Chapter 47 Through the Mist

Fara’s hands pulsed with radiant energy, her second tail curling in a slow, deliberate spiral of light that painted the air in gold. The mist outside the guild gates was no longer a drifting haze—it was a living tide, crawling up the street stones and pressing toward the sanctified walls with the patience of a predator. The air had grown sharper, thinner, biting at the lungs like an icy knife.

Revoli clutched the obsidian charm so tightly it dug into her palms, her knuckles pale. Skye stood just behind her, shoulders squared despite the tremor in her hands, golden eyes locked on the shifting sky above.

They weren’t going to wait anymore.

“The eclipse starts now!” Revoli’s voice cracked, carrying over the low murmur of the crowd gathered behind them. She pointed skyward. The moon’s black curve had already begun to eat away at the sun’s gold, casting the kingdom in restless shadow.

“Hold tight,” Fara growled, lowering her stance and planting her spear-staff into the stone. “We only get one shot at this.”

The wind answered her before the magic did—an unnatural gust that whipped their cloaks and sent dust spiraling into the air. Then came the real surge: a rush of sacred foxfire pouring from the soles of her feet and out through her tail, a burst of pure spirit-force that slammed into their backs and hurled them forward as if the road itself were a bowstring.

The temple swelled into view far faster than it should have, its massive stone doors already beginning to glow faintly with the first threads of resonance from the eclipse. The mist rolled ahead of them like a beast trying to beat them to the prize.

Revoli dropped to one knee mid-stride, slamming the charm into the ground.

The obsidian flared—deep, resonant, alive. The temple’s shimmering doors froze mid-shift, as though nailed open by invisible spears of divine light.

They didn’t slow.

They dove through.

The mist followed like a snake striking—only to recoil the instant it crossed the threshold. The hiss it left behind scraped over their ears long after it faded.

Inside, the quiet wasn’t peaceful. It pressed against them, thick and unbreathing. The air smelled like old stone mixed with something warmer—resin and spice and a metallic tang that clung to the tongue.

The walls glimmered faintly, their golden carvings catching even the smallest shift of light. Fara’s breath left her in a tight exhale. “This isn’t like anything I’ve seen before.”

Skye ran her fingers along one of the murals. A figure was carved into it—a woman kneeling in a field of dead flowers, tail limp, ears folded flat.

Fara’s eyes were drawn to another section, where a fox-eared woman cradled a child that dissolved into smoke between her arms. Her tails bristled involuntarily.

Revoli froze in front of her own wall. A younger, smaller version of herself clung to the bars of an iron gate, her eyes swollen from crying, while human silhouettes pointed and laughed on the other side.

None of them spoke.

They pressed deeper into the temple, the gold-lined corridors pulling them onward.

They found the mirror chamber by accident—turning a corner and stepping into a space that felt wrong in its symmetry.

The mirror itself stood floor to ceiling, its golden frame traced in spirals and glyphs.

Fara’s reflection stared back with nine blazing tails that licked the air like living fire.

Skye’s wore a bridal gown, flawless but lifeless, her golden eyes empty.

Revoli’s had no arms at all—only black wings where her hands should be, and no mouth to speak.

They stepped back in unison.

A slow scrape echoed behind them—cloth dragging on stone. They turned to see a figure emerging from the shadowed corner, its cloak heavy with layered feathers, its mask painted with a grin too wide to be human.

The conjurer.

“Three little flames searching for a dream,” it whispered, voice rolling from every wall at once. “How eager. How foolish.”

Fara leveled her staff. “Where is Kai?”

The mask tilted, the grin somehow stretching further.

“Which Kai? The fighter who bleeds? The shadow who cries where no one sees? Or the dreamer who kissed your hopes and walked away?”

Revoli stepped forward, her tail twitching sharply. “We’re not afraid of you.”

The conjurer’s voice slithered like smoke. “Not yet.”

Behind it, the wall shimmered—no longer stone, but an image of a black raven with feathers like shattered obsidian, its eyes burning white.

Fara’s voice faltered. “What… is that?”

The conjurer tilted its head, as if humored by the question. “Cacalotl. Named by those who saw him in a world that should not have gods. The bird who walks between dreams.”

Its laughter was soft and sharp all at once. “He watches. He waits. And wonders if you are strong enough to follow.”

Skye’s voice broke as she barked, “Where is he?”

The conjurer gestured. A wall melted into a doorway of curling smoke.

“Your Kai walked through pain to find his truth,” it said. “Will you?”

Fara didn’t look away. “We already are.”

They stepped into the veil.

The hallway beyond pulsed faintly, each beat echoing in their ribs. The murals here showed only Kai—fractured and remade in fragments.

One held his children close.
One screamed into his hands.
One curled into a corner, shadow eating at his edges.
And one—standing before the raven, which bowed its head in return.

Skye’s voice trembled. “He didn’t dream this place… he is this place.”

The air rippled.

At the far end of the corridor, they saw him.

Kai sat slumped against the wall, knees bent, arms loose over his thighs. Sweat darkened his hair, streaks of gray catching the faint light. Blood lined the cuts across his cheek and forearms. His chest rose and fell with slow, deliberate effort. He looked smaller somehow—stripped of the constant tension he wore like armor—but the twitch in his fingers told them he was still ready to rise.

“Kai!”

They ran—

And the temple woke.

From the edges of the hall, shapes crawled out of the dark: smoke-bound creatures with hollow eyes and clawed limbs. They moved soundlessly, reforming each time they were struck down.

Fara’s staff split one apart in a burst of flame—only for it to reappear at her back. Skye darted low, her blade flashing spectral light as she cut through another. Revoli’s bombs bloomed into bursts of white fire, scattering shadows into ash that swirled only to take shape again.

“Flash them!” Skye shouted.

Revoli yanked two brightbombs from her pouch and hurled them. The corridor vanished in pure light.

The shadows shrieked—high, inhuman—before they dissolved entirely, leaving only the echo of their sound behind.

The conjurer stood at the far end, its mask glinting in the last shimmer of gold.

“Our purpose here is done,” it said. “But yours… has only begun.”

Its body unraveled into a flurry of feathers, each one fading before it hit the ground.

And then there was only silence.

They dropped to Kai’s side, the echo of their footsteps gone.

Their dreamwalker had fallen—but not broken.

And they had come to bring him home.