And beyond it, An’kel.
I see the city through the rippling haze. Towering spires of jagged obsidian punch into a sunless sky, where winged horrors wheel and scream, their shrieks carrying across a wasteland of ash and ruin stretching to every horizon. Even the air seems to bleed light. Thin, gray, cold, endless.
At the center stands his temple. A fortress of death, its stairways climbing into infinity, its pyres burning with ghostly flame. Demons writhe in the carvings along its pillars, their twisted faces frozen mid-scream and I know. I know without question. She’s there. Estra.
Hidden within those walls, within the heart of the void and within the grasp of the Father Below.
The more I think of her, the fainter the world becomes. My vision blurs, my head swims, my limbs turn heavy as stone. I can barely lift my arms. My brown skin fades toward the pallor of the Fae around me, every heartbeat a distant echo, slow, uneven, thunder in my ears. My life spills out in waves, feeding the gate that roars before us.
Death Singer dissolves into smoke. Daed’s hands replace it, pressing hard against my wounds.
“That’s enough, wife,” he says. “It’s open. You’ve done it. Now heal yourself.”
His voice sounds far away, like a memory drowned beneath water. Even his face wavers before me, a blur of shadow. All I can see is Estra. My daughter. My little girl.
“Amara,” he snarls through clenched teeth, his voice breaking through the haze. His grip tightens around my wrists, blood slicking his palms. “Heal yourself. Now.”
When I don’t respond, his control fractures. “Amara Tyne!” he roars. “Do as you’re told, just one fucking time!”
I blink up at him, eyes half-lidded, and whisper, “If I heal… the portal will close.”
His jaw hardens. “Then I’ll throw your stubborn ass through it myself.”
He swings his head toward the others. “Go!” he commands, voice booming like thunder through the void. They obey without hesitation, leaping through the portal into the unknown, their figures swallowed by the scorched horizon ofAn’kel.
When the last of them are gone, Daed looks back at me. “There. They’re through. Now your turn.”
But then he sees it, the blood slowing, thick and dark as wine, the streams reduced to trembling drops. His eyes widen, disbelief warring with fear.
“You can’t die on me again,” he says, his voice trembling in its fury. “Do you hear me, Amara? You can’t. Do what you must, but you will heal.”
It’s not that I want to refuse him. I do not wish to die. It’s that I don’t yet know how. Keeper Erania’s voice returns to me, a whisper in the dark. How can you bring life where only death dwells?
And then I remember my answer.
The one I have always carried.
Life endures.
Warmth blooms beneath my skin, slow at first, then bright enough to chase back the darkness. My veins flood with green light, pulsing in time with my heartbeat until it spills from me.
From the folds of my sleeves, vines unfurl, winding down my arms in slow, serpentine curls. Heart-shaped leaves burst to life along their length, trembling as though drawing breath for the first time. The vines loop and twist, finding my wrists. I gasp when they slip into the open wounds, a brief, searing sting, then release and where blood once flowed, blossoms bloom.
They fall in a cascade, a waterfall of petals and light spilling into the void. Wherever they land, the dark recoils. The blossoms spread, climbing the fractured walls of the gate, threading through black stone and shadow. Life surges wild and uncontained, vines racing up the scorched surface until a scattering of green and color blooms where only ash once lived.
The air hums. The earth itself seems to breathe again. I feel it fill me, life, raw and endless, mending every fracture within me. My veins blaze like dawn and the first breath I draw feels like drawing the world itself into my lungs.
Daed’s hands find my face. He looks at me as if it kills him to love me this much, and then he does what he always does when he feels too much. He kisses me hard and desperately.
When he pulls away, his voice cracks through the hush, sharp as a whip.
“Stop doing that,” he growls before he snatches my hand and pulls me through the gate where the others wait for us.
The moment we cross the threshold, the air changes. It thickens, the scent of sulfur and decay floods my lungs. The sky above us bleeds grey and black, split by streaks of crimson lightning.
Then the darkness moves.
Shapes crawl from it, too many to count. Limbs where no limbs should be, eyes burning white within faces that twist and reform with every breath. They shriek, the sound so shrill it makes the bones in my skull hum. The demons of the void have come to greet us.
