Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
SANORA
I opened my eyes.
I was back in the cave.
And I was lying on the ground.
Groaning—because somehow my whole body ached for reasons I didn’t know—I pushed myself up into a sitting position. My head throbbed as I looked around, and for a dizzy second, I thought I was exactly where I’d been the last time, but no. I was at the mouth of the cave, not beside Thrax.
I hauled myself to my feet, braced a palm against the wall for support, and walked back inside towards where he had been lying.
Only he wasn’t there. Someone else was.
My feet went forward of their own accord and then stopped because the sight stole my breath. It was the offspring.
My eyes widened as I staggered back a step, one hand flying to my mouth. My heart slammed so hard it hurt at the sight before me.
She lay sprawled across the floor, a figure who was once white, glowing and incandescent was now...black. Her radiance dress looked as if someone had dunked it in soot...even the silver-thread of her hair was as dark as night.
She drew ragged breaths, each one a small, painful effort. In one fist, she clutched a long metallic object with sharp ends. A pin-like thing, but thicker and longer.
Thrax knelt beside her, and I took a step closer, compelled and horrified both, until I stood over him.
His eyes were fixed on her, and I had never seen him like.
..that. Thrax’s face was folded into something so devastating it rewired the inside of me.
I’d seen him sad once before among those memorial stone stacks in one of my dreams. But this was beyond that.
The devastation in his face was deeper than sadness—guilt, horror, sorrow, grief, regret, everything was moulded in his expression.
They looked at one another, unsaid words passing between them. She lifted her fragile hand slowly, the one that held the pin, and placed it on his thigh.
“Do... do it,” she said, voice almost gone.
Thrax shook his head, the motion small and useless as he began to stand. “I’ll see if I can get Selva—”
“No,” she cut him off by squeezing his hand, holding him back. Her head shook. “It’s too late. Do it. Complete it.”
My chest squeezed.
Complete what?
I turned my eyes away from them and to the wall that had been the source of light the last time I stood here.
The stone still had cracks, but the glow that had blinded me was gone.
Instead, on the fractured wall, something thick and white dripped down the stone.
It pooled in grooves, dropping in glistening beads, and there was so much of it that the walls looked as if they were sweating milk.
I looked back at her, then back at the wall. My stomach turned.
Was that her blood? White blood? Had she performed the ritual she’d talked about? Had she—by her own hand—done this to herself? Was this what she said she would handle? Her own death?
My eyes widened.
Did she cause her own death?
Her hand closed around Thrax’s, and with the last of her strength, she pried open his palm and laid the pin there.
“Do it now. You can’t exceed the stipulated time.
We’ve been at this for a very long time.
Please...do it now.” Her voice, though paper-thin, carried the urgent authority of someone who’d already made peace with the end.
“I’m going to die anyway. Why waste it? Do it now. ”
Thrax’s fingers shook around the long pin. I blinked my tears away, the scene so heartbreakingly intimate I could scarcely look. “Why would you do this?” he burst. “Why would you sacrifice yourself? Why? Why? WHY?”
He broke.
I felt it like a physical thing inside my chest. Tears blurred my vision, and I couldn’t stop them from falling. She lay there, exhausted and resolute, and with what strength she had left, she coaxed him on and on—pleaded, really—even as her strength thinned.
“We have seconds left,” she whispered, her hand wrapping around his fist as she guided his hand. “My offering must not go to waste. Do it, Thrax.”
He stared into her eyes and they shone with a calm acceptance that made my stomach flip. “Please,” she breathed.
His hand hovered, the pin trembling at the tip of his fingers. He looked from her face to where she pointed—a spot above her stomach, just under her chest.
Thrax’s fist closed around the pin, knuckles white. He drew a breath, closed his eyes as if to pull courage from elsewhere, and then, with a motion that made my throat catch, he thrust the metal into her skin.
I gasped and stumbled back as metal met flesh, expecting some monstrous sound, but she didn’t convulse or cry out. The pin sank in as if it slipped into water; the motion was absurdly calm.
Instead of pain, a look of relief settled across her face. Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, and she wrapped her fingers around his wrist with a tenderness that made me weak.
She smiled—small but bright—and for all the terror of it, there was peace in that smile, as if what she had done for him had finally let her breathe.
And just then, she went still. Her eyes closed, her head lolling to the side as her grip on Thrax slackened.
I choked on the knot rising in my throat, helpless as I watched the moon’s offspring die.
Thrax sank back onto the ground, his shoulders folding inward, the look on his face nothing short of guilt devastation.
I couldn’t tear my eyes from him...and from her.
She lay sprawled on the stone floor, lifeless, her pale white skin draining of colour, turning from living warmth to an eerie grey, before darkening further into the shade of ash.
Then her skin began to crack.
Yes, crack.
Hairline fractures split across her body, and from them seeped blinding white light. At first it was faint, but soon the light spread, branching out like veins of fire breaking through her flesh.
Horror locked me still. Every inch of her—her hands, her face, her feet—splintered, fractures racing across her body as if she were porcelain shattering from the inside out. And from those cracks, the white brilliance forced its way free, tearing through her like it had been imprisoned too long.
The cracks on her skin widened, light pouring out of them. And then light moved, seeping from her body in streaming ribbons, twisting and coiling into the air.
She moved from the ground.
Her body lifted, suspended by the light pouring out of her and circling her, wrapping her in a blinding halo as her hair and dress bleached from black to pure white. She glowed so fiercely that the cave walls turned to mirrors of brilliance, every surface drenched in her radiance.
I tore my gaze from her to Thrax, expecting to see terror, awe or anything, but he wasn’t looking at her at all. His gaze remained fixed on the patch of stone where her body had lain, lifeless and empty, as though the sight of her rising only deepened his ruin.
A strange current swept across my skin, prickling every hair, crawling into my bones until my entire body vibrated with the force of it. The moon’s offspring was growing brighter—too bright to look at. I raised an arm to shield my eyes, but the glare pierced through, searing into me.
It was then I realised...
She wasn’t dying.
She was combusting.
That was why the cave’s walls gleamed like crystal in that photograph. The reason wasn’t age or trick of the stone—it was her. She had caused it. Her light had seeped into the stone of the cave, transforming it the day she perished here, making it shine, preserving her brilliance in its core.
This was where the Soulless Man had ‘killed’ her.
She is going to combust. Right now.
My stomach dropped. I stumbled back a step, dizzy with dread, knowing her kind of brilliance could only end in destruction.
The space seemed to feel it too. The top of the cave groaned, the ground shaking as stone cracked overhead, making way for her ascent. Dust rained down in fine showers, pebbles broke loose, tumbling to the floor.
And Thrax still didn’t move. He sat directly beneath the cave top that was a minute from breaking down, as if waiting and willing the rocks to collapse and bury him. His eyes were vacant and dead, trapped in the hollow of his loss.
I looked up just as she reached her breaking point.
The flare of light erupted from her body, and I screamed, my eyes blinded as my cry tangled with Thrax’s growl.
I peeled my eyes open just enough to watch through my fingers as a violent beam shot from her chest and straight into his, striking him down.
Thrax collapsed, his body hitting the ground with the force of the light.
I stopped breathing as I stared at him.
The top of the cave finally gave way, chunks of rock splitting free, tumbling around her and burying Thrax in a shower of stone as her light tore upward through the cracked space, climbing and clawing its way into the sky.
“Thrax...” I whispered, panic bolting through me as I moved towards him.
Stopping halfway, my head snapped up.
Through the broken roof of the cave, the sky revealed itself. And for the first time in all existence… it was darkening.
Before that moment, the world had known only daylight. But now, before my eyes, the sky’s light dimmed.
I was witnessing the first time the world experienced darkness.
Her body—no longer flesh but radiance incarnate—continued to rise, a burning star lifting higher, her brilliance staining the black canvas of the newborn sky. She grew brighter still, unbearably so, and suddenly, everywhere went quiet. In that breathless moment, she detonated.
Her radiance burst open, a tidal wave of blinding power ripping through the skies, tearing the fabric between light and dark. The collision was violent, but in that cataclysmic instant, a star was born.
Nova.
That was the only word I had for her.
She became a living nova, the last flare of a celestial being burning herself out to gift the sky a new name. Her light scattered, and then...she was gone.
Vanished.
Thrax hadn’t killed her—
A sound split the world in half.
It was a wail, sharp and shrieking, like the tearing of the cosmos itself. It pierced so high, so furious, the air shuddered with it.
My eyes widened.
Selvanyra.
The Moon’s Wrath.
It was happening.
The scream intensified, vibrating through my skull. I dropped to my knees, clutching my ears, but it was no use. The sound clawed its way in, sharp enough to rupture flesh.
Blood trickled hot against my fingers as the grounds shook.
“No—stop—” My own scream was lost against the fury overhead, a pitiful thing against the roar of a god. My vision swam, the pain unbearable, tearing through me until the world fractured into red and white.
My body buckled, my arms shook, my knees scraped against the stone as I fought to hold myself upright, every breath shallow and ragged.
The sound pressed harder, like knives boring straight through the bone of my skull, and my chest convulsed with the effort to draw in air that wouldn’t come.
My heart stuttered violently against my ribs, my pulse uneven as the wail continued to stab my ears.
With eyes blurred with tears, I stared at Thrax who was buried beneath rocks, heart aching for him. My hands slipped from my ears, falling limply to my sides as the cave floor swayed beneath me. I tried to reach for something to hold myself, but I met nothing but air.
I was...I was falling. My shoulders slammed against stone, the impact jarring but distant compared to the piercing wail tearing through me.
My body went slack, trembling once, twice, before stilling. My vision scattered, shapes and colours breaking apart into blinding fragments.
Darkness took me.