Chapter 68
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
LEINA
Vaeloria’s wings lurch against the wind. Blood pours from her back leg, trailing a thick line through the sky.
The Kher’zenn are right behind us. Too close.
A whip snaps past my ear. Another lashes across Vaeloria’s flank. She stumbles midair, a broken beat of her wings that nearly throws me from her back.
We dip low. Lower than we should. It’s not an act, not anymore.
We’ve become the prey.
The sky is spinning, dripping red and black in the rain.
The Kher’zenn and their creatures close in, whips ready, claws reaching.
I pull at Vaeloria, desperate. I reach for the Veil, but I’m sluggish.
She is, too. I try to slash it open with a dagger, but my arm won’t move.
We brace for the strikes we won’t be able to dodge?—
A shield slams down around us, magic flaring so bright it blinds me, the shimmering strength of it throwing the Kher’zenn back when they slam against it.
I drag in a ragged breath. Vaeloria beats her wings harder, dragging us upward, finding a strength I don’t understand, but that I’ll match. I reach for the Veil again, and this time it opens to us—we stumble, but we stagger through it and back out.
This time, we’re underneath the storm. Above us, the sky boils.
I don’t look toward Amarune, toward the screams that will haunt me for the rest of my life, however long that may be. Instead, I find the Elder.
The Elder and Sigurd are at the center of the battle, framed in light and darkness both. The clouds churn around them, thick and black, streaked with veins of molten silver.
The storm is waking up. It’s a low vibration that quakes the air, the world. Maybe even the Veil.
It begins subtly. The cloud’s once-bright edges darken, rippling inward—black ink bleeding through white cotton.
It grows denser, heavier until the veins of shadow become everything.
Lightning stirs inside the storm’s heart—small at first, flickering faintly like the pulse of something waking from a long sleep.
I tear my gaze from the storm, back to the Elder.
He looks fragile. His back is hunched, his skin drawn thin over brittle bones. But the power that rolls off him is anything but weak.
And his eyes—they’re no longer cloudy white. They’re dark, swirling with starlight and restless fury, silver flashing from deep inside. Sigurd’s are the same, alive with the same terrible light.
They were never blind. They were the calm before the storm.
Sigurd beats his massive wings once, twice. With every beat of his wings, lightning crawls through the clouds.
The Kher’zenn’s commander twists in his saddle, scanning the sky around them, realizing too late that Vaeloria and I were only bait.
The Elder raises his cane. The storm answers.
Lightning arcs—bright white and deep blue—branching wild and unpredictable across the sky. It finds the churning heart of the storm and strikes. The first handful of Kher’zenn fall, blackened and broken.
The smell of burnt flesh fills the air.
It’s only the beginning.
The magic building around the Elder and Sigurd is alive, writhing and roaring. Realizing what’s at stake now, the Kher’zenn surge forward, whips snapping, draegoths shrieking, charging straight at the Elder. He strikes again.
Lightning flashes in the cloud and then stops unnaturally. It leaps from his cane to their weapons, their armor, their bodies, splitting through them with staggering precision. Over twenty Kher’zenn fall from the sky, including their commander, their bodies swallowed by the heaving ocean below.
The others hesitate until another commander rallies them, and they charge again.
The Elder meets them with another crack of lightning. And another. And another.
Each bolt blinds the sky, each thunderclap splits the world apart.
Sigurd drives forward, carrying the Elder deeper into the maelstrom.
They move as one—a single creature of storm and vengeance.
Together, they have become a force of nature, born of cloud and rage.
The Elder channels the sky itself, and Sigurd’s wings stir the winds into howling gales, ripping the Kher’zenn from the backs of their draegoths.
Again and again, lightning rains down, relentless and merciless.
But the Kher’zenn still come, a black tide refusing to break.
And the Elder is flagging.
His strikes are labored, heavier, each one a battle against the weight dragging him down. Sigurd rears, hooves striking at the sky, but the movement is sluggish, broken. His wings shudder as he struggles to stay aloft. They’re waning.
There’s a cost to magic like this. It’s tearing them apart. Mine is, too, as energy bleeds from my body. My limbs tremble, but more—my mind stumbles. Every breath comes harder, as if the magic I’ve used is eating away at the very essence of me.
With a cry that is more roar than voice, the Elder raises his cane high over his head. The heavens break. A torrent of lightning bursts forth, not in single bolts, but in a blinding, furious cascade.
Energy pours from the Elder in a flood, white and blue and burning silver, consuming everything it touches.
There’s not even time to scream. The Kher’zenn disintegrate in the brilliance, ripped apart by the force of it. The heavens and the sea collide in a breaking of light and darkness, and when it falls, there’s not one Kher’zenn left.
But the cost?—
Sigurd’s wings beat once. Then again, slower.
The cane slips from the Elder’s fingers as he slumps forward, draped across Sigurd’s neck. Sigurd fights it—tries to lift them higher—but his wings falter mid-beat. Together, they begin to fall.
Ryot and Einarr dive immediately, Aruveth close behind. Their faravars tuck their wings and streak downward, racing the ocean's pull, but Vaeloria and I are closer. Faster.
We dive hard, tucking into a roll, wings slicing through the thick, broken air.
We will reach them. We have to reach them. I stretch out my hand, reaching for the Elder. My fingers brush against his robe.
But the darkness is faster. The Veil unfurls from the broken sky, wrapping around us, dragging us back into the in-between. It yanks at my soul, at Vaeloria’s battered wings.
The Elder slips through my fingers.