Mother of Midnight

Something felt wrong to Rava.

The sky was too quiet.

No movement had come from the north since Vivienne had stormed off in that direction. Even the constant rumble of battle, the clash of blades, the cries of dying men, the screaming of aetherbeasts, had faded. All that remained was wind through grass and the soft hiss of distant fires dying out.

She stood atop a broken stone wall, scanning the horizon. Nothing. Smoke curled lazily into the air, but there was no movement beneath it.

Maybe Vivienne had wiped them out.

Maybe Tarric had finally decided to show his strength. He was supposed to be the strongest exomancer among them. She'd barely seen him fight.

Maybe that was a good sign.

But it didn’t feel right.

Her fur bristled along her arms. There was a strange crackle in the air, like the charge before lightning. Every few seconds she swore she could hear something, just barely on the edge of hearing. Not like a full battle, more like a skirmish. Shouting. Something tearing. A voice that didn’t sound human.

She shifted her stance. Her claws flexed. Her whole body felt tight, keyed up. Not the usual readiness of a warrior waiting for orders, this was something else.

It felt like she shouldn’t be here. Like wherever Vivienne had gone, that’s where she was meant to be.

But the order was clear: hold this position until relieved. Wait for Vivienne’s return, or word from someone else.

She bared her teeth and looked north again.

Something was wrong.

And it was getting worse.

Her muscles tensed, coiling beneath her fur like drawn cords. Every instinct screamed now—not the whisper of unease, but a deafening command echoing from deep in her bones.

Go.

Rava hissed out a curse and surged forward, launching herself along the top of the wall in long, bounding strides. Her claws scraped the stone as she moved, tail slicing the air behind her for balance. Wind howled in her ears. Something was wrong, and she wasn’t about to wait for permission to act.

It didn’t take her long to reach the northern edge. Other soldiers were already gathered there—archers still clutching arrows, swordsmen with weapons drawn, all frozen in place. Not from fear, but from confusion.

They stared out across Serkoth’s northern plain.

It was empty.

Where there should have been bodies, chaos, fire… there was nothing. Just scorched grass and discarded weapons. Spears lying in trampled soil. Shields cracked in half. Blood staining the dirt, but no corpses to claim it.

Not a single enemy stood.

Rava slowed, her breath caught somewhere in her throat. Her claws twitched involuntarily. Her heart pounded, not from exertion, but something else.

Even she couldn’t help the swell of pride that bubbled up. Her mate had done this. Vivienne had torn through a full army, and not a single trace remained but the aftermath.

Her eyes caught movement near the front line. A tall figure standing at the edge of the overlook, arms crossed, tail flicking with unease. His armor was dark, trimmed with gold. The leader of the army. Her eldest brother.

She still didn’t remember him, not fully. There were pieces, flickers of memory, but nothing whole. Still, something in the way he stood felt familiar.

His ears flicked. He turned before she even made a sound, catching her presence in the corner of his eye. Rava appeared beside him in a blur of black and blue fur.

“I would gripe about the eastern wall being left open,” he said without turning, voice low and hollow, “but I don’t think that matters anymore.”

He raised one hand, gesturing to the horizon.

“She’s still fighting. Something else. But the army? It’s just… gone.”

Rava followed his gaze.

Far beyond the plain, on the very edge of sight, she could see it—bursts of pale light flashing in the distance. The boom of distant impacts that reverberated through the earth like distant thunder. Something massive stirred in that space. The very air shimmered around it.

Rava narrowed her eyes. Her tail swished in agitation.

Vivienne was still out there. Still fighting. And whatever she faced now was worse than what had come before.

Rava didn’t hesitate.

She vaulted from the wall, crouched low as she landed hard enough to crater the stone beneath her feet. The impact barely slowed her. A heartbeat later, she was sprinting, claws digging into soil as she carved a straight path through the battlefield. The environment blurred past. Smoke and shimmered aether flickered across the horizon.

The light ahead twisted and flared in unnatural pulses. Magic. Power. Warped air.

Vivienne’s silhouette danced in the chaos, graceful and relentless—locked in combat with something that burned like a miniature sun. Wings of golden flame. A gleaming figure, wrapped in silvers and whites and the faint hum of something not of this world.

Rava’s stomach lurched.

She didn’t know who he was.

Didn’t need to.

The sight of him ignited a fury in her she couldn’t explain. Her lip curled. Her claws flexed. Every part of her screamed that he was wrong—an intruder, a thing that had no right to exist near Vivienne. The sound of his voice, the way he moved, even the gleam of his armor—it all grated against something primal in her chest.

She didn’t know why she hated him so completely.

But she didn’t care.

There was no time for questions.

Her mate needed her.

With a roar that split the air, Rava launched herself forward like a living missile. Vivienne twisted aside at the last second, whether by instinct or trust, and the golden man barely had time to turn before she crashed into him.

Metal screamed beneath her claws.

The force of the impact threw the golden man across the churned battlefield, his body carving a deep trench in the earth as he tumbled through dust and broken stone. Dirt exploded in every direction, and his wings flailed wildly, scraping furrows as he struggled to control his momentum.

Rava didn't give him a second.

She landed hard beside him, snarling, her claws cracking the ground. One hand slammed into his chestplate to pin him down, the other raised high, every muscle in her body wound tight. Her fingers spread wide, claws gleaming, ready to plunge straight through the metal and rip out whatever lay beneath.

The strike never came.

With uncanny speed and precision, he drove the pommel of his blade into her ribs. Pain lanced through her side. Her grip faltered, the breath catching in her throat. He twisted, rolled with the motion, and flung her bodily off him. She flew across the ground, hitting hard and sliding, a trail of dust and grit marking her path.

Before she could rise, he was already in the air.

He didn't flap. His wings weren’t made for it. Gouts of flame erupted from their base, slamming into the ground and hurling him skyward in a burst of roaring heat. The earth scorched beneath him, blackened and cracked, as he shot upward like a war machine reborn, leaving only smoke and fury in his wake.

He flew out of sight at such blistering speed that the air itself cracked with a deafening bang, the sound echoing across the battlefield like a thunderclap.

"Rava!" Vivienne’s voice rang out, sharp and commanding.

Rava snapped her head toward her, just in time to see what Vivienne was looking at. High above, framed by the smoky sky, the golden man had arced upward and was now plummeting straight down. His wings were locked, his body a missile, blade poised for a killing blow as he descended toward Vivienne’s unguarded back.

Rava surged forward, arm stretched out, eyes wide with horror. She poured everything into her legs, her claws tearing at the ground as she raced to reach her mate. But for all her monstrous speed, she wasn’t fast enough.

Vivienne didn’t need her to be.

In an instant, her form shifted. Her body rippled and bulged, limbs stretching, thickening, swelling with mass and power. Her skin split and reformed as she grew, height surging upward in a blink, her silhouette becoming monstrous and regal all at once. As she turned, arms sweeping wide, her claws sang through the air like scythes.

The golden man struck her mid-spin.

His blade pierced deep into her gut. Flesh tore open. A great gout of ichor burst into the sky, hot and black, splattering the ground beneath them. The impact rocked her, but she didn’t fall. He had not passed through. He had not felled her.

He was stuck.

Vivienne’s stomach had closed around the blade, the rippling layers of muscle and crystallizing flesh seizing his body like a vice. His wings flared and thrashed, but he was lodged deep, his forward momentum stolen.

Vivienne growled low, a sound like mountains cracking.

Her claws plunged into her own gored belly. She reached inside and seized him without hesitation, her entire hand curling around his armored frame as if he were nothing more than a doll. The metal groaned under the pressure.

She pulled.

The man came free in a spray of ichor and tangled viscera, his blade trailing behind him, useless now. Her hand didn’t release him. It tightened.

Her five black eyes narrowed. Her lips curled back.

Vivienne’s grip tightened around the golden man, her fingers curling with deliberate slowness until the points of her claws scraped against her own palm. But still, he didn’t yield. His body, encased in that gleaming metal, resisted her strength as though he had no flesh at all beneath it. There was no satisfying crunch. No scream. Only resistance.

So she squeezed harder.

Muscles bunched and surged along her arm. The veins pulsed beneath her crystallizing skin. A low snarl curled from her throat as she forced her hand to clench further, harder, until the strain made the bones in her own fingers begin to creak and crack. She felt the ligaments pull taut and threaten to tear. Still she did not let go.

“Rava, dear,” she called, her voice booming with a terrible, unnatural harmony. “Please go take care of the priest over there.”

She lifted her free hand and pointed with a long, clawed finger toward the far end of the battlefield, where the white-robed man stood calmly among the chaos, untouched, unhurried. Watching.

Rava froze. Her lips curled into a snarl and her ears flattened against her skull. She didn’t want to leave. Every part of her screamed to stay at Vivienne’s side. To protect her. To tear this golden thing apart piece by piece. But Vivienne had asked.

So she gave a stiff nod and turned.

And then she vanished.

The ground split beneath her feet with the force of her leap, and a boom like a thunderclap echoed in her wake. She was off in a bolt of motion, black fur streaking across the battlefield like a flash of living lightning, her eyes locked in the direction Vivienne had pointed. Somewhere ahead, that silver-robed man was waiting. A priest. That must have been the one.

Rava would find him. And she would end him.

It didn’t take long to find him. The silver-robed priest stood exactly where Vivienne had pointed, untouched by the battle raging around him. His staff was planted firmly in the stone, and his hands moved with eerie precision, drawing radiant sigils in the air that shimmered with a cold, silver light. A spell nexus bloomed around him like a blooming wound in reality.

Rava surged toward him, claws curled into a fist, muscles coiled tight. She was only a few metres away when she struck.

Her punch connected with nothing.

She blinked. There had been no resistance. No impact. Not even a shimmer of displacement. One moment he had been there, right in front of her. The next, she was beyond him, her momentum carrying her several steps past.

She skidded to a halt, claws gouging deep into the stone as she twisted back around.

He was still there.

Hadn’t moved an inch.

Still calmly drawing the same sigils into the air, as if time meant nothing to him. As if she weren’t even present.

A growl ripped from her chest.

She lunged again, faster this time, the world blurring around her. Her fist shot forward with enough force to shatter bone and tear through metal.

And again, it passed through empty air.

Her arm vanished just before it struck him, and reappeared a full metre past his body, the rest of her following a heartbeat later. No contact. No sensation. It was as if her body simply refused to acknowledge his.

She staggered to a stop, tail lashing with frustration. Her ears flattened, hackles raised, and her lips peeled back from her teeth in a snarl.

His eyes flicked up, just briefly, to meet hers. Cold. Dismissive. Then, as if she weren’t even worth acknowledging, they dropped again. His mouth moved without pause, lips shaping ancient words that echoed strangely through the air, each syllable trailing like smoke. The sigils spun and turned, hanging in place like frozen stars, weaving themselves into a nexus of power above his staff.

Rage surged up inside her, hot and blinding.

This man, this thing, was casting something far beyond her understanding. And she could do nothing. No matter how fast she moved, how hard she struck, her body simply skipped over him like he wasn’t real.

But he was.

A snarl tore from her throat, and for a moment, doubt threatened to take root. Was she truly powerless? Was she just muscle and fury against something so far beyond her she couldn’t even touch it?

No.

She shook the thought loose with a shuddering breath, and the storm inside her answered.

She was not just fury.

She was the storm made flesh.

With a deafening crack, lightning fell from the sky, a white-hot bolt that struck her square in the chest. Her body convulsed but did not fall. Her fur lit up with streaks of burning blue, arcs of electricity crackling along her limbs, grounding into the stone beneath her and shattering it.

Her eyes flared, burning with raw current.

She would not be denied.

With a howl of defiance, Rava lunged forward again, but not to strike.

This time, she reached into the strange space where her fist always passed through. Her hand vanished, just like before, reappearing a metre past the priest, beyond the edge of his barrier.

This time, she didn’t stop there.

She discharged.

A blinding flood of lightning erupted from her arm, arcs of white-blue power ripping through the air like living tendrils. The ground split with the force of it, and the world seemed to scream as she poured the storm directly into the space her body could not touch.

Something cracked.

The barrier began to splinter in earnest now, great cracks spidering out from where her lightning had struck. Rava could taste the burnt-metal tang of ruptured magic. She wrenched her arm back through the warping space and sprang several paces away, claws flexing, body low, every muscle ready to lunge again if the priest dared try another trick.

But he didn’t retreat.

Instead, the man only smiled. It wasn’t warmth or relief in that expression—just cold satisfaction. Slowly, he raised one palm to the sky. The air above him quivered, like heat haze on sunbaked stone, then tore. A gash in the very skin of the world yawned open, jagged and wrong, bleeding light and shadow in equal measure.

Something stepped through. Then another.

They fell to the ground with the heavy, ringing clatter of steel boots. Humanoid in shape, but their faces were nothing but gleaming masks. Their bodies were sealed in radiant armor that burned with its own inner fire, runes chasing across their plating like restless insects.

Familiar. Too familiar.

Rava’s lip curled.

“Deal with that beast,” the priest said, not even looking at her now, his voice a command rather than a request.

The constructs moved as one. In the space between heartbeats, they launched forward, their movements unnervingly smooth, like water flowing downhill. Mid-leap, their hands filled with swords—not forged, but formed—lances of white-gold light coalescing into perfect killing edges.

The first strike came low from her left. The second, high from her right. They weren’t just attacking, they were herding her, cutting off any clean escape.

Rava’s claws crackled with the remnants of the storm she’d drawn down moments before. She met the low strike head-on, parrying with a sharp, ringing clash as lightning danced up her forearm and exploded against the construct’s blade. At the same time, her other hand shot up, catching the wrist of the second attacker just as its sword began its downward arc.

She felt the heat radiating from its weapon, the hum of magic so dense it made her teeth ache.

Snarling, she pivoted on one heel, using the construct’s own momentum against it. With a savage wrench, she swung the armored thing bodily into its partner, metal screaming as they collided. The impact was hard enough to dent plating, and the first construct went sprawling to the ground, a plume of dust rising around its fallen frame.

The second staggered back a step, but its head remained fixed on her.

They didn’t tire. They didn’t fear.

And they weren’t going to stop.