Page 221 of Season Warriors & Wolves

The touch of first blood grazed the white snow and it felt like time stilled.

I don’t know who launched toward who first, but within the next second of the wind revealing everything, deafening chaos ensued. The dead twisted around the living, pulling and tugging them apart. Beasts crashed against frost wolves laced with blue gyre and silver, sending splintering ice and black blood raining down on the fight around. Thunder grew loud, but not loud enough to drown the noise below.

Grabbing onto Thora, I faded the two of us back to our front lines blocking the Isjordian path.

“Elias?” my brother asked, stepping forward and rolling his shoulders.

“He is in.”

“And the dead?”

“Attacking. More are rising and descending Tenebrose as we speak.”

The empty field of snow ahead began filling. Isjordian troops finally made their way out of Sable Abyss Forest that had concealed their vast numbers. Millions marched towards us. More monsters than humans.

“Good,” my brother said. “Step back, the both of you.”

The taste of death filling the space around made my stomach coil. Darkness deeper than tar, thicker than tar, hungrier than a starved serpent, dripped from my brother, the bounds he’d put to control it broke free. His fingers began turning black, phantom claws growing, his eyes hidden beyond the veil of darkness. A blanket of death crawled ahead, prowling like a hunting beast, an icy black fire burning wherever it touched, turning the snowy ground a solid grey ice that was colder than anything. We all watched my brother’s magic rise like tidal waves for long miles and engulf thousands of soldiers and beasts under.

There were no screams, no pleas, no fight as many disappeared into it. Nothing. Just pure silence. No corpses collapsed, no weapons dropped. They all simply vanished. Consumed by death. It had eaten almost halfway through the enemy lines.

My brother stopped before I could tell him to. Already seeing his colourful shadows turn entirely black.

Isjordians still continued pouring endlessly despite the damage Kilian had done. Soldiers crashed against soldiers. I fed on Isjordian fear and our soldiers’ bravery, my strings thickening, doubling and elongating to summon more dead, fortifying our numbers.

Smoke and steam blurred sight, blocking most of our surroundings, and I tore through dozens of beasts, my sword already soaked and dented, to reach somewhat close to her.

Thora stood between a circle of wolves, firing rounds of arrows on the khamir beasts. No one was able to get close to her, all tore apart the second they would step near her radius.

I could finally focus on finding the Empaths controlling the beasts.

Each one I found slit their own throat the second they saw me.

“Fuck.”

I pushed through again, fading, cutting, inflicting pain on every Isjordian force I came across, sieving them for more Empaths. The further in I dove, the louder the noises grew, the more bitter death tasted. All my senses were heightened. Chaos and death feeding them like a drug.

Then…sudden burning heat melted the cold wind into steam. Specs of white fire burned under Kilian’s gusts of darkness until they began breaking through.

Something bright shone overhead, almost as strongly as the sun.

The guardian stood overhead watching all of us like prey. White wings and hair dipped in pearlescent fire, her skin gleaming with specks of glitter. She spoke no words or lifted no limb when a wash of fire rained down on us.

The skies turned to night in a blink and the fire evaporated against Kilian’s darkness. Adriatian Aura took the lead, profiting from night, beasts and soldiers stilled and were slayed without a fight.

Aurora’s presence had dimmed, but not diminished.

The next wave of her attack was even more severe.

Yet my brother withstood and took the blunder of it.

Over and over.

Chapter forty-six

Black Pawn to C5

Caiden