31
We rose like the dawn.
Wings unfurled from our backs, large and magnificently powerful. Erebus’s and my wings were darker than night; Mithras’s were brighter than the sun.
“Come on!” I screamed, partially in triumph, partially in astonishment. “We’re almost there!”
We’d been freed. We had a chance.
I flew harder, rising faster, faster, faster.
Erebus and Mithras were eager to follow.
Gone were our tattered clothes from the Beyond, replaced instead by finery that reflected our power.
Erebus and I wore similar sets of black armor, clawed gauntlets shaped around our hands and obsidian crowns encircling our heads.
And, most notably, Raelion’s mark was gone.
Relishing its absence felt like breathing fresh air after a century in a putrid grave, and it was glorious.
Shadows poured from us like a rising tempest, eager for justice as they fed on the darkness that had contained us.
Mithras, impossibly, was whole.
His eyes were clear of red, his hair a radiant sweep of bright honey. His armor gleamed pure white and gold, and warm, fiery light flowed from his body as the shadows did from ours. It churned around him like a sea, twirling against our shadows.
Beautiful.
One last surge and we were free from the Beyond. It fell behind us, feeding into our power as we rose. Part of me almost expected to see the Dream Realm already restored. That our work was already done.
But that was far from the truth.
We circled Citadel Evernight, taking in the chaos below.
Shadows and light continued to surge as more demons died, their monstrous shrieks splitting the air.
Metal met flesh with sickening finality, and the sharp crackle of magic echoed through the ruined citadel, reverberating in our ears.
The Weavers had been unchained, their figures moving like wraiths throughout the fray as they fought for their lives by the Nocturne’s blackened waves. And beyond them—
The last of our Shadow Legion.
A sound rose from their ranks, low at first. Barely audible over the din of battle.
A rhythm, pulsing and unyielding. It wasn’t random shouts or cries; it was a chant.
I strained to make out the words. The cadence was familiar, yet the roar of combat swallowed the chant before I could grasp its meaning.
Still, the sound pushed forward, growing louder, steadier, until at last it broke free.
“We fear not shadow nor the night! We fear not shadow nor the night!”
It was thunderous, defiant, alive.
And I nearly buckled when I saw who was at the front of the lines, leading the chant.
Ceveon, Sorren, and Silas.
They were armed to the teeth and wearing their finest armor, absolutely mesmerizing as they led the charge. Light and shadow danced across their armor, making them seem almost untouchable. Like legends stepping out of a storybook. And they were chanting for us. For the legacy we had built.
And for what we still had to protect.
Tears burned at the edges of my vision, but I reined them in.
There was no space for hesitation. The battle was raging, and my part was far from over.
Beyond the dreamers, the center of Evernight was in tatters.
The great citadel had fractured, its jagged walls peeling apart and plunging into the infected Nocturne like a rotting flower.
My nose wrinkled as I caught the stench of decay, of something bitter and bloody.
Raelion and Estaroth towered over the wreckage, looming before us like twin gods of destruction as their bodies writhed with Corruption.
Raelion had become a grotesque amalgamation of a storm cloud and a dragon, his limbs shifting and twisting as though struggling to commit to a single form.
One moment, jagged wings jutted from his back; the next, they were swallowed into the roiling abyss of his flesh.
Lightning sparked beneath his semi-transparent hide, illuminating veins of pulsing black, and his grinning mouth was a gruesome combination of a midnight storm and hundreds of needle-sharp fangs.
Gone were his eyes; they were voids, sucking in all light.
Instinctively, I lowered my chin, avoiding his gaze.
Raelion’s hunger pulsed from him as though it had a life of its own.
Estaroth was equally malformed—his serpentine body coiled around the ruins, fur bristling as his wolflike maw snapped at the air with rows of ragged canines.
Everything about him felt wrong. His limbs, like Raelion’s, cracked and re-formed, an unstable nightmare given flesh.
A slow, shuddering snarl passed from Estaroth’s chest, and the air around him warped—as though the Dream Realm itself was bending in revulsion at his presence.
I whipped my head around, searching for Elliot.
But he was nowhere to be seen.
“I will see you again,” I promised to the wind. “I swore I’d see you again—and I will.”
When Raelion and Estaroth found us, they bellowed in realm-shattering rage. Their claws tore at the sky as they reached for us. For our wings, for our minds, for our souls.
“Let me in!” Raelion roared, his voice like an explosion of glass against my skull. “LET ME IN!”
Pain lanced through my head, burrowing fast and deep.
I screamed as my vision blurred. It was like standing in the eye of a storm and trying to be still with bones made of feathers and skin made of paper.
The sheer force of his will pressed against me, trying to dig into the deepest recesses of my thoughts.
To unmake me from the inside out.
I tasted blood, sharp and tinged with shadow, as my nose bled.
Erebus and Mithras screamed, too, roaring in defiance at Raelion’s mental onslaught. Shadows and light churned violently around us, desperate to shield us.
“Don’t you dare let him in!” Mithras snarled, his golden eyes burning. He swung his sword in a wide arc, blocking one of Estaroth’s many lunging arms.
“I should be telling you that,” Erebus bit out, twisting in midair to dodge Raelion’s snapping jaws.
Raelion’s fangs were mere inches from Erebus’s throat, thunder booming from his maw.
A quick slash of Erebus’s sword broke a row of Raelion’s teeth, but they re-formed almost immediately. “Damn you,” he snarled at our enemy.
Raelion turned on Mithras and me next, his form shifting, darkening.
His edges blurred between shadow and storm, a writhing mass of embodied Corruption.
We braced ourselves, preparing for the impact as I drew my blade—but Erebus was faster.
He slammed into me, then Mithras, knocking us out of Raelion’s reach.
“Neither of you is allowed to die,” he growled, his rough voice edged with something close to fear.
Mithras barked a short laugh. “Same to you, lord of shadows. Though I suspect the stars have already carved my fate in stone.”
Erebus’s jaw tightened. “That may be. But I don’t think they’re finished writing.”
We soared higher, power swelling as we unleashed wave after wave of darkness and light.
The sky itself trembled, our strikes chiseling through the air with crackling ferocity.
The impact of our magic sent shock waves through the battlefield, ripping through the remnants of demons.
Below us, the Weavers and dreamers cheered, pushing harder.
Cracks formed in Raelion’s and Estaroth’s massive bodies.
The first cracks were small, thin like hairs. But they spread rapidly, growing, widening. Webbing across their bodies from their skulls down to their claws. They roared, screams shaking the sky. Black ichor seeped from their wounds, oozing like liquid death, and yet still they fought.
Their rage was unrelenting.
The Corruption within them fought to hold them together, their limbs stretching, warping. Desperate to refuse the inevitable. They shuddered as the Corruption in their cores began to unravel regardless.
“Let us in!” Estaroth howled, his voice a fractured, keening wail. His serpentine body convulsed; his wolfish face distorted. Still the cracks deepened, plunging into his body. His voice wormed its way into my ears, echoing a demonic chorus of voices that were not his own.
Whispers, screams, sobs of the dreamers he had consumed.
I let out a cry of anguish, reaching for Erebus’s hand.
His hand closed around mine, our fingers interlocking in unyielding resolve.
Mithras took my other hand, forming a trio of unbreakable power.
Light and shadow, woven into one. One power drew out the demons’ Corruption; the other destroyed it.
Despite the horror, despite the nightmare before us, we stood together.
Unbroken.
“This ends now,” I cried, furiously gnashing my teeth. “They’ve taken too much.”
The Maker had shown us the way. We would end this. Now.
Together, we channeled every ounce of strength we had, pouring our power into one final strike.
A surge of pure radiance and abyssal night crashed into Raelion and Estaroth, their forms seizing, cracking, slanting.
I willed my shadows to thread between Erebus’s darkness and Mithras’s light, further cementing the two.
And with a world-shattering rumble, the demons burst.
They fractured like broken statues, bones collapsing as their power surged up in a void of pure, light-eating darkness.
Mithras raised his free hand, golden light pulsing from his palm.
And with a final burst of brilliance—
The void was consumed.
Our combined power, along with the long-awaited deaths of Raelion and Estaroth, ignited an immediate, mind-bending change in the Dream Realm.
Erebus tucked me into his chest as the world raged around us.
We lost sight of Mithras in the chaos. It was destruction.
It was creation. I held on tightly, unwilling to be separated from him.
When the world finally stilled, I tentatively opened my eyes.
We were suspended above a bright, glistening Nocturne, its glass-like waters reflecting the Dream Realm’s starlit sky.