The Last Guardian

The sky had lost its colour exactly one year ago. It had joined the bruised purple with neon green that had infected the world of Blue Shard. It pulsed like a dying heartbeat. The rhythm was slower each month, likely ending in three months, tops.

Cara tore her eyes away from the sky, adjusting the strap of her backpack. She was the Guardian of the Second Circle of Blue Shard. Or at least she used to be, when there was still a world to protect. Now she was just a woman walking through the ribs of the past. The biggest metropolis of Blue Shard, Oakheaven, rose up around her like jagged teeth. There was nothing but stone, dust, and shattered glass.

She stopped by the Crystalline River. Once it had been so clear you could count the mana-quartz on the bottom. Now it was just a haze of deep emerald. Purple swirls shot across the surface, hissing loudly if two touched.

"Don't drink it," she reminded herself. Her voice was like grinding stones. Clean water became a luxury that grew rarer each day since the Hollow Pulse. She had never considered herself creative, but the name fit the empty and dying world.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the piece of parchment. It was frayed at the edges, stained with the soot of a world that had caught fire, but the handwriting was still sharp, elegant, and devastating.

“Fighting and protecting is your job, not mine. I can’t live in the shadow of your duty anymore, Cara. Find me when you are ready to just be you.”

She closed her eyes, and the smell of the mana-ash vanished, replaced by the scent of lavender and old books.

It had been a regular Tuesday. She had returned from the frontline, her robes torn and scorched by Void-beasts. Her hands had been shaking from the strain of tapping into the leylines of the world to save the day, again. She had walked into the small cottage on the edge of the forest near Oakheaven, expecting Aris to stand at the stove, making dinner or some delicious dessert. But the house was empty, the air stagnant.

The note had been lying on the table in their now silent cottage.

Her mind was still fuzzy from the thousands of miles of teleporting she had done that day. She realized, too late, that he had gone to the evacuation portal. The portals had been humming in the town square for weeks, a golden hope for a population weary of monsters. She had refused to go. “We can fix this,” she had told him a thousand times. “If the Guardians leave, the world dies.”

In her duty to save the world, she had abandoned her world: Aris.

The memory played out behind her eyelids. The air was thick with ozone and filled with the constant hum of the tall portal. Aris walked past one of the guards, adjusting the pack slung over his shoulder. He stood on the threshold.

"Aris!" Cara had pushed through the crowd.

He turned around and looked at her. His face had aged so much since they first met. There was a deep pain in his eyes when he recognized who called him. Then, a panic rippled through the crowd. Screams. People running.

Cara looked up. The Seed of Elsewhere had turned from gold to purple. The portal started to vibrate; the purple spread fast. Her thoughts went even faster. She could make the jump, push herself and Aris through. She could make it work. She could—

The portal screamed.

Aris or the Blue Shard?

She dropped to her knees and hammered her staff into the cobblestones, chanting the Prismatic Aegis. The mage war ended not with peace or a treaty, but with the world collapsing. The shield erupted around her just as the square turned into a sun. She watched, shielded by her own duty, as the portal collapsed into a singularity. She watched the silhouette of the man she loved vanish from sight. Everyone in the square turned into golden dust, scattered by the blast.

She had chosen to survive, and she had never forgiven herself for it, even if he had made it through.

The magic of the old world had died around her. The beautiful sky gardens had crashed into Oakheaven. The forest around the cottage turned a beautiful orange, like autumn, until the leaves turned grey and crumbled into dust.

Now, three years later, the Hollow Pulse was almost complete. It would be a few months before the leylines ceased to exist, finishing the world for good. Except for cockroaches, they were the only things that had survived so long.

Cara felt the itch in her veins. Her own mana was thinning. Every time she used a basic light spell, her vision blurred. To be a mage in a world without magic was like trying to breathe in a vacuum.

She froze. A beast went past the gate. It was a lumbering deer walking on two legs; its tall crystalline antlers pulsed with purple lights. Once it had been a proud spirit of the forest, now it was twisted by the death of the leylines and dying magic. It phased through a wall, vanishing from sight. Cara walked slowly out of the gate, towards the path to their cottage.

She reached the cottage by dusk. The roof had caved in, and the lavender garden was a patch of blackened stalks. She was just in time for the echo—shadows of the past, memories that the world had held onto. A ghost-light flickered near the hearth. Cara's breath hitched in her throat as the light took shape.

Aris was there. He wasn't the tired, grey man from the portal square. He looked young. His hair was messy from the wind. The smell of rosemary and browning butter phantom-drifted through the rot of the cottage. Aris was standing over the stove. He was making her favorite food for her promotion to Guardian of the Second Circle, nearly the highest magical achievement in the world.

"You finally joined me," he chuckled. His voice was as warm as she remembered.

"You know me, always one more person to save," Cara said in sync with her own echo.

"Good." He turned around. His deep blue eyes always calmed her down. "I was about to eat your portion, too."

"You wouldn't dare." She put her staff against the wall. She waved her hand, the fire in the hearth turning a vibrant green.

Aris laughed. He took a big scoop of stew. He looked her dead in the eye when he ate the whole scoop. "You don't scare me."

She walked around the counter. He opened his arms wide and she stepped between them. His arms went through her; the cold of the memory pressed into her back. She stepped back and watched their echoes kiss, back when she still made an effort. A tear rolled down her cheek.

The cottage turned bright golden. Cara looked away from the echo to the table where a small metal contraption sat. A tiny fragment of the Seed of Elsewhere was humming with golden power. At last, it was cleansed from the purple blight. She lifted the glass vial and sat on her usual chair on the porch. The sun was slowly setting behind the broken skyline of Oakheaven. Another moonless night would begin.

“I’m ready now, Aris,” she whispered. “I’m not a Guardian anymore. There’s nothing left to guard.”

She twirled the vial between her fingers. The fragment had enough power for one last act. She could tear open a portal long enough to flee to whatever new world was on the other side. To find Aris. But would he be waiting for her?

Or, she could use it to jumpstart the leyline beneath the cottage, purifying the water and the soil for a few acres, creating a small, lonely oasis in a dead world. Maybe the leyline would be the start of curing Blue Shard.

She thought of the note. Find me when you are ready.

Survival had been her first choice, and it had cost her everything. This time, the choice was different.

Cara stood up and walked to the center of the blackened lavender patch. She knelt and pressed the glowing vial into the dead earth. She reached for the ground.

"I'm staying," she murmured. "Finally fixing the world without fighting, without bloodshed. Even if I'm the only one here to see it."

She crushed the vial.

The explosion was small, a soft, white ripple that didn't burn. It washed over the stalks, turning them green. It flowed into the well, turning the purple sludge back into clear, cold water. The light bled out of Cara’s eyes as her own mana was pulled into the earth to anchor the spell.

As her vision faded, she fell on the warm dirt. A phantom hand rested on her shoulder. It smelled like lavender and old books.

"If you are out there, don't wait for me."

She was lost, left behind in a world of her own making. But for the first time since the portals broke, she wasn't a ghost. She was home.