Sev reached out and froze time.

Something in his demeanor had changed — no doubt from the memories he'd just clawed back from the Void, something that shouldn't have been possible to begin with. Even the spread of the Void slowed down under the effect of his skill, though it was incomplete. The end of the universe didn't really need to respect a concept as trivial as time.

And yet, with divinity here as strong as it was — with the Grand Anchor for magic present, a half-anchor formed from nothing floating in the middle of the room, and Misa's own reality anchor — reality was too stable. The Void had made its way in, drawn here by something or the other, but cracking through was a process that was incomplete.

All around the room, small distortions began to manifest, wriggling wildly against whatever they were touching. Derivan recognized them instantly.

"Void Wyrms!" he called out. "Don't touch them!"

It was hard to avoid them, though. They were manifesting en masse, spawning from the edges of the crack and quickly crawling all over the pseudo-Vault. The Wisfield elders still had their eyes closed, were still holding hands and channeling whatever skill they were using for this false ascension. It was pretty clear they were locked in a trance.

The question was why no one else was around. This was a crucial operation, surely, and if they couldn't respond to anything that was happening around them — like the situation they were in right now — then they should have had other Wisfield members standing by in case there was an emergency. Someone that could wake them up.

Jakos walked up to one of them and poked them in the shoulder. When that didn't elicit a response, he tried slapping them.

"Uh," Misa said.

"I think they're dead," Jakos declared. "We should leave them."

Misa rolled her eyes, stalked forward, and forced two of the hands apart. It took surprising effort, despite her strength; it was almost like something about the ritual was trying to keep itself going.

It didn't stop her, in the end.

The effect was instantaneous the moment the circle was broken. All eight of the Wisfield elders stumbled apart, several of them gasping for air. Two seemed bewildered, glancing around like they had no idea who they were or what they were doing here. One of them collapsed.

"What are you doing here?" one of the elders asked. He glanced around, finally seeing the crack in the air — the now-visible squirming of dozens and dozens of worms crawling all over the floor and his robes. He flicked them off with disgust, but they clung to his fingers, sticky clumps of nonexistent mass.

Which would have been fine, had small pieces of his fingers not immediately begun to fade.

The elder stared at his own hands with panic, not comprehending. It was hard to tell exactly what was going on, unless you knew the nature of the Void — as far as the elders were concerned, he had always been missing one finger. Then two. Then he had never had fingernails —

Sev stepped forward, and in one brutal flash of light, sliced off and regrew the hand. The elder gaped, reeling from both the pain and the sudden fullness of his hand; as far as he was concerned, he'd never had the full set of five fingers. Not a single healer had ever been able to restore his hand.

Sev's expression was tight, and his jaw was clenched. "We need to run," he said grimly. "Do not touch the worms, whatever you do. They will eat away at everything. Get moving. Now."

Whatever it was Wisfield had done here — for all that they had potentially been the cause of this, even — they didn't deserve to die like this, uncomprehending of their own deaths as their own bodies were eaten away.

The elders barely seemed to understand what was happening, anyway. Sev doubted that they were the masterminds that had orchestrated this whole thing — more than likely that was the Wisfield head. That they'd been left in the pseudo-Vault to keep plugging away at this ritual...

Sev didn't know what Wisfield was getting at. Having a god under their control would give them a lot of power, certainly; was that really the full extent of what they wanted? And if that were the case, if this ritual was so important, why didn't they have any guards stationed here?

It didn't make any sense. There was something more going on.

But there was no time for speculation. Now that the ritual had been stopped, the crack in reality had stopped spreading — but that didn't mean that the Void stopped pouring through. The timestop he held was only barely slowing it down.

He needed everyone to move.

Thankfully, he didn't need to speak for his team to get the idea. They each gave Sev a concerned look, but there was a mutual understanding in their gaze when they locked eyes: We'll talk later.

It was more important now to get everyone out of the Vault, lock the doors, and then evacuate the rest of Elyra. Sev doubted that what had begun here could be stopped, not until the entirety of Elyra was consumed. Wisfield's actions had almost certainly fully destabilized the Elyran Prime Anchor. That would be the reason they hadn't received their rewards properly, and the same reason skills didn't entirely function correctly.

Misa grabbed two of the elders, one under each arm; Javok saw this and immediately grabbed hold of three, as if he needed to outdo her. Derivan grabbed on to one and threw them over his shoulder.

Vex didn't bother trying to pick any of them up. He cast a spell to lift the remaining two elders, making them float behind him, and all of them made for the exit.

Sev was the only one that stayed behind.

He did it just long enough to mutter an incantation, calling on the divine connection he held; with the ritual stopped and the divinity that was laying claim to Elyra slowly dissipating, the remaining gods could slowly filter back in and lend him their power. The request he made was a simple one.

Seal.

A collection of hexagonal golden barriers formed in the air, sealing themselves around the Void crack; it wouldn't last forever, but it didn't need to. It just needed to last long enough.

He'd seen all this before, after all. The worms would stop when they reached the edge of Elyra, when the surrounding reality anchors forced them back; that was the whole reason the anchors were set up the way they were, to limit the spread of the Void should there be an incursion.

But now evacuating was a necessity. It was a good thing the rebels had already started the whole process, or Sev wasn't sure that there would have been enough time.

He hurried out of the pseudo-Vault after his friends, glancing behind him to make sure the seal held. It was already filling up with worms; the rest of the room was still covered in them, and a few of them stuck on to his clothing. A quick brush of divine magic forced them off, and he kept that barrier active as he ran out.

Misa shut the doors behind him.

"We don't have much time," Sev said without preamble. "I'd say we need to track down the Wisfield head, but I don't think that's actually important right now. He's doomed no matter what we do, if he doesn't want to leave. If he does, we'll deal with him once everyone else is safe. I don't want to compromise anyone's safety to go after him."

"I agree," Vex said. The lizardkin waved his tail about anxiously, and Derivan put an arm around his shoulders.

"I could always go kill him, if you want," Javok said cheerfully. "Then you don't have to worry about it."

All four of the adventurers turned to stare at him. He stared back, his gaze innocent, as though he'd just suggested he go and fetch them some water.

"And if I don't kill him, then at least I die in a really fun fight," he adds.

"I think you should probably just help us with the evacuation," Misa said dryly.

None of the elders protested as they were summarily dragged out of the Wisfield estate — perhaps because they had observed exactly what effects the worms had on them, or perhaps because the dark crack in the air had been sufficiently frightening.

It might also just have been the very frank discussion of what was happening between Sev and the others.

"How much time do we have?" Misa asked. She was uncharacteristically serious.

"Not that much," Sev said. "Three days at most. The seal is powerful, but not that powerful."

"That's not a lot of time," Vex sounded worried. "Not for how many people there are in Elyra."

"With the compulsion gone, it'll be easier to convince people to leave. We just need them to believe there's a problem." Sev frowned.

"It probably won't be that hard." Helix was the one that spoke up, there. Sev and the others had gone straight back to the jewelry store to fetch Helix and his team, and the entire group was now headed towards one of the rebel gathering points, ignoring all the stares they were getting. Now wasn't the time for secrecy anymore. "We're all getting notifications about how our skills aren't working properly anymore. It was just letting me break the limits at first, but now a few of them just aren't working properly. Or they do something completely different."

"Some of them are dangerous," Larok said quietly — Helix's clerk teammate, if Sev remembered correctly. The lizardkin fidgeted nervously. "I tested a few, because I thought it might let me fight better. It kinda does, but if the skill backfires..."

He winced. "It took a chunk out of my tail. Just an entire chunk of flesh. I drank a healing potion, but it wasn't pretty, and it hurt a lot."

Sev grimaced with sympathy. "I don't think we need to worry about that, since we're tied to Misa's anchor and not Elyra's," he said, glancing to Misa for confirmation; she nodded at him.

"I can tie you guys to my anchor, too," she said. "But I'm not sure how much it can support. It's already responsible for a whole village of people."

"J'rokksur might become even more important in the coming days," Sev muttered. Misa glanced at him, and he saw the question in her eyes, but he shook his head slightly.

Not yet. First, they had to make sure Elyra was empty when the Void came to consume it.

"Call everyone you can get a hold of," Sev told Helix. "The nobles, too. We don't have time to fight with one another anymore."

"You say that," Helix said. "But I don't know that they'll listen."

Sev's grip on his staff tightened. "We need to try," he finally said. "If it comes down to it..."

He left the sentence unfinished. Vex stared at him, almost frightened. Misa seemed mostly concerned, and Derivan watched him contemplatively.

Then he reached out, placing a hand on Sev's shoulder.

"You are not alone," he told him quietly. "Seven or not, you are Sev to us. And we have always found another way."

Sev stared at Derivan for a moment, and his composure cracked. Something like pain and a heavy, heavy burden suddenly became visible in his shoulders, and he visibly sagged.

"Okay," he said quietly.