Page 6 of Blade of the Nightking

I could hear him shouting but the sounds were muffled, distant, as if submerged underwater.

My muscles jerked again, hard enough my teeth clacked together. I tasted blood. A wave of heat pulsed up my spine, clashing with the cold creeping numbness in my fingers. I tried to reach for him, to anchor myself, but my hands no longer belonged to me.

Nothing belonged to me anymore.

Not my breath.

Not my voice.

Not my body.

Somewhere far away, Aedric cried out my name.

El!

El!

Look at me!

I did.

My eyes were the only part of me left that could respond.

He lay me down on the ground, cupped the back of my head, ash swirling around us like smoke.

Eidra.

His lips didn’t move, yet the word filled my head, startlingly clear and steady, echoing through the ringing in my ears.

Where are you?

I couldn’t understand the question. I couldn’t answer it.

I’m coming.

I was locked inside a body thrashing on its own, a puppet of failing nerves and burned flesh. The world around me dimmed into shadows and muted shapes. My vision tunneled—shrinking, narrowing, collapsing inward⁠—

—and then everything went still.

My limbs fell slack.

The humming faded.

But beneath that sudden silence was something else—a lingering echo, a ripple of cold along the inside of my skull. It brushed the edges of my thoughts like a shadow moving just out of sight. Foreign, yet achingly familiar.

And then it vanished.

I gasped, the breath tearing into my lungs as the world swam back in blurry, broken patches. Wetness slid into my hairline.

Tears. Aedric’s, and my own. He bent over me, terror in his eyes, as he pushed sweaty strands back from my forehead. The searing pain was still there, but blunted now, no longer all-encompassing. My body felt hollow, drained, wrung dry. Every muscle trembled, not seizing anymore but shivering from the aftershock. My magic lay quiet, barely a whisper in the dark.

I was exhausted to the marrow.

I moaned and tried to lift my head, but Aedric pressed a gentle, steady hand to my shoulder. “Please. Stay still.”

His gaze darted wildly around the forest, as if he expected help to appear from between the trees.

You’re dying.