Chapter 43: The Conclave
The sound didn’t start as an explosion. It was a deep, subsonic groan that came up through the marble floor, vibrating in Kerr’s molars a second before the world tore itself apart.
Then, light. A searing, violent green that eclipsed the stained-glass windows, flooding the grand chamber in an alien, sickly glare. The concussion hit like a physical wall. It threw Kerr back, his new armor screeching against the floor as he slid. The air became soup—thick with pulverized stone, splintered wood, and the coppery reek of ozone and blood. Screams, raw and directionless, cut through the ringing in his ears.
He pushed himself up, his head swimming. The center of the Conclave chamber was gone. Where the Divine’s dais had stood, a pillar of that same hellish green energy roared into a sky now cracked like a broken eggshell. Through the gaping hole in the ceiling, he could see it: a massive, swirling tear in the fabric of reality, spitting out emerald lightning. The Breach.
“Anora!” His voice was a ragged shout, lost in the cacophony. He scanned the chaos. He saw fallen nobles, templars staggering, mages clutching their heads as the violent surge of energy from the rift scrambled their senses.
Then he saw the movement at the shattered perimeter. Not panicked civilians. Organized, malicious shapes in dark, segmented armor poured through the new gaps in the walls. Venatori. And with them, robed maleficarum, their hands already glowing with predatory magic. Behind them, shimmering into existence from the fractured Veil itself, came the demons—shambling shades, snarling terror demons that flickered in and out of sight.
They weren’t here to talk. They were here to clean up.
“Fergus!” Kerr bellowed, spotting his brother shoving a fallen column off a pair of Fereldan banns. His brother’s face was a mask of grim comprehension. No questions were needed. The time for politics was over. “Get them out! Our families, anyone loyal! Kill anyone who gets in your way. Palace is the rally point. Go!”
Fergus met his eyes, gave one sharp, decisive nod, and turned, his voice rising in a command that cut through the panic. “Fereldans! To me! Now!”
Kerr didn’t watch them go. His world narrowed to the gap between him and the nearest cluster of Venatori warriors who were methodically cutting down a group of fleeing Orlesian dignitaries. The runes on his armor flared, a cool blue-white against the pervasive green. The hum of Dagna’s craftsmanship was a steady thrum in his bones, a promise of violence made solid.
He drew his weapon. Not the sword sheathed at his back. The warhammer.
KERR HAD THE HAMMER OUT AND WAS BLIND WITH ADRENALINE AND RAGE. THE VENTATORI AND MALEFICARUM CAME AT HIM, WITH DEMONS AND ABOMINATIONS AT THEIR HEALS. THE TEMPLARS, HEADED BY CULLEN RUTHERFORD, DALISH BATTLEMAGES AND KNIGHT ENCHANTERS. THE SQUARE IN HALAMSHIRAL WAS FULL OF BODIES AND IT WAS ABOUT TO BE FULL OF DEAD BODIES.
The square outside the shattered chamber was a killing floor. The beautiful marble was slick with gore and littered with the dead and the dying. A unit of Templars, recognizable by their distinctive armor, had formed a fractured shield wall under the barking commands of Cullen Rutherford, their faces set in lines of furious discipline as they fought back a wave of shades. To their flank, a disparate cluster of Dalish hunters and what looked like Circle battlemages, their robes singed, fought back-to-back against a Venatori phalanx.
Kerr wasted no time. His hammer was too fast, too heavy. The runic feedback made it a part of him. A Venatori axe came screaming for his neck. He didn’t parry; he smacked it away with a contemptuous diagonal swing that shattered the axehead and kept going, catching the warrior full in the temple. The sound was a wet, final crunch. He was already moving, his body a coiled spring of devastating momentum.
He smacked away incoming strikes and riposted them with crippling, skull-or-bone-crushing blows. A maleficarum raised a barrier, a shimmering purple dome. Kerr didn’t slow. He changed his grip, thought of the spear, and the runes flared. The hammerhead became a blur, launching forward like a comet. It hit the barrier and didn’t stop; the telekinetic force punched through, and the head carried on, caving in the mage’s chest cavity in an explosion of blood and splintered rib bone. The haft in his hand was now a spear, and he spun, driving the point through the throat of a charging terror demon. It shrieked, dissolving into foul smoke.
A kneecapping swing dropped a Venatori warrior. The man screamed, clutching his obliterated joint. Kerr’s follow-up was an immediate uppercut swing, the blunt force thereof sufficient to decapitate the enemy. The head tumbled, a forgotten thing, as the body spasmed and fell.
His ferocity inspired the men next to him. A young templar, flagging, saw the King-Consort carve a red path through the enemy center and found a second wind, roaring as he smashed his shield into a shade. The Dalish let loose a unified cry, their arrows finding new marks.
Even the Venatori hesitated in their approach. They were fanatics, but they weren’t stupid. They saw the giant in rune-etched armor who wasn’t fighting by any code they recognized. This was butchery. Efficient, absolute, and without pause.
As soon as he saw the hesitation, he smiled. It was a cold, lifeless twist of his lips.
He launched the head of the hammer into the nearest warrior, the impact lifting the man off his feet. In the same breath, he flung the spear. It wasn’t a throw; it was a release. The blade shot forth, piercing clean through the chest of one Venatori, never slowing, tearing out his back to impale the man behind him, and a third, pinning them all together in a grisly knot. The spear returned. He caught it, the shaft slapping into his palm, and he was moving again.
Where he twirled it, enemies were impaled. A sideways slash cleaved a man from hip to shoulder. A thrust took a maleficarum through the gut, the rune-edged blade sliding through spell-forged robes like they were gauze. The hammer head returned from across the square with a lethal whine, reattaching just as a brutish abomination, all mismatched flesh and fury, lunged at him. He went back to bashing. Each blow rang out like a funeral bell—a wet, metallic, final sound.
He was painting the square marble ground crimson. It wasn’t a fight; it was a harvest. The runic lattice on his armor bled off magical attacks in showers of harmless sparks. A fireball that should have melted plate only left a scorch mark and staggered him half a step. He used the momentum to fuel his next swing.
He did this ballet—a brutal, economized dance of launch and retrieve, of crushing force and surgical cuts—until his lungs burned and the world was a red-hazed tunnel. Until he looked around, heaving breath that tasted of iron and ozone, and no one was left standing except for the men fighting with him.
The immediate square was clear. A ring of Fereldan, Templar, and miscellaneous forces stood panting, weapons dripping, surrounded by a carpet of the dead. The green light from the Breach pulsed overhead, casting monstrous, shifting shadows.
Cullen Rutherford staggered towards him, his sword arm hanging limp, a deep gash on his brow. He looked at the carnage around Kerr, at the weapon in his hand that was somehow both hammer and spear, then up at Kerr’s face. There was no admiration in his look. It was the bleak recognition of a necessary horror. “They’re falling back to regroup,” Cullen gasped. “But the demons… they’re still coming through the smaller rifts. We can’t hold.”
Kerr followed his gaze. Beyond the square, the city of Halamshiral was a panorama of chaos. Fires bloomed. More green rifts, smaller siblings to the giant Breach, flickered open in streets and on rooftops, disgorging more nightmarish forms. The echo of screams was constant.
His family was out there. Fergus was leading them through that. Anora was somewhere in that hellscape.
The cool, calculated focus that had taken him in the fight hardened into something even colder. The path to the palace wasn’t a road anymore. It was a gauntlet. He looked down at the runes on his gauntlets, still glowing with residual power.
“Then we don’t hold,” Kerr said, his voice rough but clear. He thumbed the rune, and the spear blade slid back into the haft with a definitive shunk. He hefted the warhammer again, settling its familiar, terrible weight on his shoulder. “We carve a road. Anyone who can still walk and swing, you’re with me. We’re going home.”
The path back to the Fereldan quarter was less a road and more a slow, brutal excavation through a city that had become a layer of the Fade. They moved as a single, bleeding organism—Kerr at the tip, a wedge of Fereldan warriors, scattered Templars, and whoever else had the sense to follow the man carving a canyon through the chaos. The smaller, flickering rifts spat demons into their path with a dreadful regularity. Each one was a clog in the artery of their retreat, needing to be cleared with steel and spellfire.
"Left flank, shades!" Cullen’s voice, raw from shouting, cut through the din. Three wraithlike forms oozed from a cracked wall. Before the templars could fully pivot, a low whine cut the air. Kerr had launched the hammerhead. It spun once, a blur of dark metal, and pulverized the central shade into dissipating smoke. The spear was in his hand an instant later, and he drove the point through the second. The third met the returned hammer in a downward arc that left a crater in the cobblestones.
"Keep moving!" Kerr didn’t look back to see the effect. His world was the next ten feet, then the next. A Venatori archer appeared on a balcony. An arrow shivered against Kerr’s rune-lit pauldron, deflected into the throat of a despair demon skittering toward their rear. "Lucky shot," someone muttered behind him. "Wasn't luck," another voice replied, numb with awe.
They reached the fortified Fereldan embassy as a blood-orange sun began to stain the smoke hanging over Halamshiral. The gates were barricaded, but familiar faces—Fergus’s men, grim and battered—hauled them open just wide enough. The last of the stragglers stumbled through into the cobbled courtyard, which was now a makeshift camp overflowing with the wounded, the terrified, and the stubbornly alive.
Fergus was there, his armor dented, directing supplies. He saw Kerr and the sheer relief on his brother’s face was a tangible thing. "They're ahead of you on the road. Anora, the children, the rest. Made it out clean before the worst of the blocks formed." He clasped Kerr’s vambrace, his grip tight. "Your damned road-clearing worked. They had a clear run."
KERR PARTED WAYS WITH THOSE WHO FOUGHT BESIDE HIM AS THEY RODE COLLECTIVELY IN THE SAME DIRECTION. The shared purpose that had bound them in the square unraveled at the crossroads just beyond the city's corpse. Practicality took over. Cullen gathered the remaining Templars, their numbers sadly thin, his face set in lines of exhausted duty. "The Circle... Irving needs to know. The Breach changes everything." He offered a stiff nod to Kerr, not a bow to a king, but a warrior's acknowledgment to another. "Warden."
The Dalish hunters melted into the surrounding woods without ceremony, their task complete, their debt for the aid in the square considered paid. There were no grand farewells, only the silent understanding of survivors.
The ride back to Denerim was a silent, grey blur for Kerr, punctuated only by the steady rhythm of hoofbeats and the deep, aching protest of his own body. The runic armor had saved his life a dozen times over, but it hadn't stopped the impacts, the wrenching twists, the sheer metabolic cost of the butchery. He felt hollowed out, a shell holding a cold, focused dread that only began to thaw when the familiar, stout walls of the palace grounds came into view.
WHEN THE GATES TO THE CASTLE OPENED HE FOUND ANORA ROCKING THEIR SICK CHILDREN, ALL OF THEM SOMEHOW FITTING ON HER LAP IN A CHAIR BY THE GREAT FIRE. The two youngest, rosy with fever, were tucked against her, their small faces pinched even in sleep. Her voice was a low, steady murmur, a thread of calm in the tense quiet of the hall. "Shhh. The noise is far away. Your father is coming. He'll be home soon."
The older children, who had been huddled together on a rug with a palace hound, saw him. A unified cry broke from them—not of joy, but of delayed, overwhelming fear. They ran to him, tiny fists clutching at his blood-stained greaves, their faces streaked with tears. He knelt, the movement stiff, and their small hands touched the horrific stains on his armor. "Is that your blood?" his eldest daughter whispered, her eyes wide.
Anora’s voice, firm and clear, cut across the hall. "It is not his blood." She said it with such absolute authority that the children’s sobs hitched. She gently transferred the sleeping toddlers into the waiting arms of silent, anxious maids. Then she stood, smooth and sure, and crossed the room.
ANORA HANDED THE YOUNGER CHILDREN TO THE MAIDS AND RUSHED AND WRAPPED HER ARMS AROUND HIM. It wasn't a gentle embrace; it was a desperate, claiming hold, her fingers digging into the hard plates of his back as if to assure herself he was solid. He let his forehead rest against her shoulder, the weight of the warhammer finally sliding from his grip to clatter on the stone floor. He held her tight, his own arms trembling now from fatigue rather than fury, and a single, hot tear traced a path through the grime on his cheek.
SHE TRIED TO REGAIN HER COMPOSURE BUT HER EYES WERE SLICK WITH TEARS AND A SMILE. She pulled back just enough to look at his face, her thumbs wiping at the dirt and dried blood near his eyes. "Listen to me," she said, her voice thick but unwavering. "You do not have my leave to die young. You do not have my leave to be a martyr for a cause that isn't finished here, with us."
A ragged breath that was almost a laugh escaped him. HE TELLS HER THAT A BLIGHT, THE FADE, THE DEEP ROADS, TWO BROOD MOTHERS HAVE TRIED BUT HE FEARS DISAPPOINTING HER MORE.
SHE KISSED HIM, a hard, pressing kiss that tasted of salt and resolve. Then she stepped back, Queen again. "The children need to see you whole. Get in the bath. I will be up shortly." She turned, already calling for clean linens and broth.
THE SERVANTS TOOK OFF HIS ARMOR. The buckles were stiff with gore. The rune-etched plates came away, each one a relief and a reminder. Underneath, his linens were not just stained; they were black and stiff with other men's blood, a second skin of violence. He stood in the steam of the prepared bath, a mountain of scarred muscle and fading adrenaline, letting them work.
WHAT WAS HE? SHE THOUGHT, watching from the doorway as the last of the fabric was peeled away, revealing the brutal landscape of bruises and old wounds beneath. Not a king, not in that moment. Not just a warden. A MAN THAT CAN DO WHAT HE DOES. An instrument of survival, forged and reforged in realms of nightmare. A man who could STARE DOWN AN ARMY AND KNOW HE WILL BE THE LAST ONE STANDING, and then come home to be careful with feverish children. The dichotomy did not frighten her. It was the bedrock of their reality. She picked up the discarded, horrific linen, held it for a moment, then let it fall into the fire, where it caught and burned with a dark, acrid flame.