This was something more.
Every nerve in her body screamed at her to run, to leave, to get out.
But she couldn’t.
Not then.
Not now.
Like then, there was just Elyria and the last flickering embers of her wild magic. She was all that stood between Malakar’s dark army and the castle behind her. Between them and the queen.
Shouts cleaved the air. They were coming.
The ground rumbled as she clenched her fists, summoning the dregs of her power to the surface.
She was going to lose. She knew this. She’d already lost once.
But just like last time, she also knew she would fight to keep the enemy from breaching the castle. She would fight to her last breath.
Elyria raced forward to meet the cultists before they could swarm the injured garrison. Crossing her forearms, she conjured a shield of vines and roots to hold at her side. It immediately met a wave of crystal arrows.
Gritting her teeth, she dug her heels into the ground, holding herself steady against the onslaught of blood magic. She waved her free arm. Rocks flew through the air, crashing into cultists’ heads, hands, chests. Vines snaked out of the ground, wrapping around legs, snapping ankles, buckling knees.
But there were too many of them.
And her magic was...it was nearly gone. A kind of coldness crept through her veins, chasing the wild light of her power. She had used too much.
Elyria screamed as a red blade skewered her shoulder, the dark grin of asanguinagicultist rising over her. The wolven face of Malakar’s sigil on his chest glinted as he shoved the sword in deeper, further. It burned. It tore at her insides, her own blood fueling the dark magic of the conjured weapon—strengthening it.
She fell to her knees. Thesanguinagilaughed, a low, menacing sound. He twisted the blade. The cold spread to Elyria’s chest.
Unable to maintain the magic that cloaked them, her wings rematerialized. Just in time for Elyria to fall on top of them, too weak to adjust, to avoid crushing one at a terrible angle.
And even though sheknew—knew that this was what reallyhappened, that this was how it ended, that she was reliving the inevitable—Elyria Lightbreaker did not want to die.
It was the last thought she had before she did.
Light.
Blinding, white light washed over Elyria. It burst across the battlefield—a tidal wave of brilliant energy that rolled over buildings and soldiers and cultists alike.
Elyria knew this light. Recognized it. Remembered it. Floating above her own body like a specter, she watched the Shattering happen all over again.
Queen Daephinia sacrificed herself in a final bid to rid the world of Malakar’s evil once and for all, shattering the Crown of Concord and unleashing its power across Luminaria. A power so pure, so mighty, so explosive that, for a moment, it felt like hope.
It wasn’t.
Elyria had failed to protect her queen.
And as quickly as the light had appeared, it was suddenly sucked back into the castle, as if it had never been there at all.
But it had touched her. And in the singular heartbeat after Elyria breathed her final breath, that light doused her wings, seeped into her wounds, crawled into her veins. It expelled thesanguinagi’spoisonous magic, erased its touch. It healed her injuries, cast outdeath.
One moment, Elyria was a wraith—watching, listening, waiting. The next, she was yanked back into her body, flesh and blood once more. The air was thick with ash as she gasped, struggling to breathe anew, to swallow the life-giving breaths she’d just been without.
It wasn’t raining anymore.
Elyria bolted to her feet, eyes wild. She hadn’t remembered what it felt like when she came back to her body. Hadn’t remembered the thrum of energy in her fingertips, the racing beat of her heart. It was all foreign. She’d disconnected from herself, even if just for a few moments, and now everything felt discordant. Strange. New.
