Ilara: Mistress of Shadows

Silence.

For the first time since the battle began, there was nothing. No howling abyss. No whispers of the void. No clash of power. Just an empty stillness, stretching into eternity.

Ilara gasped as the world around her shifted, her body weightless, floating in a vast expanse of nothingness. Colors bled together in a swirling storm of fractured reality—pieces of the shattered veil drifting like broken glass in an endless ocean.

She was falling.

Or maybe she was rising.

It didn’t matter.

What mattered was the rift—a spiraling wound in existence itself, where the Harbinger once stood. The void had not disappeared. It had merely been torn apart, scattered into countless fragments, but its presence still lingered.

A voice echoed through the abyss.

“I told you… there was always a cost.”

Ilara turned sharply. Lysara hovered nearby, her form flickering between solid and translucent. She was unraveling, her connection to the world fraying at the edges.

“No,” Ilara whispered. “You can’t—”

Lysara smiled, though sadness weighed heavily in her gaze. “The seal is broken. The equilibrium is undone. And I… was always part of it.”

Ilara reached out, but her fingers passed through nothingness. Panic surged in her chest. “I can fix this. I just need—”

“There’s no time,” Lysara interrupted gently. “You did what needed to be done. The Harbinger is gone. The world will survive.”

“But you won’t.”

Lysara exhaled, her form flickering faster. “None of us were meant to.”

A sudden gasp drew Ilara’s attention.

Marcus.

He was barely conscious, floating amidst the ruins of reality. His body was battered, his breathing shallow. Blood drifted through the void around him, forming crimson constellations against the black.

Ilara’s heart clenched.

She couldn’t lose him. She couldn’t lose both of them.

Not like this.

Not after everything.

She turned back to Lysara, desperation in her eyes. “Help me save him.”

Lysara hesitated—then sighed. “There’s only one way.”

Ilara already knew the answer.

She felt it, deep within herself. The last embers of the equilibrium still burned inside her, flickering weakly, waiting for a final command.

A choice.

Lysara met her gaze. “If you use what’s left… you can pull him back.”

Ilara swallowed hard. “And what happens to me?”

Lysara didn’t answer.

She didn’t need to.

Ilara understood.

A trade. A sacrifice. A price.

She closed her eyes.

She had never feared the void. Not truly. It had whispered to her, reached for her, tempted her. But now, standing on the edge of oblivion, she felt peace.

The world would live. Marcus would live.

That was enough.

Ilara placed her hand over her heart, feeling the last remnants of her power pulse beneath her skin.

And then—

She let go.

Light burst from within her, radiating outward in brilliant tendrils. It wrapped around Marcus, pulling him from the abyss, binding his soul back to reality.

Ilara felt herself fade.

Her body dissolved into the swirling void, her essence scattering like dust in the wind.

The last thing she saw was Marcus—his eyes opening, his breath steady.

And then—

She was gone.