Chronicles of the World of DaoTyr

The Final Battle of the GRANITE HOME KNIGHTS Chapter 3

The Hall of the Night Mist.

The four Bladesong knights had scarcely drawn breath before reality folded inward. Sound disappeared first, then gravity, then distance itself. Colors unraveled into long ribbons of silver and violet, and the forest, the stars, and the battlefield dissolved like reflections disturbed upon dark water. They had entered the Hall of the Night Mist.

No mortal architect had conceived that place. The Hall was less a chamber than an impossible geometry suspended between moments of creation. Vast bridges of polished obsidian floated unsupported across an endless white abyss. Towers hung upside down beneath invisible heavens, their windows opening not into rooms but into forgotten centuries. Rivers of moonlight poured upward through the air, becoming waterfalls that climbed toward unseen skies. Forests grew beneath crystal floors, while above them drifted oceans in which silent whales swam through clouds instead of water. Every footstep echoed twice: once in the present, and once somewhere impossibly far away, as though memory itself walked beside the living.

Around them drifted the Night Mist, pale and luminous, forever changing shape. Within its folds appeared the faces of long-dead kings. Forgotten lovers. Children not yet born. Entire cities flickered in and out of existence like thoughts abandoned by Creation itself. Loralin understood with sudden dread.

This was not merely a prison. It was a seed. The Anum-Batai had built this demiplane before kingdoms remembered their own beginnings. Here, beyond time, the six primordial swords would one day be gathered. Here the Swords of Doom were destined to extinguish forever the last light of the Swords of Glory. From this impossible place the ending of the world would unfold.

The trap had closed. Yet destiny had arrived imperfectly. The Hall had expected different souls. Different hands. Different histories. And so, for the first time since its making, prophecy hesitated. Then the mist began to scream. From the endless whiteness below rose a mountain of blackness. Not walking. Not flying. Gliding. The Avatar of Volukai emerged like grief made flesh.

He stood nearly twenty feet in height, impossibly thin, wrapped in cathedral-black robes that seemed stitched from funeral shadows. His face resembled neither skull nor man but something between the two, stretched impossibly long beneath a crown of broken antlers wrought from obsidian. His lower body dissolved into an enormous bed of writhing serpents whose scales reflected no light.

Where arms should have been there lashed spirits. Hundreds of them. Transparent souls bound together into elongated limbs that reached outward in impossible angles, grasping and clawing with hands that belonged to a thousand forgotten dead. Every movement released whispered prayers, screams, curses, and lullabies all at once. The Hall itself recoiled. Volukai had come.

He had been drawn not by the knights…but by the swords. A great roar split the impossible heavens. Fire burst through one of the floating towers as Severin, clad in black plate whose surface reflected burning crimson sigils, descended upon his ancient red dragon Taelashinon. Every beat of the dragon’s wings scattered sparks that became meteors before striking the crystal bridges below.

Then another shadow eclipsed even him. The ancient dragon Yropa emerged. Not the radiant Mountain Mother of old songs. That dragon had died long ago. What descended now was a thing consumed by shadow, her once-prismatic scales swallowed beneath living darkness. Her enormous wings bled night itself, and her eyes glowed with a mournful violet that seemed to remember what she had once been. Upon her back stood Skylla.

The witch wore robes of flowing black embroidered with silver constellations that continually shifted across the cloth. Her white hair floated in unseen wind, and in her hands crackled violet sorcery drawn from places where stars had never shone.

Then, before them all…Aceritiana laughed. No disguise remained. The kindly face of Acertana dissolved into ash. The ancient mistress of the Anum-Batai stood revealed in robes woven from living shadow, her eyes burning with patient triumph accumulated across millennia.

“So,” she whispered. “At last…The family is complete.” Then reason abandoned the battlefield. Nothing unfolded according to alliance. Nothing obeyed expectation. Volukai’s avatar reached not for the knights but for Severin. Severin cursed Skylla as traitor. Skylla unleashed torrents of violet fire against Aceritiana. The shadow dragon Yropa struck at Volukai. The lich answered with storms of spectral serpents. The Hall itself groaned beneath competing destinies. Knights fought dragons. Dragons fought liches. The dead betrayed the living. The living betrayed prophecy. Every oath in history seemed suddenly to collide in one impossible place.

Amid that glorious chaos Loralin acted. He raised his hand. The words were almost gentle. The spell blossomed. Ancient transmutation seized Taelashinon. The colossal red dragon shrank in a single impossible instant into a tiny silver-scaled fish. For one heartbeat the little creature blinked in bewilderment. Then gravity remembered its purpose. The fish plummeted through endless air. It struck one of the crystal bridges with an almost absurdly tiny splash.

Severin barely escaped, casting himself from the dragon’s back in fury before vanishing into a vortex of black flame. Even Volukai paused. Then the battle became terrible once more. As swords rang and worlds cracked, Loralin’s thoughts returned again and again to the vampire. Veteramor. No…Not Veteramor. There was another name. The true name. Not a weapon. A door.

The realization arrived like sunrise. The true name had never been meant to destroy Aceritiana. It was meant to free what had become imprisoned. He cried the name aloud. The Hall answered. At that same instant Zun, his face twisted beneath the domination of Rendgray, charged forward with a roar that belonged as much to the sword as to the paladin.

The Sword of Doom fell. Its black edge pierced Aceritiana. She did not scream. She smiled.The Anum-Batai could not be slain. Only one of the Swords of Doom possessed authority over the oaths that had created them. As Rendgray completed its dreadful purpose, reality split.

A ley-line burst open through the center of the Hall. Beyond it shimmered a Feyhold outside time, untouched by decay, untouched by prophecy. Without hesitation Loralin stepped through. He vanished. To Korrath. To Sayelle. To Zun.

Only three heartbeats passed. But for Loralin…Three days unfolded beneath impossible skies. He walked forgotten gardens where the first archfey remembered Creation. He crossed bridges woven from birdsong. He spoke with beings older than myth.

There, within the oldest forge remaining in existence, the shattered Justicar Blade was restored. When he returned, the sword no longer carried the wounds of history. It shone with living radiance. It had become once more Aeltharion Valethis. The White Oath of Mercy. The Ivory Blade reborn.

Korrath looked upon her family’s ancient blade. For a long moment she said nothing. Then she roared. It was not merely grief. It was every ancestor. Every sacrifice. Every broken promise. Every victory. She lifted the Ivory Blade high. White fire erupted across the Hall.

The Avatar of Volukai met that light. For the first time since his manifestation…he knew fear. The blade descended. Mercy became judgment. The towering horror shattered into a billion fragments of black light that were carried away forever upon the Night Mist.

Yet victory had one final price. Rendgray still possessed Zun. The sword whispered. The paladin struggled. Loralin saw only one path. He wept even as he moved. His own blade, Dilthen Nel, flashed once through silver air. The stroke was perfect. Zun’s right hand fell cleanly away. Still clutching Rendgray.

Before the Sword of Doom could whisper to another soul, Sayelle was already moving. The thief crossed the broken hall with impossible speed.Waiting leathers, prepared months before for this very horror, wrapped themselves around the sword before bare skin could touch its hilt. She bound it shut. Only then did anyone breathe.

The Hall of the Night Mist began to die. The floating towers fractured into drifting starlight. The obsidian bridges dissolved into rain. The rivers climbed one final time toward forgotten heavens before vanishing altogether. Yropa fled into shadow. Skylla disappeared with her. Severin escaped into smoke and flame. The Night Mist tore itself apart like ancient silk.

When the four companions stood once more beneath the familiar stars of Toril, not a trace of the Hall remained. Only silence. And the certain knowledge that the world had come within a single heartbeat of its final ending.

This entry was posted on June 26, 2026 at 8:13 pm and is filed under Gildensong. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.