Hiral’s exit from the portal dropped him several feet to the stone floor below, the landing nothing to his S-Rank body, despite the injuries—and the bellyflop. More importantly, Seena wasn’t moving. Blood covered her face from wounds to her head, while her armor of metallic feathers was torn and bent where it had done everything it could to protect her.

  As for what had likely saved her life—she still had an entry in the party window—Li’l Ur was nowhere to be found. Neither his full-size body, nor the smaller version that had ridden around on Seena’s shoulder since they’d met him.

  “Nine hells,” Wule said, the sound of running footsteps echoing off stone.

  Wait… Wule?

  Hiral looked up to indeed see the man running down a tunnel in their direction—his three, floating lanterns providing the only light in the otherwise absolute darkness—Nivian and the others close at his heels. Solar energy was already pooling off the man, the lantern on his right glowing, and he sent a wave of healing energy crashing ahead of him.

  As soon as it passed over Hiral, the potent energy worked in tandem with his already active regeneration, and his chest expanded again with an unnerving series of cracks. Thanks to the nature of the Grower’s healing, there was no pain along with the bones resetting themselves, and he took his first full breath since everything had gone so horribly wrong.

  “Seena and Laseen look the worst,” Wule said as he dropped to his knees between the pair. A hand went to each, energy spooling from them to begin his work. “Hells again. What did this do you guys?”

  “Found the Raze,” Hiral said.

  “They found us too,” Yanily said, pushing himself into a seated position against the tunnel wall. “Which is kind of the bigger problem.”

  “They were that powerful?” Nivian said, his eyes flicking from the injured to the tunnel deeper in.

  “Not… exactly,” Hiral said. “Lots to tell you. Before that… where are we? The stone is worked, so it’s not natural…”

  “The roadway down to Trevallen,” Nivian said. “There were actually some of those Cinder-Blokes up on the surface we had to deal with before coming down.”

  “And the Enemies,” Finotol said. “Finally killed an A-Rank one.”

  Hiral should’ve been excited at the news—it was the first A-Rank squid any of them had killed—but he couldn’t even force the feeling past his worry for the others.

  “How did you get here?” Dole said, the big Shaper keeping an eye on the tunnel they’d travelled down.

  “That would be me,” Seeyela said, kneeling opposite Wule beside her sister. “I opened a portal to you guys.”

  “You can do that?” Nivian said.

  “My new advanced class made it possible,” she said, clearly using the conversation to distract her from her unmoving, younger sister on the ground. “How is she?”

  “Did something drop a building on her?” Wule asked, going as far as transforming into his Aspect form for the additional power. “Everything is damaged, but in a weird way. It’s like the bones should be broken, but they aren’t.”

  “She was in her Aspect when she got hit,” Hiral said. “Makes her immune to critical hits… because I don’t think she has organs or bones like that.”

  “Aaaaah,” Wule said, the energy coming from his hand changing slightly. “That helps. What about Laseen? What happened to her?”

  “Nothing good,” Yanily said.

  “I can see that,” Wule deadpanned. “Her arm is the worst. The bones aren’t just broken, they’re powdered. I don’t have an ability that unpowders bones.”

  “Just… ignore… it,” Laseen wheezed, her head rolling to look at Wule. “I’ll just… grow… a new one…” The cackle that came out after only sounded a little forced.

  The Grower seemed to think about it for a few seconds, before he nodded, and his healing energy completely left the limb.

  “This isn’t going to be fast,” Wule said. “Their Abyssal Regeneration is helping, but there’s a lot of misalignment from the injuries.”

  “Don’t rush it,” Nivian said. “Nothing coming from either direction. We’re safe for the moment.” His head cocked to the side at his own comment, and he looked at Seeyela. “We are safe, aren’t we? Can the Raze follow you?”

  “I don’t think they can,” Seeyela said. “Or if they even care enough to.”

  “We might need to watch for the smaller constructs,” Hiral said, pushing himself to his feet. Beside him, Left had come over, and Waters of Frey got added to the healing Wule was putting out.

  “Dole, Igwanda,” Nivian said. “Go keep an eye on the tunnel entrance. We haven’t seen any of those Cinder-Blokes since we entered, but who knows if we stirred them up. Don’t engage them if you don’t need to.” His blue-flame eyes went straight to Igwanda. “And no target practice.”

  The wight tsked and turned her head to the side, but then nodded.

  “I’ll keep her out of trouble,” Dole said. “C’mon, you can tell me about your new arrows.”

  At the mention of anything even remotely related to bows, the undead Squalian perked up, then followed Dole up the tunnel.

  “Bash,” Nivian continued with the pair vanishing into the shadows of the upper tunnel. “You feel anything around us.”

  “Rock,” the Troblin said. “More rock.”

  “Nothing in the rock?”

  “Smaller rocks?”

  “I don’t feel anything down the tunnel either,” Hiral said. “I’ll keep an eye out with my sensory domain. Wule, how is she?”

  “She’ll be fine,” Wule said. “Just not in the next few minutes. Let me work.”

  “I…” Hiral started until a hand fell on his shoulder.

  “She’s in good hands,” Nivian said. “Her and Laseen both.”

  “Yeah… boy…” Laseen coughed. “Don’t… forget about… little old me…”

  “You’re too stubborn to die,” Wule said. Despite his words, there was enough healing energy flowing from him into the vampire, he could’ve healed a whole lower-Rank city.

  “Tell us what happened,” Nivian said. “We have the time.”

  “Left, can you…?” Hiral started.

  “No,” Nivian said. “I asked you. Wule will take care of Seena, and you’re spiralling. Talk to me. It’ll help you too.”

  Hiral forced his eyes away from Seena. Nivian was right, of course. She was alive, that was the most important part. He could feel her breathing through his sensory domain, and her health was steadily climbing in the Party Interface. She would wake up, and she would be fine.

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  She’d also probably be super pissed at the Raze, and planning her fiery return. Still… there was one other person unaccounted for.

  The little lich who’d saved her life. Li’l Ur wasn’t in the tunnel anywhere with them—Hiral had searched with his sensory domain to no avail—which only left two options. One, he was left behind. Unlikely. Two, he’d actually been killed.

  For a lich, though? Maybe that wasn’t so permanent, and Hiral dove into Seena’s PIM universe. Like the last time he’d viewed it, the system of her skills bloomed around him like the space Tomorrow had brought them to. In place of planets and stars, of course, her abilities rotated around the newest addition—a core that was her soul.

  Now, imprinted with the Edict of Energy, that soul resonated with power, but it wasn’t like Hiral’s own. In his PIM universe, the whole thing had taken on the shape of his Rune of Eclipse—one of the hints that’d led him to what he was becoming—with his soul taking center stage. For Seena, her soul was again central… and on fire.

  Not just bright like a sun, a constant, steady burn, but a wave of flame passing slowly across the surface. In its wake, plants bloomed and grew, leaving a field of green, only to be devoured by the next pass of the fire. Over and over, the cycle of destruction and rebirth repeated itself. Around that, her abilities were organized neatly, themselves rotating in circular orbits.

  Hiral couldn’t see anything indicating the Edict of Energy itself. Just the resulting effect of binding her soul to her PIM. Interesting as all that was, though, it wasn’t what he was looking for.

  It didn’t take him long to find the ability in question, nestled practically right up against Seena’s soul. Unlike the other abilities in the PIM universe, this one also burned, albeit with black flame instead of red. In fact, the more Hiral looked at the ability, the more it resembled a throne.

  And there, seated on that throne, fragments of a small lich were putting itself back together again. So far, Hiral could only make out a hand, part of the skull, and tatters of his little robe.

  “Sorry,” Hiral said, coming back to the present from Seena’s PIM universe. “I was checking on Li’l Ur.”

  “Is he going to be okay?” Seeyela asked. “Pretty sure he’s the only reason she’s still alive.”

  “He’s recovering,” Hiral said. “He’ll be okay, and we’ll owe him our thanks.”

  “He’ll just say something about doing anything for his Mistress,” Yanily said. “And still somehow manage to look proud of himself.”

  “Deserves it this time,” Hiral said. “And, Romin, you and Wallop too. Thanks for grabbing Yan.”

  “After what he did,” Romin said. “It was the least I could do.”

  Nivian coughed.

  “Yeah,” Hiral said, looking up at the Death Knight. “Let me tell you about happened.” And, so, he did. While he talked, Wule worked, Seena unconscious the whole time, though Laseen added in the occasional point. It took longer to explain the fight than the actual battle had lasted.

  “… and that’s when Seeyela dropped us into a portal,” he eventually finished, looking at the woman who hadn’t moved from beside her sister. “How’d you do that anyway?”

  “My Unfettered ability,” Seeyela said. “Grabbing any of you with a Bamf didn’t cut that connection you noticed. Something about my portals, though, they carried a hint of my class ability. I just had to open something up far enough away they weren’t immediately on our asses.”

  “And you were able to open a portal to us?” Nivian said.

  “It was your or Ilrolik’s group,” Seeyela said. “A perk of the Raid Interface, you’re like beacons for me to teleport to. Not that it was cheap. And, with how hurt Seena and Laseen were…

  “Look, I like Yully and all, but if there is one healer I’d trust with my sister’s life…”

  Seeyela didn’t have to finish the sentence for everybody there to understand. Wule had been in Seena’s party, and more than that, they’d grown up with each other. He’d go to Genesis and back again if it meant saving her.

  Wule gave Seeyela a second of his attention, as well as a nod of appreciation, before he went back to his work. In the Party Interface, the two were doing much better on health—other than Laseen’s wrecked arm—but Seena still hadn’t moved.

  “We’re going to have to figure some way around that ability you described if we want to fight them,” Nivian said. “The constant resetting, so seamless you don’t even notice it’s happening, what kind of magic is that even?”

  “Hiral has some idea, don’t you?” Yanily said. “You said you figured it out there before everything dropped through all nine hells in an orderly fashion.”

  “I figured out who the Raze are, and what the want from Genesis,” Hiral said. “I think.”

  “Then… spill…” Seena said, and suddenly everybody was moving to surround her. None of them as fast as Hiral, who was by her side before she even finished speaking.

  “Hey,” he said. “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay.”

  “You… saying that,” Seena said, grimacing a little like something was uncomfortable. “Makes me think I am not okay. Wule, give it to me straight.”

  “I’ve… got some bad news,” Wule said. “Your injuries, they’re… I don’t know how to say this. They’re not nearly serious enough to save you from a long life with this goon.”

  Around the healer, everybody paused in dread at the beginning of his sentence. Then his brother cuffed the back of his head as he finished. The chuckles that followed stole a lot of tension from the air—though it returned for a split second as Bash looked to join in the slapping fun. From the wind-up of the buff Troblin’s arm, if Nivian hadn’t caught his wrist, he probably would’ve taken Wule’s head clean off.

  After that near-brush with death, Seena got peppered with questions to make sure she was okay. That lasted a solid fifteen seconds, without the woman even getting a chance to answer, before a horrifying, wet schlurp had words catching in everybody’s throats. As one, the party turned to look at where Laseen had stood up and ripped off her own arm.

  Like she was holding an arm-length glove with stones in it, the torn appendage hung in a way that made Hiral’s stomach turn. Even as he watched, whatever was inside seemed to slide down within the skin, causing the bottom end to bulge and grow.

  “Yeah,” Laseen said. “Thought that would shut you all up. Give the girlie a chance to answer at least. Sheesh.”

  “Uh… Laseen, are you… okay?” Yanily asked, shifting to the side a bit to get away from the arterial spray that’d cover the wall and floor in a line beside him.

  “Better than okay, knucklehead,” Laseen said. Before anybody could comment on the whole missing arm thing, though, a surge of solar energy pulsed within her. Along with something else.

  Her heart.

  One beat, that was all it took, and a brand-new arm erupted out of the stump to fill the sleeve of her dress.

  “See? Good as new.” She even held up the new hand and wiggled her fingers to prove her point. She did have to take the rings—still dripping blood and all—from her old hand and put them on her new one, but that seemed to be the biggest inconvenience of the whole ordeal.

  “Bash next!” the Troblin shouted, his right hand reaching over to grab his left wrist. Once again, only Nivian’s reflexes stopped things from escalating way out of proportion.

  “We’ll do it later when he’s not looking,” Laseen ‘whispered’ to the Troblin, then tossed him a wink.

  “Heh heh heh,” Bash chuckled, excited about their ‘little secret’.

  “So, guys,” Seena said, motioning for Hiral to help her sit up. After they were comfortably leaning against the dark, tunnel wall, she continued. “I’m fine. All in one piece. Just might take me a little longer to be dancing and hurling fire again.”

  “You were always a terrible dancer anyway,” Seeyela said. “I doubt we’d notice a difference.”

  “Mean. Fair, but mean,” Seena said. “Really, though, I’ll be ready to go for round two, whenever that is. As long as it’s not right now.”

  “It’s not right now,” Hiral assured her. “Seeyela, could you even get us back there?”

  “Yeah,” Seeyela said. “Since I created a portal from there, it’s like a landmark in my mind. I can bring us all back… if we really want to do that.”

  “Not until we have an idea on how to deal with their ability,” Nivian said. “Hiral, you said you figured out who the Raze are? Let’s start there.”

  “This is all a theory…” Hiral began.

  “Always is,” Yanily said. “Skip ahead to the part where you tell us what the theory is.”

  “It’s probably not a big leap,” Hiral said. “We got our answer when Laseen saw Zero-T inside the crystal before it stood up. The Raze are the same party whose footsteps we followed during the lost dungeons. The original ones, I mean.

  “What we saw in Ascender’s Tower, that was as much their story, as it was the Fallen’s.”

  “Hells, boy,” Laseen said. “I had an inkling, but hearing you say it…”

  “How did they get so strong then?” Yanily said. “Yeah, they had to be powerful to beat Laapdoug, but they couldn’t have been the same as what we just fought, right? The Fallen wouldn’t have had a chance.”

  “The answer to that was in The Final Sunrise,” Hiral said. “One of our quest objectives.”

  “The Heart of the City,” Seena said, putting the pieces together. “They did the same thing we did, changed it to empower them instead of the Fallen.”

  “And its buff is based off the level of runic energy, isn’t it?” Yanily said. “Since they’re pumping all that energy from Genesis over, that’s what’s making them like that?”

  Hiral shook his head. “That’s probably just a bonus of why they’re pulling energy from Genesis,” he said. “Because, really, at the end of time, what do they need to be able to fight? What do they even need strength for?”

  “If they aren’t using the runic energy to make themselves stronger, what’s the Heart of the City doing then?” Nivian said.

  “It’s still connected to them,” Hiral said. “And through that connection, it’s pumping refined runic energy straight into them.”

  “Refined…?” Seena said. “But, that made you…?”

  “Exactly,” Hiral said. “The Raze trapped Genesis in a dungeon and are using it like a giant keg. Resetting it over and over to create distilled, high-quality runic energy for the Heart of the City to turn into their drug of choice. An infinite supply.

  “Simply put, the Raze are addicts.”

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