"I have no interest," he said flatly, "in being anyone’s pawn."
That single statement sent a ripple through the robed figures. Whispers, soft and dissonant, echoed among them, as though they communed silently. They knew him. Perhaps they had glimpsed him in visions or illusions. Perhaps they had heard of his survival in the Ashen Expanse. One way or another, their reaction was immediate: a disturbance in the hush, the slightest shift in posture.
Then, in a heartbeat, one of them broke formation. A figure from the leader’s left, presumably a fanatic or zealot, lunged forward, bridging the short distance between them with startling speed. His blade was unlike anything Draven had seen carried by normal soldiers—shimmering with unstable energy, as though half of it existed in another plane. Arcane sparks danced along its length, phasing in and out of sight.
Before Draven could fully register the movement, that blade was slashing for his throat. He twisted, dodging by a hair’s breadth, the savage hum of the weapon slicing the air near his ear. That hiss alone was enough to tell him how lethal it would be if it connected. Worse, the blade flickered in shape, sometimes ghostly, sometimes gleaming steel. Predicting its path was nigh impossible.
Asterion reacted swiftly, stepping in to engage a second attacker who charged almost in tandem with the first, as though the group had rehearsed their maneuvers to complement one another. Asterion’s dagger glowed with short bursts of controlled magic—he channeled it skillfully, each strike forcing the second cultist to defend. The air crackled around them, illusions unraveling wherever Asterion’s magic flared.
Draven, meanwhile, was forced to rely on pure combat instinct. His mana reserves were dangerously low, a result of the forced transition from the ruin and the subsequent drain from the Ashen Expanse. With no lavish arcane blasts at his disposal, he met the cultist’s attacks with lethal precision, parrying each flicker of the blade with crisp economy of motion. The cultist pressed him fiercely, weaving illusions around his limbs, making them appear to extend or vanish altogether. Yet Draven did not waver. He pivoted on his heel, slashing low, forcing the cultist to give ground.
The fight tore through the illusions like a blade through gauze. Around them, the air split in silent bursts, revealing glimpses of the cultists’ true nature. Their robes flickered, exposing half-formed flesh that seemed to be fracturing. One moment, Draven glimpsed a normal human arm, the next, it unraveled into swirling lines of raw energy. The effect was unnerving—men who teetered on the brink of being devoured by the very illusions they wielded.
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A savage thrust came at Draven’s chest. He sidestepped, letting the blade slice through empty space, and brought his own sword in a precise arc that caught the cultist just under the ribs. Instead of the sickening feel of steel biting into flesh, he felt a resistance more like thick fog. The cultist emitted a keening sound, and Draven felt the reverberation rush up his arm. He pressed forward, forcing the blade deeper.
The cultist’s eyes—half-veiled by illusions—widened in something that was neither pain nor shock, but more akin to cosmic frustration. Then, with no flesh to bleed, his torso fractured like glass under too much pressure. Light erupted in jagged threads, flaring outward before collapsing inward. The body dissolved in a swirl of ephemeral filaments that glowed like embers.
Instead of relief, Draven felt a wave of bone-deep disquiet. If these fanatics could survive at the edge of existence like this, it meant Kael’Thorne’s leyline supported them, twisting them into half-living manifestations of the Tapestry’s meltdown.
Asterion, locked in combat with the second attacker, found an opening and sliced upward through the cultist’s extended arm. That arm flickered between real and not real, but it was enough. The attacker stumbled back, illusions unraveling around him in a wave of shimmering color. With a half-scream that rattled the midnight air, he too collapsed into writhing lines of light that vanished as swiftly as they had appeared.
The remaining four cultists had not joined the fray. Instead, they stood in silent unison, their robes shifting patterns of swirling sigils. Draven’s instincts screamed: they are not frightened. They are choosing not to fight.
The leader stepped forward, his posture composed, that mockery of a smile visible beneath his hood. "We are already within you, Draven." His words carried a resonance that made the space behind Draven’s eyes ache, as though some foreign power reached out to tap on the walls of his mind.
Asterion froze, breathing hard, sweat lining his brow from the close-quarters struggle. He glared at the cult leader, adrenaline still burning in his veins, but unwilling to provoke a second wave if they weren’t attacking. Draven, on the other hand, met the leader’s statement with a cold, deliberate stare, refusing to yield any hint of confusion or doubt.
A moment of taut silence passed. The four robed figures and their hooded leader stood as if carved from illusions themselves, each breath a subtle shift in their half-real forms. In that quiet, Draven could practically taste the tension, as though an entire conversation was playing out in the flicker of their ephemeral edges. He reined in his pounding heart, refusing to show that the cult’s statement had struck an uneasy chord.
Then, just as swiftly as they had appeared, the cultists moved. But it was not an attack. They swayed as if guided by invisible strings, stepping backward into the swirling mist. One blink, and they were already half-subsumed by it. Another blink, and their shapes grew fainter.
The leader’s voice drifted through the hush one last time, a half-echo carried on the wind. "The Threads will pull tight. You cannot sever what is already woven."
Asterion opened his mouth as if to retort, but no words emerged. He understood, as Draven did, that the cultists had chosen to depart, leaving them with cryptic warnings and the memory of unraveling illusions. The hush pressed in once more, thicker than before.
Draven, sword still in hand, let out a slow, measured exhale. This entire confrontation, from the moment they arrived at the fork, had been orchestrated. The cult had known who he was, had recognized him instantly, had tested him. Perhaps it was a mere scouting approach. Perhaps they were confident enough in their strength to show only a fraction of it. However, he found himself oddly grateful for the reprieve, fleeting though it might be—his mana reserves couldn’t sustain a prolonged battle, and Asterion’s glimpses of magic were calculated but hardly limitless.
They waited a beat or two longer, scanning the mist for any sign the cultists might return. The crossroads no longer felt perfect. The illusions that had kept it unnaturally pristine had faded, revealing cracked stones and half-buried debris beneath a thin layer of dust. Whatever illusions conjured this place had dissolved the moment the cult ended their confrontation.
Finally, Draven sheathed his blade, the metallic scrape echoing in the uneasy air. His gaze flicked to Asterion, who was still bristling with tension, posture coiled like a spring.
"Stronger than I expected," Asterion muttered, letting his dagger rest at his side.
Draven inclined his head in agreement, the dryness in his throat reminding him how close that fight had been. "They are devouring the leyline’s energies. We have to move."
Asterion nodded. "Kael’Thorne, then."
"Yes." Draven’s tone was resolute, as though there had never been a doubt. Because truly, there wasn’t. The confrontation with these cultists only solidified the scale of the threat. If they commanded illusions this complex, if they manipulated the Tapestry to flicker in and out of physical reality, then staying away from Kael’Thorne would accomplish nothing. The city was the source. Or, at the very least, it housed the source— that open leyline which needed to be sealed, or harnessed, or both.
Neither man voiced the shared dread lingering in the back of their minds. They both sensed the unstoppable collision course set in motion by the unraveling Tapestry. Belisarius’s spectral presence hovered like a blade at the edge of Draven’s awareness, and these cultists had only confirmed that confrontation loomed.
Asterion took in a steadying breath. The tension in his shoulders eased, though only slightly, and he cast one last glance at the road. In the distance, the silhouettes of the robed figures had vanished as though they’d never been there. Only the faint impression of illusions remained, swirling motes in the corners of Draven’s vision. The crossroad looked far more ordinary now, albeit haunted by a hush that was no less unnerving.
"We are already within you, Draven," the leader had said.
The words churned in Draven’s mind, but he didn’t dwell on them aloud. Instead, he gestured for Asterion to move, forging down the eastern path that, according to Asterion, bent toward Kael’Thorne. The next confrontation, he suspected, would not be so easily resolved. Yet he would meet it on his own terms, or not at all.
They set off without another word, the final echoes of that short, vicious fight trailing behind them like the last gasps of a half-forgotten nightmare. The Tapestry had rumbled, illusions had parted, and the cult had decided, for whatever reason, to let them go. Draven knew better than to believe that was a sign of weakness or mercy. The cult had plans of their own, and Draven was certain they had only glimpsed the beginning.
For now, the fork in the road lay empty. The hush returned, carrying the faint stench of magic scorched by sudden violence. Slowly, the stones underfoot crunched as Draven and Asterion continued their journey, each well aware that their next stop would be a place where the land twisted even more violently around the exposed leyline. The cult was likely waiting in force. Perhaps illusions, perhaps half-unraveled monstrosities that used to be men. None of that would halt Draven’s steps.
Just a short distance away, the swirling mist closed in behind them, reclaiming the crossroads. In its wake, no robed figures remained to bar their path. The confrontation had ended, leaving only the imprint of words that gnawed at Draven’s mind: We are already within you. He forced the lingering echo to the back of his thoughts. The resolution not to yield to illusions or cosmic rewriting thrummed like a second heartbeat within him.
They advanced, forging deeper into the uncertain horizon. Overhead, the sky’s bruise-hued clouds gathered into a tumult, reflecting an ominous tension still simmering in the air. Leaves on twisted trees rustled as if whispering secrets of a land on the brink of further unraveling. In that stark hush, Draven and Asterion’s footfalls seemed impossibly loud.
And behind them, the crossroads stood abandoned, dim illusions still dancing in ephemeral patterns above the vacant stretch of road, as if the cult had never truly been there at all.
And then they simply dispersed into the mist. Find exclusive stories on freewebnovel