Unleashed

1st of Stormfall, 977 A.D.

There is no silence like the silence after unraveling.

Toad stands in the center of her sanctum. The wards are shattered. The air is smoke. Twilight lies collapsed a few feet away - no, not Twilight. Mystra. Or she was. Cyric stands before her, wild-eyed and laughing, until he isn’t. The Weave is no longer a single breath. It is screaming. Magic coils through the air in jagged waves. The leylines twist visibly, luminous serpents whipping through the sky, clawing at what little order remains.

The moment is broken as a sharp cry erupts from the man holding Toad. She hears a blade retracts from the man’s body, and he simply falls. Toad turns as the one who struck him steps forward. Cloaked in shadow, and with eyes as embers. His eyes meet hers for just a second. No time to question it. Toad moves.

The Weave is everywhere now, broken open and unleashed. The thing she worked so hard to contain, now free, wild, because of the mad god in front of her. Toad reaches out for the wild magic all around her, and starts channeling as much as she can bear to. It floods through her, roaring with untamed potential. She draws from it with both hands, and the moment it answers, it burns.

Magic sears down her arms, carving lines of raw force into her skin like ink made of fire and memory. She doesn’t stop. Can’t stop. The force twists in her grasp, writhing for control - and she slams it forward. Cyric turns, just in time to be caught.

The blast crashes into him with the force of the Weave itself. Not as it was meant to be, but as it is now, free and furious. The binding coils around him in arcs. Magic that had never known shape, now bent to her will. Cyric screams, not in pain, but in defiance, but in this moment, the mortal who once held together the Weave now binds a God.

And then the world shifts again, as the sky once again breaks open as four more figures appear. Kerelan, the God of Souls is the first to appear. His eyes find Cyric and do not look away. Behind him, three more descend - Tyr, the God of Justice; Azuth, the God of Spells; and Lathander, the God of Dawn.

None of them speak to Toad. Their eyes are on Cyric alone. Toad also does not speak. She simply holds the Weave, and keeps Cyric in place.

The gods move towards Cyric, and Tyr speaks.

“Too long have you walked unchecked, spreading madness, tearing at law, truth, and soul.”

Azuth picks up his staff from the ground - his gaze lingers for a moment, filled with regret, before hardening as it moves to Cyric.

“You have stolen names, twisted scripture, tampered with the fabric of magic itself.”

Lathander stands behind Azuth, his light blinding Cyric.

“And now you have spilled ruin into rebirth.”

Kerelan’s voice is last - calm and final.

“No more.”

The following sentence is delivered as one voice.

“By the judgment of gods and the balance of all things, you are to be sealed. Banished to your domain. Imprisoned for a thousand years.”

The words strike like verdicts, anchoring. The Weave recoils, contracts, and then snaps tight around Cyric. He vanishes, his roar of defiance fading in an instant. Torn from the world he tried to break. Locked away in the throne he once claimed as victory. As he vanishes, the gods leave once more.

Toad turns towards the man who killed her attacker, but as she turns, there is no sign of him. No presence, no footprints, only the dark shadows where he stood. As if he was never there.

---

It’s been a week since.

The sky hasn’t stopped flickering. Some days, it burns a clear blue. Others, it sparks with color. Entire regions pulse with magic like fever. Spells fail without warning. Some grow too strong to hold. Others fizzle before collecting any fragments of Weave. Magic is no longer a language. It’s wildfire.

They call it the Spellplague.

It sweeps like sickness. The Weave, too wild to tame. In some places, the Spellplague manifests as a storm of blue flames, laying entire areas to waste. Temples burn, cities collapse. One spell turned an entire city’s dreams into reality. Another rewound time - and killed the mage casting it. The world is learning to fear the thing it once revered.

Toad watches it all from the home that used to be hers. Observing, studying, much like the rest of the world, trying to understand. But she is not the Weave’s keeper anymore. That burden has passed.

And now the world must learn what it means to live in a place where the Weave moves on its own. Where the magic is untethered, and spells ignite without command. And where not even the gods can protect the ones they love.