explorer. She walked the churning chaos, let the tendrils of raw nothingness caress her, felt the endless hunger that had pursued her across Ravka. It was immense, terrifying, yet… something else. She pushed deeper, past the gnawing emptiness, past the echoes of devoured worlds, towards the source. And there, at the very heart of the Nemesys, she found it. Not a monstrous maw, not a roaring beast, but a singular, fragile point of light, pulsating with an unbearable, profound terror. It was a being of pure, unadulterated loneliness, adrift in an infinite void, aching for connection, for *anything* to fill the hollow. Vesna reached out, her own soul a beacon of defiant warmth in the cold. “I see you,” she whispered, her voice resonating not through air, but through the fabric of existence itself. “You are not a monster. You are afraid. I offer you a choice: peace within me, a balanced soul where neither of us devours the other, or…” Her resolve hardened, a cold, unyielding truth. “Annihilation. Together.” The core of the Nemesys pulsed, an uncertain, panicking tremor. A decision hung in the void, a choice that would either save Ravka or condemn it to an eternal, hungry darkness. Vesna waited, her hand extended, her heart a drumbeat against the impending dawn or eternal night. She had offered it a way out, a true ending. But would it accept the warmth, or consume it with its final, feral act of terror?

The Last Altar