The Silver Pact
He stepped in front of our battered group, his broad frame shielding us as his combat blade ignited with a violent, triple-braided aura of royal wildfire, cosmic shadow, and deep sea-blue.
We stood on the cracked precipice of a high basalt cliff, surrounded by the towering obsidian frame of the Eastern Gateway. Below us lay what remained of the Eastern Reaches.
There were no trees, no rivers, no rising smoke of living towns. As far as the eye could see under a blood red twilight sky stretched an endless desert of fine, grey ash. Massive, ruined spires of shattered obsidian cities stuck out of the ash dunes like broken bones. Miles away, near the jagged horizon, a vast vortex of void energy