Page 83 of Roaring Spell

I don’t care.

My bear knows where she is. Can feel her like a compass needle pointing north—not through any magical link, but through instinct older than magic itself. She’s there. That direction. Running toward danger because that’s who she is, and I will tear this entire forest apart to reach her.

A tree falls across my path. I go through it.

The ground opens beneath my feet. I leap.

The wild magic hurls a wall of thorns at me. I take the cuts and keep running.

Sakura. Sakura. Sakura.

Her name becomes a rhythm in my blood, driving me forward, keeping me focused when the chaos tries to scatter my thoughts. She’s alive. I feel it—not magic, just certainty. The kind of bone-deep knowledge that defies explanation.

If she were gone, I would know.

I would feel the world end.

I find her in a smaller clearing, facing Valesh alone.

Two Preservers lie unconscious at the edge of the space—Sakura’s work, judging by the electrical burns on their clothes and the way the air still crackles with residual lightning. She took them down while I was fighting through the forest. She did it alone.

Pride surges through my bear’s chest.

Strong. Fierce. Ours.

But the situation isn’t good.

Valesh stands near the siphon, which pulses with barely contained power—damaged but not destroyed, still draining energy from the Warding Line. And in her hand, pressed against her own palm, is a ritual knife.

Blood wells from a shallow cut, dripping onto the crystalline surface of the siphon.

“Stay back!” Valesh’s voice is ragged but triumphant. “Blood magic. If I die, the siphon activates at full power. Kill me, and the town dies with me.”

Sakura faces her with lightning dancing between her fingers and fury in every line of her body. She’s beautiful like this—elemental and barely contained, power incarnate, a storm made flesh.

And she’s helpless.

Because Valesh is right. Blood magic is ancient, binding, almost impossible to break once initiated. The fail-safe is real. If we kill her—or even if she kills herself—the siphon will discharge everything it’s collected. The Warding Line won’t just weaken. It will shatter.

I shift back to human form.

The change takes longer this time—my body protesting the rapid transformations, muscles screaming with exhaustion. But I need hands for what comes next. I need a human voice.

“Torin.” Sakura’s eyes find mine, relief and terror and love all tangled in her expression. “You’re alive.”

“So are you.” I move toward her slowly, keeping Valesh in my peripheral vision. “That’s what matters.”

“How touching.” Valesh’s lip curls. “The bear found his witch. Just in time to watch everything fall apart.”

“There has to be another way.” I keep my voice calm. Reasonable. The voice I use when mediating disputes in the sleuth, when de-escalating conflicts that could turn violent. “Valesh. You don’t want to die.”

“I’m willing to die for what I believe.”

“Are you?” I take another step, watching her grip on the knife. Reading her body language the way I’ve learned to read predators and prey over decades of leading my people. “Because your hand is trembling. The blood magic is already primed—if you truly believed in your cause, you’d have activated it the moment we arrived. Instead, you’re talking. Justifying. Trying to convince yourself as much as us.”

Her expression flickers. Uncertainty beneath the conviction.

“Twenty years.” I keep my voice low, measured. “Twenty years of careful positioning. Building relationships. Earning trust. You didn’t spend two decades in deep cover because you wanted to die in a forest. You did it because you wanted to win. To be there when the Preservers finally succeeded. To see the fruits of your labor.”