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I opened my eyes.
I prepared to exterminate everything.
My vision stuttered.
I swayed with confusion.
Sickness clutched the back of my throat and—
I-I don’t understand.
My shadows poised in a sinister hissing cloud, waiting for my command to destroy.
But...destroy what?
I looked upon a world that existed in the past.
Runa stood next to Solin and Tral.
Aktor was back on the rise, running toward the herd.
Nhil hunters hadn’t come to his aid yet.
No blood, no guts, no death...
It...wasn’t real?
I blinked, willing my mind to understand as everything I’d seen began to unravel exactly the same way. Step by step, following the path as if I was the one who puppeteered their upcoming endings.
I swallowed hard as Aktor skidded and tripped toward the herd. “Go, Father! Get to safety. I’ll scare them into running in the other direction!”
My ears rang with eerie repetition.
It was just a vision...?
A preview of what was about to come to pass?
If that was true, it meant...I have to watch her die all over again.
It would break me.
I’d annihilate the entire galaxy.
“Aktor, don’t—” Tral shouted. “They’ll trample you!”
I groaned as my heart tore in two.
I’ve seen this.
All of this.
My bones groaned as magic curled and snarled in my veins.
She couldn’t die.
Not now.
Not then.
Not ever.
And that idiotic male is running headfirst into death, taking Runa with him.
Agony made me tremble.
Sweat dripped down my temples.
I shook my head to focus—
“Do something!” The moth appeared, screeching silver dust into my ear. “Do something, before it’s too late!”
My shock shattered as my gaze fell on Runa.
Still alive.
Still breathing.
Still watching me full of worry as if I was the one in danger, not her.
“Keep her alive!” the moth yelled, shoving me deeper into ripping, tripping pain.
A groan spilled from my lips.
Time sped up.
Seconds rushed toward death.
Aktor disappeared down the rise.
Niya and Leca followed, along with other Nhil, trying valiantly but uselessly to save their kin. Runa cried out, planting hands over her mouth. Shaking her head and squeezing her eyes closed.
I knew she tried to commune with a swarming herd of panicking bison, doing her best to link with them the way she linked with me.
But she would fail.
I’d seen it.
She would die.
And—
My rage billowed with power.
I acted without thinking.
To save her.
Protect her.
Love her.
My chaotic darkness whipped into one fatal shadow-spear. Wind gusted from nowhere, funnelling with rage, howling with hurricanes that tore up the grasslands, chasing after Aktor.
I glowered at the mortal male about to steal my reason for existence.
It didn’t take any effort.
I stepped into who I was, what I was.
I dove into the cold.
I sank into the deep.
And, with a flick of my wrist, the shadowy sword of my wrath scythed through the herd.
In a single breath, I stole countless lives.
I slaughtered cows and calves, juveniles and elders.
I struck terror into the hearts of those running toward the blackened, snarling cloud, and they careened off, breaking ranks, fleeing west and east in terror, lowing with panic.
But the bull didn’t stop.
He would never stop until its enemy was dead.
He charged toward Aktor.
Aktor cocked his spear like he had in my vision.
The spear flew through the sunshine with its blackbird flitting feathers.
And with a coax of speed, my shadows swallowed his spear and swarmed the bull, suffocating it with darkness.
The ground shuddered as his mighty bulk slammed hard into dirt.
His carcass slid through freshly churned mud...
...coming to a sickening stop at Aktor’s feet.
Chapter Forty-Nine
. Runa .
I SAT TREMBLING BY THE fire that Solin had set alight with a spark of Quelis.
No one spoke.
I rubbed my arms, trying to coax away my seemingly permanent chill. I couldn’t stop ice flowing in my veins or swallow away the sour taste of carnage.
All around me sat males and females, cross-legged and hunched on the ground, their faces blank with shock, their eyes staring at nothing as they relieved the storm that wasn’t a storm, the black cloud that wasn’t a cloud, and the terrifying ease in which Darro had singlehandedly slaughtered the largest bull and sixteen of its herd.
All by himself.
Without a single weapon raised.
I flinched.
The clouds he’d summoned needed only to touch a living creature to snuff out their spirit as easily as if they were tallow candles. The funnel of black he’d mastered cut through the air like a giant blade, horrifying in its mercilessness and shocking in its murderous speed.
Those monstrous shadows had dispatched the bison that’d charged. They would’ve killed more if the herd hadn’t forked and bolted.
If the herd hadn’t given up the fight, they would all be dead.
Hundreds upon hundreds of gentle herbivores whose only crime was to be shown to me by the fire and forced onto my tongue with their location.
I hung my head.
This is all my fault.
When the ground shook as the bull dropped dead at Aktor’s feet, a gift by Darro himself, no one moved as the clouds dispersed as quickly as they’d arrived, and the slither of silent death vanished on cyclonic winds.
