Chapter 67
Alora
The weight of Vorak’s abysmal existence settled over the land. The air crackled, the world itself straining beneath him. Alora’s breath faltered as it pressed through her bone and marrow.
Threads of red electricity sparked along his frame. The pressure of his power was immense and beyond reckoning. Fear kindled sharp in her chest. Yet beneath it, something far more dangerous stirred.
Recognition.
The power in her blood flared in answer. Because a fragment of her soul had always known his shadow and now stood trembling before its source. Instinct demanded she kneel.
But blood alone did not make a Primordial worthy of reverence.
Nor did it make them kin.
Alora lifted her glaive, its crimson light burning like dawn in her grip. “My father is dead, Titan. His soul has long passed through the Gates. And I intend to send yours after him.”
A hint of a dark smile curved the edge of Rune’s mouth, approval humming through the bond.
Vorak walked toward her, the ground trembling beneath each step as if his presence alone carried the cosmos. The closer he came, the more the air thinned like a suffocating mist.
His voice rolled over the battlefield like silk drawn over a dagger’s edge. “Why do you stand against me? You were not meant to fight. You were meant to reign. In your veins runs my power. In your breath, my will. Do you think the usurper beside you anything more than a thief wearing my crown?”
Rune drew the Sunstone blade alongside Noctharion, its glowing runes pulsing red. “If you want it, then challenge me for it.”
Vorak’s otherworldly eyes slid to him. “I will deal with you in a moment, pretender.”
A force like the weight of the world dropped on them and Rune froze in place.
Then Vorak extended a clawed hand toward her, plated in armor as dark as blood. “Come to me, daughter. Tread the infinite universe at my side. Together, we will build worlds anew from the ash and rule for all eternity.”
His voice deepened into music, dark and rich, a melody spun with honey and iron.
The cadence of it wound into her veins, a song designed to lure, to ensnare. For a breath, Alora swayed toward him. The pulsing light in his chest pulsated like a promise of power unlike anything the cosmos had borne witness to.
She reached out—
In the back of her mind, Rune shouted.
Alora’s palm lifted. And a beam of searing white light struck Vorak.
The Titan reeled back, spun midair, and landed in an elegant stride, cutting across the ground. He reached up and wiped the smear of red from his lip, looking at it as if confused that he could bleed.
That was for her mother.
“You speak with a thrall in your voice,” Alora said, brushing Rune’s wrist on instinct, absorbing whatever power that shackled him without meaning to, drawing it into herself like breath.
The spell fractured, and Rune staggered free of it, sucking in a ragged breath.
“But it cannot hide the void beneath. You are nothing more than the destruction you crave.”
The little power she took shot through her veins with a rush of strength, pulsing bright through the markings on her skin.
Vorak’s response was a sharp sneer, indignant if not impressed. “You would stand against me to save a world I could dismantle beneath my heel?”
Alora looked out across the ravaged hills.
The Lords of Argyle stood beyond the city walls, soldiers bloodied and exhausted, yet unbroken. Clutching blades of Nightstone, facing an enemy far beyond their strength. They stood anyway, eyes lifted to her, fear on their faces, but resolve brighter still.
She looked to the fae gathered along the ridge, bows knocked with arrows, thorn banners rising against the gale, thorns slick with blood and iron. Zinnia sat astride her elk, chin lifted, her court silent and waiting, as if the land itself had drawn breath.
Behind her stood the Harbingers… and the Seven Courts.
More than half had been considered enemies. Now they stood in uneasy ranks, watching not the Devourer in the sky, but her. Shadows curled low at their feet, restless, listening.
This was not fear that held them there.
All waited for her to lead.
A truth settled deep in her chest. Power was not what Vorak offered. Power was not what Rune had taken. Power was not even what lived in her veins.
It was being believed in.
And being chosen.
She squared her shoulders and turned back toward the Primordial who would devour everything if allowed.
“This world is mine,” she said. Her voice rang like steel, carrying the fire that was hers alone, stronger than shadow or flame.
“I lived in it. I bled in it. I grew up as one of them. Mortal, fragile, unyielding in the face of defeat. I learned their strength, their hope, their defiance against forces who think themselves untouchable. I will not let you devour my people. Not while I draw breath.” Her voice never wavered, not even before his magnitude. “Touch them, and I will destroy you.”
Vorak’s molten eyes narrowed. A charge rippled through the air as he levitated, his voice rippling with the wind. “You have the power to force the universe to its knees… yet you squander it on cattle. How pitiful that you should share their fate.”
He lifted a single finger.
A glowing crimson seam followed as he drew it down.
The world answered with a scream.
The sky split.
A new doorway tore open into the Abyss, bleeding shadow and lightning as the wound widened. Mountains groaned and trees cracked, their roots torn free. Wind howled inward, dragged toward oblivion, carrying ash and the stench of old death.
The Wild Hunt poured from the tear in a black flood, riders of bone and shadow astride nightmare beasts, bursting into the world with a sound like a thousand graves opening.
Hooves struck the air and found ground where no ground should be, each impact fracturing stone and shattering wards. Their banners were smoke, their armor living darkness, and their eyes burned with a hunger older than the Realms themselves.
The sky dimmed around them and the Blood Moon swelled as if Vorak’s presence itself pulled it closer to the earth. Its light bathed the land in red.
Alora’s hand found Rune’s, light and shadow interlacing together. They spared one look, shared one breath, one thought humming through their bond.
Until the stars fall.
They launched into the air and split off, arcing toward Vorak with the force of exploding stars. Vorak watched them come. Their weapons struck and clashed against his hands with violent cracks of thunder, reverberating through her bones.
The clash split the night.
Below, the Harbingers led the charge against the Wild Hunt. The Midlands horns blew over the ridge with a deep bellow and the fae loosened their arrows. Drakon flew down, picking off riders. The humans roared and charged down the hills.
Rune’s blade swung again for Vorak’s neck and Vorak parried with his claws with a sound like worlds colliding. Shadow and crimson electricity burst outward in a shockwave that sent Alora nearly sprawling.
Rune’s shadows detonated outward in bladed arcs as Noctharion sang for blood. Alora followed on his flank, divine flame tearing from her like a comet, her glaive striking in rapid, ruthless succession. Shadow and light collided against Vorak’s crimson core in a maelstrom of motion.
Every strike met dark steel, to slow to cleave past his defenses.
Vorak flowed between their blows as if reality itself bent to accommodate him. His strikes fell like thunder, each one cratering the earth when they missed. Rune’s counters came like lightning, precise and furious, yet every blow that landed lacked the crushing weight of a Titan’s.
He turned Rune’s shadows aside with a flick of his wrist, crimson light shearing through darkness like glass. Alora’s flame crashed against him and slid away, devoured mid-burn. He laughed softly, almost indulgent, as though watching children exhaust themselves. Then his hand snapped out.
He caught Noctharion mid-swing.
The blade screamed. Vorak’s fingers tightened.
The abysmal metal fractured, split, then shattered in his grip like brittle bone.
Rune barely had time to react before Vorak drove a kick into his chest, the force of it catastrophic.
Rune flew, body hurled across the battlefield, crashing through stone and smoke until he vanished from sight.
Alora launched herself at Vorak with an infuriated cry.
He caught her by the throat.
The moment his hand closed, agony detonated through her.
Her limbs locked. Her breath vanished. The force of his power flayed her veins from the inside out.
Alora screamed. Light and shadow peeled out of her body as he drank the magic directly out of her.
The world narrowed to pain and pressure and the terrible intimacy of being consumed.
“Born in bloodlight,” Vorak laughed, his voice layered and vast, vibrating through her bones, “And destined to end beneath it.”
She had forgotten
It was the night she was born.
And the night she might die.
Sunfire descended with a roar.
The Sunstone blade slashed through Vorak from shoulder to stomach in a blinding arc of incandescent fire.
The impact split the air itself. Vorak roared, his grip slipping.
He staggered back, as crimson light bled from the gash, his form flickering, unraveling.
Light burned into him, not cutting so much as unmaking, the wound blazing with a fury he could not swallow.
Alora was torn away from him.
Rune caught her against his chest, wings flaring wide. Shadows lashed like whips around him. “Don’t touch my wife,” he snarled.
For one breath, the battlefield held still.
Shock flickered across Vorak’s face, and he blinked down at the burning wound.
Then he laughed, the sound sending a chill through her.
The wound sealed itself closed and he surged into the air and blazing scarlet light erupted from him, rending the atmosphere.