“Obey!”Riven’s voice is a distant, frantic scratch against the scream in my skull.
Something snaps—a thread pulled beyond its breaking point.The light, the voices, the lies—they all collapse inward, imploding against the darkness desperate to escape.The air folds.I scream, and the marble ripples like water.
Her whisper cuts through the noise:Remind them of what the darkness can do.
The manacles flare, branding red rings into my skin before they crack.The metal clinks to the floor—discarded lies.My shadows rise, their tendrils caressing my face as if thankful for the unleashing.They burst out like wings, black fire unfurling, sweeping through the chamber.
The chandeliers shatter.Glass rains down, coating the room in glittering diamonds.The scholars scatter, screaming their prayers like desperate songs.
Riven’s eyes widen in horror.He raises his rod—too slow.The darkness coils around him, slamming him to the floor.The light on the rod flickers once, then vanishes.
The Luminaries stand poised to pounce.Light glows around them, making the gold thread of their robes twinkle like dying stars.The High Luminary of Radiance takes three steps forward, his voice booming through the hall.
“Stand down!”he demands.
My chin dips.My gaze bores into his.My mouth curls into a smile that feels too wide for my face.I reach out a hand, watching as my shadows curl around him, dampening his glow.A snarl unfurls as the snake-like tendrils squeeze.
He squirms like prey.Shallow, desperate gasps fight against the tightening coils.His mask clatters to the ground.And every eye in the room follows it as it tumbles down the twelve steps.
“Solmir,” the words leave my mouth, but the voice is not mine.“How very nice to see you again.”
He sputters, silver blood trickling from his mouth as he tries to form words.The weight of the shadows too much.
I chuckle, the sound reverberating through my very bones.I can’t stop this voice from tearing out of me.“Don’t bother trying to speak.Conserve what little oxygen you have left.”
The other High Luminaries stare back, glowing statues frozen in place.Their light flickers as I step toward them, my bare feet slicing over the broken glass.I let my gaze linger on each of them in turn.
“Look at what you’ve made me become!”I shout, arms thrown wide.“My people have suffered for years at the hands of your destruction.And why?Because you could not bear to share the world with us.”
“That is not true!”Calis, the High Luminary of Judgement shouts back.“Darkness rained down and brought only chaos!It was our duty to restore balance—to bring peace to our people.”
“Balance?”I laugh, stepping toward the dais.Toward Solmir.“You forget, Calis—even light casts a shadow.”
Silence.
“There is only balance when light and dark reside together.You have betrayed your people, feeding them the story you wished to tell: that the light within them issupreme.But let me tell you this, my dear—” I edge closer, my smile widening until my cheeks ache.“Darkness lives in everyone.Even you.”
Calis spits on the marble, her glow flaring.“The darkness was a furnace, spreading embers of corruption into the minds of our people.It makes them believe that to understand the dark was to understand themselves.Wetell them what to believe.Wecreate obedience!”She points a glowing finger at me.
Solmir’s wet, sputtering cough breaks the silence.My smile only grows the closer to death he drifts.
“We burned your body until there was nothing left but ash,” Calis snarls.“We scattered you like bird feed.You should not be here!”
“What is a body without its soul, Calis?”My brow furrows, the smile vanishing as words I don’t understand tear from my throat.
The air in the chamber turns frigid, the rippling marble beneath my feet slowing into jagged, frozen waves.Solmir’s rattling breath is the only clock left in the room.
“You think you are the masters of Light, doing Solan’s bidding,” the voice continues, echoing with a hollow resonance that isn’t mine.“But you are merely children playing with the embers of a fire you did not start.”
My voice fractures—hers retreating, mine screaming to the surface.
Time slows.Solmir crumbles beneath the weight of my shadows.Silver blood beads from his mouth, spilling like liquid mercury across the marble.His light gutters like a dying candle.
A high-pitched scream echoes through the hall as Calis and Riven rush to him.My shadows release, rushing back to me, coiling around my legs and climbing up my spine.I stumble backwards, breath ragged as the voice subsides.Power still surges through me, hot and alive.Kael shouts my name, but the roar in my ears drowns him out.
Run,Nyx whispers.
I run.
