The Unmaking of the Breakers

The Breakers had been a sect of the old world. They believed bodies were vessels and souls the true form, and they had been broken into pieces by the god whose will they carried. Every Shepherd had held a fragment of that will to protect. Every Soulreaver had held a fragment of that will to consume. They had not been people with power. They had been extensions of a god, and when the god was lost they had scattered with him.

Tiashrila had spent the Long Quiet finding the scattered pieces. She had bound them to pages, stolen the work back from oblivion, and prepared to hand them out. The Darkness had been the first recipient. Others would have followed. The Fourth Age would have opened with a sect of borrowed gods walking Aabahran at her command.

Erelei returned for the second time and ended it.

The Gathering at the Barren Highlands

Strange lights and energies had been felt across the lands since winter. Erelei walked back to the Barren Highlands, the same ground where the Darkness had first stepped into the world, and stood at the center of it with the bound pages open in his hands. The assembled came one by one. Aquitous knelt. Baeric arrived, dwarven and grim, blood already rising in his eyes. Sylinis, the Nexus drow, came with a black dragon in tow and bound the Chaos Shard to Moloch's power as he watched. Morttilak, the Undead psionicist, came with his ectoplasm and his bone work. Siphi, the bard, sang of canticles and clarity. Ghregen, the Holy Patriarch of Healing, came weeping. Gibble of Watcher came in silence.

Tiashrila came hooded, and Morcado came at her shoulder, day-walking still. They came to see what Erelei held.

The Erasure

The light that poured from him was not warm. It was white, and absolute, and it erased. The pages curled in his hands. They blackened. They dissolved into nothing.

The writing on the pages screamed as it died. Not metaphor. The blood in the ink had carried the will of a god, and the will of a god does not go quietly. It wailed as Erelei burned it out of existence. He did not move. He did not raise his voice. He simply held the pages and let the light do what the light was for.

Every Shepherd. Every Soulreaver. Every trace of that will, bound to those pages, was unmade.

What the Lich Saw

Tiashrila watched the pages disappear. She had spent the Long Quiet on this work. She had crossed planes for it, made the deal with the Darkness for it, turned a Savant for it. She watched it end in a few breaths.

She asked, quietly, if what she had just seen was what she thought it had been. Erelei did not answer her. The pages were gone. Nothing remained.

The Breakers were unmade for the second time, and the Fourth Age now belonged to whatever Tiashrila and the Darkness chose to do next, knowing what Erelei had been willing to do and what he had been able to do without effort.