They found the Highlord in the Manor’s dining hall. The room had been reduced to ash, furniture incinerated, and walls blackened by flame. Embers still glowed and flitted in the air, evincing their recent creation.

  It was just as his grandfather had said. The picture of destruction wrought by their clash, when two Fearshapers of flame brought their Fears to a head. Valeric’s Fear of dragons meeting his father’s Fear of immolation and renewal.

  Berevan Brimstone was slumped against the far wall, to receive them.

  His eyes wide open.

  Lifeless.

  Caledon’s cry of anguish echoed through the destruction, and he broke away from Shiver and Vale to run towards his father. The Highlord’s Phobia, his greatsword of burnished red and gold was driven into the ground beside him, deprived of its eternal vortex of flame.

  "Father! Father, please!"

  They watched as Caledon’s hands desperately locked onto the Highlord’s broad shoulders, shaking him gently. The image of a child waking a parent from an overlong nap.

  Only to be met with silence.

  Shiver and Vale watched as Caledon fell to his knees and wept, in the scene of destruction.

  Shiver’s Phobia, the elegant blade of ice dissipated into a haze of frost as the girl dropped it from her grip. Vale’s eyes widened as she glimpsed Shiver’s eyes. Devoid of any emotion, and as cold as the object of her Fear.

  "So… that’s how it ends. Someone beat me to it."

  Then, she watched in horror as her friend began to shiver.

  The revenge that she chased with vehemence, her wrath, hatred, sorrow and grief wielded like a tool to facilitate her meteoric descent through her Fear, evaporating as quickly as they had coalesced.

  Her descent rendered pointless.

  The girl began to shiver, as the cold, emptiness and desolation held at bay by her singular purpose began to creep in, no longer hindered.

  "Icey… What was it all for?"

  Shiver let out an empty laugh, as her hand clutched at the scruff of her shirt, twisting it into a spiral. In the end, her guide had been right. The Highlord’s death, would not bring her solace, or peace. Not that she had been so naive to think that it would.

  Caledon’s sobs continued to echo. Then, he raised his voice with uncharacteristic wrath.

  "You useless guide. Tell me what I can do. Now."

  Pure desperation entered his tone, as his voice cracked.

  "Please."

  A floating eyeball sporting a pair of draconic wings appeared in a flash of flame beside him. It stared at Caledon, shifting its gaze to his father. Watching onwards in silence, the guide’s choice not to dignify his Fearshaper’s pleas was a response in itself.

  Feverish eyes turned to them.

  "Vale. Is there anything you can do? You’re a Fearshaper of death. Can’t you-"

  Vale let out a shuddering breath. A common refrain, uttered through the ages. Vale knew little about her predecessors.

  But there was one thing she did understand about her Fear.

  Why it was so insidious and pervasive. So wholeheartedly embraced when it represented something so repulsive.

  It was because the wish to deliver death, and to avert it, were equally as tempting. So much so, that elves would dance with Insanity for a chance to glimpse such power.

  Yet…

  "I’m sorry."

  Perhaps if she had reached Serenity, descended as through the very depths of her Fear, it may have been possible. One to surpass even the old monsters of the Revenant name. For she had never known of a Fearshaper of her house or otherwise, that had succeeded in restoring life that was once taken.

  She averted her eyes. Only for them to linger on a corner of the room encased in lingering black smoke.

  Something was burning. The smoke billowing from-

  Vale gasped, and she ran towards her brother, heedless of the debris littering the manor floor. Shiver’s eyes narrowed, as she glimpsed what had so captured the girl’s attention, an impossibility. Shiver followed behind her in a slight crouch, ready to burst into movement at the slightest threat.

  As she drew nearer, she made out familiar blonde hair.

  That was where the similarities ended.

  Triol Revenant’s face had morphed.

  His eyes bore no irises. They were pure black, circles of void. Streaks of black liquid leaked from them, dripping idly over black lips, falling from his chin. His teeth had grown jagged and sharp, cutting into his lips and the skin of his jaw and cheeks. Similarly to the undead winterlion they had glimpsed outside.

  A gross perversion of the natural form. His body, entirely transformed. There was something wrong with his proportions. His limbs were elongated, his arms had grown longer and were bound in raw muscle that the young man had lacked when they had first encountered him. His bare forearms were covered in black veins that spidered down their length.

  Vale clenched her fist as tears ran from her face. She let out an anguished whisper.

  "You idiot. What have you done."

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Black lips, curved upwards into a smile.

  Vale recoiled. She began to shake, as she took a tentative step forwards, reaching out to but visibly halting before gripping her brother’s arm.

  "Triol?"

  "Vale..."

  He coughed, and specks of black blood flew to the ground. As Shiver drew closer, she realised that one of the man’s eyelids had been fused from the melting of his flesh. The other had been torn away altogether, his autonomy ripped from him, as he was forced to gaze on the scene of destruction he had partaken in. At the anguish, on his sister’s face as she confronted him.

  A monster.

  "You were right after all. So was your friend. We were always just tools."

  "What did he do to you? What have you done?"

  Triol laughed weakly, running a hand along the wall behind-

  No, it wasn’t a wall.

  It was his guide.

  Silvanis, the undead eel creature whose venom he had used to torture Icey, lay behind him. She had grown into an enormous serpent whose body had filled the hall. She was no longer a simple creature made of bone, but one comprised of flesh and blood. Black liquid leaked from between misty scales of silver in the areas where she had been injured. Her body was a history of countless slashes, the edges still glowing with the heat of the blade that had inflicted them.

  Triol was leaning against her body.

  As Shiver’s gaze traced the enormous guide, she eventually found Silvanis’ skull, buried in the rubble. Half of it had caved in, as if from a blow of flames as the burning viscera emitted smoke. Her skin melted through.

  "I got what I wanted, sister. Father offered me power, and I took it."

  He laughed weakly.

  "You know, I always thought you were the na?ve, idealistic one."

  His breath gradually began to grow ragged, as he forced out his words in between ragged intakes of breath.

  "At first, I had hope for the academy. I thought, perhaps it would possess some knowledge or means to descend."

  Vale looked on in horror, tears fleeing from her eyes.

  "The Floors of Trepidation were empty, just as much as the promises of that academy."

  Shiver had confirmed as much when she had strode through the barrier.

  "Father offered me power."

  "You idiot."

  Vale whispered, as her shoulders fell and her question was answered. Triol continued weakly. He coughed, and as he turned, he revealed a plane of his face that had previously been concealed.

  It was burned through, just the same as Silvanis’. Shiver could see his flesh melted, intermingling with the repulsive black substance that oozed from him. The fact that he still remained conscious went against all laws of nature.

  "He knew that I shared in your objective. Here I thought, I could rise up by his side, and slit his throat once I was capable of it."

  Triol smiled weakly, baring alien, jagged black fangs. Vale trembled as she clung on to his every word.

  Then Triol sighed, and the lights in his eyes dimmed.

  "In truth, I was scared. Of defying him."

  His admission came as a whisper. Inadequate, frustrating. He twisted his neck to face her, revealing the tendons that had been partially severed, that still glowed with the heat from the weapon that had torn through them.

  "Shiver was right after all. Please. Protect Dawn. Father has designs for her as well."

  His eyes gradually began to fall, as the last of his lifeblood ran dry.

  "She’s the most terrifying of us all. I’m sorry, Val-"

  A blade of flame severed his head from his body, tearing through the tendons that had already been partially severed, giving form to the will of his original assailant, Berevan Brimstone.

  Vale recoiled in horror as her brother’s head fell from his body.

  Caledon gripped the hilt of his torch, from which sprouted a blade of golden flame.

  Anguish filled Caledon’s eyes, as he took Triol’s life.

  Vale could feel the nature of Caledon’s Fear, and her vision flickered. For a moment, she glimpsed her brother as he stood at the threshold of their old home. Young, his eyes filled with hope and eager to impress their father. As naive and frustrating as she had once been.

  Before the image faded and she was left staring at his headless corpse, twisted by whatever had corrupted his body.

  Caledon’s chest heaved, and he turned to Vale with a look of pure rage.

  Then, Shiver’s Phobia of frost fell between them.

  "She was not the one that took your father’s life."

  Tears still fell from his eyes, and he dropped his torch at the horror of what he had done.

  What he swore never to do.

  Caledon slowly returned to his father’s body, kneeling before him. Shiver’s cold hand grasped Vale’s shoulder in reassurance.

  Which was when something stirred in the midst of the Fearcore that she had created in her descent through Anhedonia.

  Gazing at her fallen brother, something that flickered at the edges of her vision.

  "So this is the shape of your Fear. Will you give form to your brother’s wishes?"

  Vale gritted her teeth, trying to push the words of her guide from her mind.

  Repulsed by his suggestion.

  "You would have me raise my own brother? Pervert his rest? He already got what he deserved -"

  "Rest is not what his soul longs for."

  The word struck Vale, as she struggled to deny what she had come to realise. She could see the edges of her brother’s soul before her.

  Veteran Revenant raised the dead en masse, uncaring of their lives, pasts, or wishes. Hers was a power of a different nature. She knew, that if she wished, she could turn Triol’s soul to do her bidding, with the single invocation her descension had given form to.

  She looked to Shiver, and saw her friend meet her gaze with empty eyes, her revenge stolen from her. The object of her hatred dead.

  Vale was not so lucky.

  She called her Fear into reality, scythe in hand.

  A Fearshaper in truth, at long last, she invoked her Fear with a whisper.

  [Soul restoration]

  She glimpsed mounds of twisted flesh melting from her brother’s bones. The impurities that infected his being fell away, black, jagged teeth clattering to the floor from the black skull that rested at her feet.

  Triol Revenant walked forwards, melting from his twisted, monstrous form that had changed him. Even so, his body was not fully free from the impurities that had corrupted him.

  A black skeleton stood before her, animated by the shape of her Fear.

  She had embraced what she had most despised, and Vale knew-

  There were some things, you could never come back from.

  ---

  Caledon watched as Vale raised her brother’s body. Shiver just stood, watching him with cold eyes.

  He had lost track of time. He didn’t know how long he had been weeping. The only clues as to the passage of time being the burns on his knees, pressed against the dying embers that surrounded his father, and his eyes which had finally run dry of tears.

  The invocation he had received from his descension would be of no assistance to him. The shape of his Fear sickened him, and it embodied its very essence.

  He had vowed never to bring form to the invocation his descent has gifted him.

  Caledon rose, with heavy shoulders, his Phobia in his hands. The flame that had coalesced into a blade now burned weakly, at risk of being extinguished at the slightest breeze.

  Viveria and Appella. His mother and sister. He needed to ensure their safety. If Triol had a vendetta against his father, none of his family were safe. With the passing of his father, he was the Highlord of Brimstone, by order of succession. The people of Brimstone were in jeopardy. With Triol’s passing, the sounds of battle outside had finally come to an end.

  Which was right when his father stood to his feet.

  Berevan Brimstone smiled.