“Was that the baby? What’s happening to it?” he chokes out.
“There’s no time to figure that out,” I snap, already slicing the dagger across my arm.
A crimson curtain spills down my skin, warm and fast.
The Golden Son snarls, lunging for the dagger, wrenching it from my grip. But it’s too late.
The blood is already spilled.
“Véthari lios an’thera.”
I close my eyes and think of the Grove. Of home. Of the ancient trees and the Souls that whisper through them. Of the ones I swore to protect.
But this place. This place does not let go so easily.
It seeps into me, thick as ink, curling through my ribs, my veins, my mind. Itstainsme. Poisons my thoughts until even my beloved Grove turns to rot and cinder in my memory.
My blood drips. My vision flickers.
The void before me rips.
A gash splits through the darkness, stretching wider, inch by inch. A portal. And despite the cost it demands, despite the truth that my life has been torn apart in the name of this magic, I can’t help the swell of pride that rises in my chest. I’ve done this. It’s enough to steady me, enough to chase back the fear of what I’ve become.
Within the portal, there is light, faint, dim, but blinding compared to what surrounds us.
The Grove?
I don’t know. But Ashen moves toward it, drawn like a blade to its sheath.
The tear unravels, threads of shadow snapping apart like stretched sinew. At first, the view is muddled, unclear, but as Ashen carries us closer and the portal swells, clarity sharpens.
This is not my beloved Grove.
The land beyond is barren and cruel. A jagged expanse of dark stone, cracked and unforgiving, and there, carved into the spine of a mountain, looms a fortress. Crooked and rotting, like the corpse of a kingdom long dead. Fire pits flicker at its base, spitting embers into the sooty sky, casting shifting shadows that dance across shattered ramparts and broken spires.
Then, a screech cleaves the air, razor-sharp and unnatural.
A sky of wings. Black. Endless.
Not Mordorin Fae.
Not the Blades of Baev’kalath.
Worse.
Monsters.
But it isn’t the only sound.
The first growls roll across the land like thunder. Deep tremors that rattle the bones of the world. Then come the screams. Shrieking. Unrelenting. Growing louder with each ragged breath.
And then I see them.
A flood of creatures bursts from the fortress, a living tide of shadow and snarling teeth, crashing down the mountain in a relentless swarm. They pour over the landscape like spilled ink, unstoppable, ravenous, fast as death.
“Amara,” the Golden Son murmurs at my ear, calm despite the chaos, despite the death hurtling toward us. “Close the portal, please.”
A cold weight drops into my stomach. My throat tightens.
