I don’t know the Star, but I feel like I should. Like maybe she meant something to me.Meanssomething.
But as hard as I strain to hear her now, tofeelher, that beautiful magick is quickly drowned by another kind.
I can’t see him, but Dark Judgment’s voice is a deep and deadly threat on the wind, beating back the purity of her light with his foulest curse.
The one that broke me in the first place.
Flame and fury, will and might
Rend the shadow from the light
Dark desires now revealed
Heart and soul shall be concealed
At his words, my vilest memories flicker back to life. The pain and anguish, the agony, the festering wounds of a broken, discarded boy who grew up to become a shattered man. Wounds that fueled my rage and allowed me to welcome in the darkness. Wounds that led me to this—the battle raging below. The dead rising.
Flame and fury, will and might
Rend the shadow from the light
Dark desires now revealed
Heart and soul shall be concealed
But the dead, I realize, are no longer rising. The robed mages continue their relentless attack, aided by the Dark Magician and his companion, the Chariot, but their armies are being decimated by the witches and mages of Arcana Academy.
By attacks both magickal and mundane, my friends and fellow students are reclaiming our school. Our home. Our lives.
The dead are staying dead.
Desperate, Judgment recites his spell again, the words churning inside me, twisting like a hot knife, digging into the deepest aches in search of his Black Sun.
He doesn’t realize the darkness has already left me. I felt it go, vanquished by the magick of the Star’s blade and the ferocity of her love.
The Black Sun’s body—mybody, hijacked by corrupt magick and ill intent—lies broken in her arms. She’s on her knees, holding me close. Blood soaks through my shirt. The bright, coppery taste of it fills my mouth, my breath. I watch us from above. My head on her shoulder, eyes closed. Sword protruding from my chest. All that blood. All her tears.
She should be mourning me. Burying me.
Yet she refuses to give up.
Blood of the World, light of the Star
Let body remember the soul and the heart
All is reborn, but first it must die
In shadow he fell, in light he shall rise
Slowly, the Star withdraws her blade from my chest, her spell a healing balm. Silver light emanates from the wound.
But don’t feel them. Not the light, not the Sword, not the spell, not the mending of bone and skin that follows.
She presses her lips to the top of my head, still chanting.
I wish I could remember her. I wish I could feel the warmth of that kiss.
But I feel nothing.
