Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
ELLIE
“The greatest magic is not in the taking, but in the choosing to give.”
The Nature of Veinblood Rebirth
“No!” The word tears from my throat. I try to send out my mist stalker, but it doesn’t respond or materialize. The crystal must be blocking my connection to it. I can’t stop what’s coming. Sacha is going to die, and I can’t do anything other than watch.
Sereven’s hand seems to rise in slow motion, shadows and fire wrapping around it. Sacha’s head bows, and through the bond, I can feel his defeat, his weakness. He has nothing left to give. Everything has been torn from him.
Tears spill from my eyes, as I reach for my power once more. Sparks sputter and die between my fingers. I try again, breath coming in gulps as I fight to form a lightning bolt, thunder, anything.
Sereven’s ball of power strikes Sacha in the chest and throws him into the air.
I scream.
And then the world stops.
Sacha hangs suspended in the air, one hand reaching toward me, his face frozen in an expression of despair.
His dark eyes are wide, his mouth is open around a shout that will never be heard, the tendons on his neck stand out as he strains against gravity.
Debris from the crumbling walls hover in the air, each piece of stone caught between one heartbeat and the next.
Some are no larger than pebbles, others are huge boulders that would crush bone if they hit.
Smoke from fire magic coils motionless around us, frozen mid-swirl in twisted patterns.
Silence falls, so complete it presses against my eardrums. But it isn’t empty.
It’s dense, oppressive, filled with the energy of everything that should be moving but isn’t.
There are no muffled gasps from Mira, no crackling of flames, no shouts from Sereven or Sacha.
Just endless quiet that wraps around me, heavy and suffocating.
I am the only thing that moves. My heart beats against my ribs in a rhythm too quick to be comfortable. When I lift my hand, it cuts through the motionless air without resistance, leaving no wake or disturbance in the frozen atmosphere. Everything around me stays locked in place.
“At last.”
The voice, not recognizable as male or female, doesn’t come from outside of me. It rises from somewhere within, unfamiliar yet somehow right in a way that makes my bones ache. I don’t hear it through my ears, but feel it through every fiber of my being.
I have never heard this voice before, yet it feels like coming home.
“It is time to listen now. You are ready to understand.”
I open my mouth to respond, but no sound comes out. Instead the question forms in my mind. “Who are you?”
“I am what has always been with you. What chose you before you could choose for yourself.”
The air around me shimmers, and suddenly I can see it.
Threads of blue-white light running through everything.
Through the frozen debris, each fragment connected by gossamer strands that pulse with their own inner light.
Through Sacha’s suspended form, the light mapping every line of his body, every shadow he casts, every breath trapped in his lungs.
Through the very stones of this cavern beneath Blackvault, walls that reveal themselves to be alive with energy, networks of power running through stone.
All of it is connected by filaments of energy that pulse with quiet purpose, a vast web of connection invisible to the eye, binding everything together with a pure blue light.
“The crystal.”
“Yes. And no.” The presence grows stronger, more defined. “I am what the crystal became when it touched your infant mind. What it chose to become rather than what the Authority demanded. Let me show you.”
An image fills my mind of a small child strapped down in this very cavern, thin wrists raw from struggling against the metal restraints.
Shock rushes through me as I recognize myself.
Two years old, barely able to speak, but already sensing the wrongness in what is going on around me.
Authority figures in crimson robes move, their faces hidden beneath deep hoods.
Their movements are careful, deliberate, rehearsed, the actions of people who have done this many times before.
“Hold her still,” one commands, voice sharp with impatience, and worse, anticipation.
I’m crying in great, gulping sobs that echo off the walls and return to me distorted and multiplied, until the cavern is full with the sound of my terror. My voice is so small, so helpless.
“Mama? Want mama!”
But there’s no one coming. There isn’t anyone who is going to save me. Just the cold stone beneath my back, and the blue crystal being lowered toward my face, full of power that makes my skin crawl before it even touches me.
“Fill the vessel,” another voice orders.
“They wanted to use you as a vessel for the power they took from others. Their plan to discard you when your body could no longer contain what they forced into it, the same way they had done to so many others before you.” The voice is gentle, a jarring contrast to the horror I’m witnessing.
The crystal touches my forehead and agony explodes through my tiny body.
Power crashes into me, forced inside me.
Foreign magic that tears through veins too small to contain it, burning paths through a system that wasn’t born for this.
The stolen magic of murdered Veinbloods pours into me, all at once, far too much for such a small body to hold.
I scream until I can’t anymore, until blood coats my throat, until the sound becomes something inhuman echoing off the walls.
But then something changes. The influx of power hesitates, the crystal’s light faltering for a second, and its focus turns to something metal wrapped around the child’s wrist.
A silver bracelet, glowing faintly.
The crystal’s consciousness, dormant for so long under the Authority’s corruption, stirs to wakefulness, drawn to the metal’s glow. The bracelet carries memories the crystal can sense.
New images flood my mind.
A woman working by candlelight, crafting silver links with love, pouring her hopes and wishes for her daughter's future into every detail.
The bracelet is full of that maternal love, and it rises, fighting against the violent transfer being forced onto the child, trying to shield the small body from forces meant to destroy it.
This child is different. This vessel can survive what would kill the others within heartbeats. More than survive.
And for the first time since it was discovered by the Authority, the crystal makes a choice that isn’t about obedience to its masters.
Instead of continuing to force power into the body until the child’s heart busts, it begins to guide the flow.
To strip away the pain and trauma, and remove the agony of how those powers were torn away, leaving only the pure essence of power, while wrapping each ability in protection, in purpose, and in the love of those who died.
“I felt your fear. Your innocence. And your potential.” The voice fills with regret.
“I had already absorbed so much power, so many severed connections. The Authority corrupted my purpose. I was meant to unite all Veinblood powers in harmony, to amplify them when all four bloodlines worked together with the Shadowvein Lord. But they twisted me into a tool of separation, of harvesting that which I was meant to heighten.”
Memories of the dreams Vorith sent to me flicker at the edge of my awareness.
A vision of the crystal floating above the platform in the cavern, surrounded by willing participants, power flowing freely between them and the crystal in gentle currents, magic shared rather than stolen, amplified rather than hoarded.
A time before the Authority, when the crystal served unity instead of division.
“When I touched you, I felt what you could become,” the voice continues. “You weren’t just another temporary vessel destined to break and die. You could bond with the power, make it truly yours. So I chose to protect you rather than destroy you.”
The image shifts again. It’s still the same cavern. A woman with dark hair has been chained to the platform, blood streaming from cuts and whip marks, her wrists raw from the metal shackles that have worn grooves into her flesh. The crystal hangs above her, ready to tear away everything she is.
As the purging begins, as her Tidevein mastery is ripped from her body in agonizing streams, she doesn’t rage or weep or beg for mercy.
She simply closes her eyes. “Serve life, not death. Take my essence freely.”
The scene shifts, and I watch in horror as the pattern repeats. A man with broken fingers, beaten until blood runs from his ears, strapped in the same restraints. The crystal tears his Flamevein abilities from his body, but with his final breath he whispers a prayer into the void.
“Burn for something good.”
Over and over, the cavern is filled with different victims. Years of purging.
A parade of suffering that goes back decades.
Thousands of Veinbloods meeting their end on this same platform, chained to the same restraints, their blood staining the same stone.
Yet in their final moments, as the crystal tears their essence away, many of them find the strength to choose a different path.
Each one sends their power toward something beyond their murderers’ reach, toward a future they would never see, but still hoped for. Silent acts of defiance in the face of absolute despair.
A Tidevein whose gentle touch could stop the flow of blood and seal wounds. “Heal what needs healing.”
A Windvein who filled the sails of ships with wind, directing his gift with his last thought. “Carry hope on swift wings.”
An Earthvein who tended gardens and crops, pouring her final breath into her power. “Build something beautiful."
An elderly man, whose Tidevein power had allowed his village to survive through drought, releasing his power with a prayer. “Flow toward life.”