CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX ISI
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
ISI
“Fuck you,” I snarled, racing toward him with a blade lifted.
Pherin and Gavelle charged the Skathe lines in firecat form, blasting flames that turned the creatures to ash.
Nim and Levar flew overhead, their scales gleaming in the murky sunlight.
They swept above the Skathes, blasting them with fire.
Kira’s python wrapped around three Skathes at once, crushing them while her fangs found another’s throat.
The other companions attacked from different directions.
Kira and Kerralyn rushed through the gap our companions created, aiming for Alfred and the cloaked woman. Their blades sang through the air, cutting down any Skathe trying to intercept them.
With Trew, Derren, and Lexie providing cover, Addie and I darted to the left rather than engage the controllers, running for the ritual circle’s left edge, our boots splashing through the glowing blood-like substance filling the carved channels.
The breach loomed ahead, a ragged tear in reality that made my veil-sight scream warnings.
Through it, I glimpsed the nightmare realm beyond, endless darkness filled with writhing Skathes pressing against the barrier.
They’d find their way through; I knew it.
It was just a matter of time before we were overrun.
Fenmark lay on the slab, chains binding his wrists and ankles to iron rings set into the stone. His chest rose and fell in shallow gasps. Blood pooled beneath him from dozens of cuts.
Addie split away from me, rushing toward him.
“Hold on,” she sobbed, latching onto the chains, trying to break them. “Please hold on.”
The woman chanted, her hands lifted while Lord Alfred ran straight for me with a dagger in his hand. Kira and Kerralyn intercepted him, and the crash of steel rang out in the open area.
With Trew and our friends guarding me, I positioned myself between the altar and the breach, using my veil-sight to its fullest extent.
A nightmare of corruption wove around the tear.
Threads that should’ve been gleaming metallic had turned putrid green, and they writhed like diseased veins.
The edges of the breach pulled at the fabric of reality, tearing wider with every pulse of the controller’s ritual.
I’d broken a few wards. Dismantled magical structures.
Even loosened a few Skathes from the controllers’ hold.
But I’d never tried to heal a weave like this before.
This one wasn’t meant to come undone. It was the fundamental pattern that held the edge of our world together.
How did I repair something this essential when the tools must be the same magic that had torn it in the first place?
“Isi,” Addie called out. “I can’t break the chains. They’re warded.”
“Use your veil connection,” I said, not taking my eyes off the breach. “Focus on where the ward connects to the metal, and you may be able to break through.”
Around us, the sounds of battle intensified. Steel rang against steel. Companions roared and Skathes shrieked. Kerralyn’s voice rose in a battle cry as she and Kira fought against the woman.
Lord Alfred kept working his bloodfire magic, his chants sending a wave of tainted magic across me, making me stagger. Trew was there, his hand on my arm to stabilize me before he whirled away to fight three Skathes at the same time.
We had too little time.
I reached out with my magic, trying to touch the breach’s edges. The corrupted threads recoiled from my power.
This wasn’t going to work in the way I’d expected.
“Can we weave new threads?” Addie cried out, her hands pressed against Fenmark’s chains as her body flickered between somewhere else and here. “Remember Grandfather’s notes. Offer the thread that matches.”
“Our blood,” I whispered, all of this finally making sense. “Velacross’s legacy. We’re made of the same magic that created the breach in the first place, and it will take our blood to seal it.”
A grunt snapped my attention away from the veil. Trew and the cloaked woman circled each other while Lexie engaged Alfred. The woman moved with incredible grace, her blade a silver blur as she attacked. Trew parried, his sword meeting hers in a shower of sparks.
Her hood fell back, and my heart stopped.
Coralee.
Trew’s aunt.
The woman who’d helped us, who’d given us information about bloodfire magic, who’d seemed so concerned about Trew’s welfare.
“Surprised?” Coralee’s shrill laugh rang across the battlefield. Her blade swept toward his throat. He blocked, but barely. “You always were too trusting.”
“You’re dead,” Trew snarled, pressing his attack. Their blades locked, their faces inches apart.
Gavelle roared and raced toward them, Pherin blasting Skathes with fire as she kept pace with him.
“The real Coralee did die sixteen years ago.” Her smirk rose.
“I killed her. As for me…” She disengaged with a twist, her ermine companion leaping off her shoulders.
It shifted into its white bear form and raced to intercept Gavelle and Pherin.
“I was born three hundred years ago into a family of powerful mages.” She didn’t even huff for breath as she battled Trew, but she’d just sucked in blood magic.
“Do you know what it’s like to be lesser, Trewyn, to watch everyone fawn over your family while you’re barely noticed? ”
She attacked again, a complex series of strikes that drove Trew backward. They were evenly matched, and she met every one of his moves with a perfect counter.
“But then I learned about bloodfire magic,” she said. “I fueled it with stolen power.”
She’d been behind the Day of Mercy all along.
Watching them fight terrified me. Trew was one of the finest swordsmen I’d ever seen, and she was matching him effortlessly.
“I killed your aunt and took her place,” Coralee said with a slick smile.
I turned back to the breach, forcing myself to focus. Addie’s hands glowed with silver-blue light as she worked on the chains. Her body flickered more frequently now, the veil-sickness worsening with the use of the power she stole from the veil.
“Bloodfire magic fooled everyone,” Coralee hissed, her voice carrying over the clash of steel. “The research your aunt gave your father? My work. I removed key details, however. I couldn’t share everything.”
I reached for the breach again, trying to visualize how the threads should connect. I’d speculated the pattern should flow in a spiral, tightening toward the center, but instead, it splayed outward in a grotesque mockery of proper weaving.
“This would be over with already if Velacross’s wards had been easier to break.” Coralee ducked under Trew’s swing and scored a line across his ribs. Blood bloomed through his tunic. “Your mother noticed something was wrong. I poisoned her.”
“You killed my mother.” Trew’s voice went deadly quiet. His next attack came with so much fury that Coralee gave ground, her boots splashing through muck.
“Your father too,” she said with a laugh, parrying a strike aimed at her heart. “Marlane came close, so I killed her. Velacross’s mistake sixteen years ago gave me the doorway I needed to finally ascend. If they’d sealed the veil, I couldn’t become a god.”
My hands shook as I gathered my magic. She wanted to merge the realms and turn herself into someone who’d rival the fates?
“There,” Addie gasped. Fenmark’s chains fell away with a clang. His eyes fluttered open, focusing on her.
“Run,” he croaked. “Addie, run!”
“Not without you.” She helped him sit up, tears falling down her face.
The ritual circle throbbed, its pattern disrupted by the movement of its anchor. Alfred roared, breaking away from Kira to rush toward Addie and Fenmark.
“Protect them,” Trew shouted as he slashed out at Coralee.
Kerralyn and Derren intercepted Alfred, their blades meeting with enough force to send shockwaves through the ground. Lexie hobbled over to help Addie with Fenmark, her face tight with pain.
I reached into the breach with both hands, my veil-sight revealing every corrupted thread. How could I reweave this? The pattern seemed too complex and too damaged.
“Blood calls to blood,” Addie said, joining me. Fenmark leaned heavily against Lexie, barely conscious. “That’s what Velacross wrote. Our blood…is the thread.”
Understanding crashed through me. “We need to bleed into it. Let our magic flow through our blood to repair the weave.”
“It could kill us,” Addie said quietly.
“Then we die.”
We locked eyes. In hers, I found the strength of a woman who’d survived torture and veil-sickness and was still standing. She’d find the same in mine, the determination that had carried me through everything that came before.
My sister. My other half.
She gave me a nod. “Let’s do it, Isi.”
We each drew a blade and made cuts on our forearms, letting blood well up bright and red. It drizzled across our skin, gathering into droplets that fell across the breach. The moment it hit, silver and blue-white threads erupted from our wounds, diving into the corrupted pattern, seeking purchase.
The veil recognized us.
But it hurt. Damn, how it hurt. Agony roared through me.
Fire and ice and lightning poured through our blood into the fundamental fabric of reality. I gasped, my knees buckling, but I didn’t lower my arm.
Addie screamed. Her body flickered wildly between solid and shimmering, veil-sickness surging as she channeled everything she had into the breach.
“No,” Coralee shrieked. She tried to disengage from Trew, but Gavelle and Pherin blocked her path to us with walls of flame. Coralee’s companion lay on the ground, breathing, struggling to rise to its feet.
“You want Isi?” Trew snarled, pressing his attack. “Go through me first.”
The breach shuddered. Our blood and power wove through the corruption, transforming it, healing it from within.
We were slowly weaving the broken segments back together.
The true pattern began to emerge, spiraling, tightening as the ragged edges knitted into the complex mesh it must’ve been before our grandfather broke it.
But this wasn’t enough. We were healing it too slowly. At this rate, we’d run out of blood and strength before the breach closed.
Lord Alfred broke past Derren with a brutal strike that sent him crashing to the ground. Kira, still pale from her imprisonment, threw herself between them, taking a slash across her shoulder that made her blade arm drop.
The remaining Skathes pressed closer, knocking our companions to the ground.
Nim bellowed, his silver scales streaked with Skathe blood as he slashed his tail and fangs, fighting off a dozen at once with Levar by his side.
Kira’s python coiled around others, crushing them, but more latched onto her with their blade-sharp teeth, dragging her down.
Keek and Dare slashed through the endless mass of bodies but couldn’t reach us.
We were losing.
“Isi,” Addie whispered. Her face had gone paper-white. “I can’t. I don’t think I can do it any longer.”
“Hold on,” I begged. “Please, just hold on.”
Coralee laughed, the sound cutting through everything else. “You can’t stop this. I’ve been planning it for hundreds of years. Every death, every sacrifice, and every drop of harvested magic has built toward this moment.”
She attacked Trew with a flurry of strikes so fast they blurred. He blocked them, his training and skill keeping him alive, but I could see his strength flagging. The wound in his chest bled freely now, and his breathing came hard.
“I will unmake this world,” Coralee shouted, her voice rising. “Tear down the barrier between realms and rebuild reality with myself at its core.”
“You’re mad,” Trew snarled, parrying another strike.
“I’m inevitable.” She feinted left and struck right. Her blade slipped past Trew’s guard and punched through his chest with a wet sound that stopped my heart.
Time slowed to frozen horror.
Trew’s eyes went wide. His sword fell from his nerveless fingers. Dark red spread across his tunic, spreading dark and fast as Coralee twisted the blade.
“Trew!” His name ripped from my throat in a scream that tasted of endless despair.