Tae's Arc

Chapter 6 of 5

The portal spat Tae into the ruined city. Broken towers leaned over empty streets. The sky above him split into bright cracks. He stood still and listened. For one moment he heard nothing. Then a long screech rolled through the dead city, and the stone under his feet trembled. Something had already caught his scent. It was close, and it was coming fast. Tae wanted to sit. He wanted to close his eyes against a cool wall and sleep. But the Seer's warning rang in his head. If he stopped now, the dark creature would reach him. He pressed on through the rubble, boots scraping grit. The screech grew louder behind him. He did not run this time. Running had failed in two realms. He gripped the golden-silver core in his pocket and turned to face the sound. The creature burst from a collapsed wall. It was larger than the others, black and jointed, with too many legs. Its head swung toward him. Tae did not step back. He drew the core, and it flared white in his hand. The creature charged. Tae waited one breath, then drove the core into its chest. Light tore through the thing. It screamed and twisted, but it did not break apart. The core held, yet the creature pulled free and reared over him. This one was stronger. One blow would not finish it. Tae stumbled over something in the rubble. His hand struck a sleek metal box with clean, carved edges. The lid snapped open under his palm. Inside, the dark went deeper than the box could hold. His fingers closed on a cold disk and pulled it out. It was a flat sigil carved with rings inside rings, like petals of light stacked forever. The pattern burned warm, brighter than the core. The Seer had never shown him this. The city's old owners had left it waiting. The creature lunged again. Tae raised the sigil. The rings flared and poured white fire down his arm. He felt no pain. He felt full, as if the power had always been his and only now came home. He pressed the sigil against the core. The two joined with a sound like a bell. Light swallowed the street. Tae drove both hands forward. The joined light passed through the creature and did not stop. The thing came apart, not into dust this time, but into nothing at all. The screech cut off. Across the city, other howls rose, then faltered, then went silent one by one. They had felt it. They had felt what he now carried, and none of them would come. The fire faded. Tae stood alone in the quiet street. The core sat whole in one hand. The sigil cooled in the other, its rings dim now, resting. He waited for another screech. None came. The cracks in the sky above him began to close, sealing one by one, until the dim light turned smooth and still. The Seer stepped out of the air beside him. Her white marks flickered, then settled. She looked at the sigil in his hand, and for the first time her cold eyes went wide. "That was sealed here long ago," she said. "Nothing was meant to lift it." She studied his face. "They will not hunt you now. They know what you hold. There is no creature in any realm that will come near it." Tae closed his fist around the sigil. He had chased quiet across two realms and never found it. He had been told the only peace was war without end. Now the war had ended in a single street, because the thing hunting him had finally met something worse. He let out a slow breath. The silence pressed in around him, and this time it did not break. "Then it's over," Tae said. He slid the core and the sigil into the sleek box and shut the lid. The box swallowed them into its endless dark, safe and out of sight. He looked at the Seer. "No more realms. No more running. I'm done." She did not argue. She only nodded and opened one last portal, and this one led home. Tae stepped through into a plain room with a couch and a dark screen. He dropped onto the cushions. The box rested at his feet, holding the power that kept every creature away. For the first time in longer than he could remember, nothing was coming. He reached for the controller, and he slept before the game even loaded.