Bastun's body moved with a preternatural strength and balance despite the mess of his thoughts. Part of his mind focused on descending the stairs, keeping alert, and finishing what he had begun-what had begun long ago. The rest of him felt a mess, a jumble of emotions, questions, and doubts. His cheeks were cold, a few tears freezing before they could roll away, but he could not determine for whom they fell.
Ghosts flitted by as time rolled in random directions around him. The memories of the Shield were his memories, though the details were fleeting as if the stone were alive and forgetting things as it aged. The past was all that remained, the only life left for the crumbling fortress to live. There was a kinship between he and the Shield that he was loathe to admit, but he could not deny it.
He recalled his first arrival at the gates, staring at the high towers and walls. He had been so eager to get inside and see for himself this place he had known in tome and scroll. Now, he only wished to escape. He had forged his peace, with KefTrass and himself, in blood and in ice, and had buried pain and regret in the deepest hell he could find.
The length of the walls and the various towers of the Shield spread out before him, and he found himself outside. Predawn light lit the eastern sky, glowing across the ocean of mist that rolled and eddied just below the battlements. Leaning on those crenellations, staring out across the ruin of Shandaular, stood the youngest son of the Nentyarch.
Serevan, his faced half-ruined with flesh slowly creeping backward into death's grimace, did not turn at Bastun's arrival. The prince looked upon a city that was not burning, not dying, but dead, a cursed shell of the city he remembered.
'Time is broken,' Serevan muttered as Bastun approached. 'The empire is gone. My father is gone.'
Bastun paused at the prince's words, keeping the Breath before him as he eyed Serevan.
'You know this?' he asked, his voice resounding with the same power it had taken in Stygia. It echoed and vibrated through the wall, and the prince turned. Pale brows furrowed over the icy, lidless eyes.
'Yes, wizard,' he rasped. 'I have always been aware of time's passage. Trapped in my own mind, forced to relive the past, to witness my own foolishness. An eternal nightmare, a dream from which I cannot awaken.'
Silhouetted by glowing mist, he turned away from the battlements and stared up to the top of the northwest tower, the cradle of the Word. Behind him, Bastun could only see darkness within the watchtower where he had left Thaena and Syrolf. No sound came from within. The pang of alarm he felt became a chill down his spine. He tilted his head at the odd sensation and regarded the cold prince thoughtfully.
'You opened it,' Serevan said, still gazing upon the weathered stone of the tower. He did not ask, merely stated a fact that both of them knew, could feel in their bones. 'Athumrani sought vengeance when he betrayed me and sacrificed himself. He found it. Did you find what you were looking for?'
'Yes,' he answered without hesitation, then reconsidered the question. His own past, his own ghosts, were quiet within him. The tetrible weight of life on his shoulders had lessened, and the future seemed less an escape than the freedom he had sought. A dull ache tested in his knuckles, the gleaming blade of the Breath still in his hand. The sword, so heavy before, was nothing to the strength he felt now. Something of Stygia's touch remained, hiding beneath his skin, and he found a hint of regret slipping amidst his scattered thoughts. 'And… no.'
'Hmph. Sacrifice, the purest currency between devils and men,' said the prince, and he gazed upon Bastun through orbs of ice in hollowed sockets, his rictus grin growing as the ravages of undeath reclaimed flesh and separated it from illusion. 'One never truly knows the price until it is paid.'
Bastun was never more aware of his own heartbeat than at that moment, staring into the ruined face of Serevan Crell, pondering the meaning of sacrifice and its price. Faint wisps of steam escaped from around the edges of Bastun's mask, and he breathed a little deeper. His pulse quickened as the air between them grew thick, whatever strange truce that had caused them to speak to one another ending as quickly as it had begun. The prince edged his body sideways in a fighting stance, his tattered cloak and white hair stirred in a morning breeze.
'We must end this here, wizard,' Serevan said, his voice now more hollow than before, rumbling out from a withering throat. He drew his thin blade, joints cracking with frozen flesh. 'I want what I came for.'
Bastun stepped back, raising the Breath.
'You still mean to have this?' he asked, staring from the sword to the bleakborn. 'After all that you have seen?'
'I see the world that is and the world that was,' the prince replied, glancing once again at the weathered stone and mist-covered landscape of the city. 'I cannot deny the fate that was handed to me-but truth be told, I much prefer the dream.'
The thin blade darted quickly and Bastun parried. It came again and again, each slash ringing strident tones on the Breath as Bastun backstepped. He had fought this battle before and lost, the memory of the wound in his side still painful, though nary a scar now remained. His breathing came quicker; his pulse raced. Magic seemed slippery and evasive, his thoughts turning to chaos as ghosts flitted past.
They turned, and Bastun was pushed away from the northwest tower, away from the Word and the lingering echoes of its frozen hell. Though the prince continued to deteriorate, the vremyonni could find no opening, could not focus to summon a spell. He growled in frustration, the unnatural strength flowing through him finding purpose, and he pushed back.
His strikes were poorly timed, but Serevan moved back all the same. The Weave stirred around Bastun, and he sought its thythm as the Breath moved faster. He battered at the thin, dancing blade of the prince. The phantom scents of smoke and blood stitred him even further. Magic remained elusive, but his thoughts had cleared enough to watch the quick sword and the angle of the following thrust.
Bastun's open hand shot out, grasping the prince's sword. The searing pain in his palm was rewarded by a hiss of anger from the bleakborn. Serevan tugged the blade, drawing into bone, but still Bastun held. He imagined he could snap the weapon like a twig, but the Breath shot forward instead. It tore through the bleakborn's breastplate, scraping against ribs and exiting from his back.
Serevan's struggles stopped, and he stared at the sword inside of him. The gleaming blade dulled as its strange glow spread through the bleakborn's body. Ice formed in clumps, and the prince jerked in pain. Bastun could only stare in wonder as the Breath froze what life remained in the undead prince. Bones cracked under the pressure of newly forming ice, brittle hair split and fell away. The taste of ashes filled Bastun's mouth as Serevan's body deteriorated into a collection of brittle bones. The ancient sword's metal lost its hellborn luster, fading back to runes and small patches of rust and age.
The prince's eyes of ice looked blearily up at the vremyonni, the odd light within them flickering. He raised a skeletal hand held together only by ice and frost. His face was little more than a skull bearing the memory of flesh.
'I much prefer the dream,' said a spectral voice from within the destroyed visage, followed by a dry laughter like autumn leaves in a strong wind.
The body slipped backward, falling free of the Breath, and broke as it met the wall. Though the body lay dismembered and silent, Bastun chanted, summoning the Weave to his will. He shouted, the force of the spell shattering Serevan's remains into motes of ice and fragments of bone. Gray light washed over his shoulder, and a strong breeze scattered the prince, stirring up a snowy dust that swirled on the air before drifting away.
Serevan's words haunted him as he turned in a daze to the watchtower. He slid the Breath into his belt as he approached the doorway, preparing himself for the death that surely lay within. Inside, his eyes adjusting to the dark, he found Duras in the place where he'd left him. Nearby, leaning against the wall in SyrolPs arms, lay Thaena, still and silent but for the slight rising and falling of her breast. Five of the berserkers still lived, injured and solemn, waiting with their ethran. Less than a handful of the others still stirred, lying on the floor in pain or shivering with cold.
The dim morning light grew brighter, the sun's heat causing the mists outside to shift and grow thicker. Bastun turned back to the wall, walking into the blanket of mist, and leaned against the battlements. His hands found the deep impressions where Serevan's palms had been, and he stared out into the shadows and phantoms of Shandaular.
'Is it over?' he heard the ethran whisper, her voice echoing from within the tower's all-consuming quiet. 'Is it ended?'
'It is ended, ethran,' said Syrolf. 'It is done.'
The pale light of ghostly flames drew Bastun's attention to the western gates of the city. Plumes of black smoke mingled with the mists as the memory of screams and wailing cries reached his sensitive ears. Ghosts began
