Fourteen #2
“Oh, I very much doubt that,” Atheron sneers.
The silence stretches until I can barely think. I position myself in front of Marissa, shielding her with my body as I draw my Mana to the surface.
Atheron steps back, nodding at Serraith. “Let’s see if he’s paying attention.”
The next attack is coordinated—Serraith and Maleiros move as one, their fire converging in a spiral that strikes the half dome of light I manage to summon.
The heat is staggering, a physical force that buckles my knees.
A scream tears out of me, furious and raw, as the golden light pulses, barely holding.
“Go now!” I shout and shove Marissa as hard as I can. She stumbles, then runs, animal-like panic propelling her forward. The Fireborn don’t chase her, but Serraith launches a fireball that clips her shoulder.
I shout her name as she falls, shrieking in pain. Somehow, she hauls herself to her feet and vanishes into the mist, legs trembling beneath her.
Atheron doesn’t move, just watches her go with a small, satisfied smile. “No matter. She is unimportant.”
He gestures at me, bored. “Perhaps we should finish this. It seems your Prince doesn’t care after all.”
Maleiros steps up, his hand crackling with dark orange flames.
I’m about to get up, to stand tall even if it kills me, when I feel a presence behind me.
Lyssandra, still kneeling, opens her eyes and looks directly at me. Her eyes are swirling pools of water, her face utterly serene.
“Fight, son of the sea. Darkness comes,” she says, but the voice is not her own.
Maleiros swings his hand toward me, flame erupting like a whip.
I throw up my shield. It splinters, bright gold against the flames, and the world explodes in heat and light.
Marissa is gone. Lyssandra waits for death. The Fireborn stand before me with murder in their eyes, and whatever called through Lyssandra has left me with a command I don’t understand.
I’m scared. But I'm still here. I’ve run away my whole life. Not this time.
I will not let these monsters break me.
Let them try.
The Fireborn don’t talk now; they don’t need to. They hunt in concert, a practised rhythm: one attacks, two fall back, then the pattern rotates. There’s no wasted movement—only the sound of fire meeting my shield and the measured certainty of trained killers at work.
I stagger, breathing heat. Every breath scalds my lungs and leaves them raw, like my chest is lined with burning sand. The golden shield flickers, the veins in my arms spiderwebbing blue and red as I strain to hold each barrier in place, no matter how quickly they burn away.
Serraith goes high, launching a whip of fire that carves across my vision and scorches my cheek.
Maleiros keeps low, sending a roiling ball of fire at my knees, forcing me to stretch my shield wide enough that the impact nearly takes my balance.
Each attack chips away at my energy, at my confidence, at my belief that any of this matters.
Atheron watches, arms folded, smile flat and unimpressed. “I expected more from you,” he says, like this is a casual conversation. Like I’m not fighting for my life.
Lyssandra’s prayer is the only constant. Behind me, she is still kneeling, her hair stuck to her forehead with sweat but her voice never wavering. Every time I want to collapse and let the flames consume me, I hear her: a low, sweet drone. A lullaby as the world burns.
I move between her and the Fireborn, not by choice but by instinct. My shield splinters again and again, but I keep putting myself in their line of fire, absorbing every attack meant for her.
Atheron starts to pace. “I’ve witnessed hundreds of deaths,” he says. “Many at my own hands. But it is rare to see someone so willing to die for another. Rarer still for someone from another Dominion. Strange, really.”
I want to spit at him, to snarl that killing people isn’t normal. Enjoying it is worse. But my tongue doesn’t work and my mouth is too dry to form words.
The Mother Shard’s death counter stays stubbornly at five. Rask is still alive. Kael isn’t coming.
A spike of panic lances through me. Maybe Kael never cared. Maybe he saw how weak I am and decided I was not worth saving. Maybe revenge matters more to him than I do. The thoughts hurt worse than the burns.
The next hit comes from all three at once. A circle of fire closes in, sucking the air from my lungs. I conjure a dome of light around Lyssandra and me, but the heat is unbearable, like breathing shards of glass.
The shield bursts into golden dust, and Lyssandra’s song stops. She gasps, starving for air.
I drop to one knee, my hands burning on the scorching stone.
Atheron steps in, his face slick with sweat, and presses a burning palm to my forehead. “Time’s up,” he whispers.
I scream. Not from fear—just pain, raw and brutal. The world blurs.
Maleiros moves toward Lyssandra.
And something inside me snaps.
Fear, rage, loss, love—everything combusts in a single, blinding moment.
My Mana, all the light I have left, explodes.
There’s no thought. There’s just the shockwave.
Light pours out of me in a sphere, golden and white, expanding faster than breath.
It slams into the Fireborn, hurling them back as if they weigh nothing.
It rips Atheron’s hand from my face and sends him flying.
The same shockwave tears Lyssandra off her knees, throwing her towards the edge of the island.
The air crackles, the stone shudders. Somewhere beneath me, the floating rock groans and shakes, the veins of blue pulsing.
I fall to my hands and knees, vomiting bile. My eyes won’t focus, but I hear nothing—no footsteps, no voices, not even the wind.
Lyssandra’s faint, shocked gasp breaks the silence as she starts to slip over the edge. She clings on, eyes wide and uncomprehending, as if her body has betrayed her faith by wanting to live.
The Fireborn are scattered across the stone, stunned or broken. I can’t tell.
I blink, and the only thing left inside me is static.
The silence is absolute.
The world is empty.
Time thins.
First, the silence ebbs away, overtaken by the sound of my own heart. Then sweat drips from my face and arms, each droplet sizzling on the cracked, burning stone beneath me. I’m hunched over, the skin on my arms blistered where the flames grazed me.
I force my head up. Across the field, the Fireborn are in various states of ruin—Maleiros is crumpled, unmoving; Serraith drags himself upright, but his leg is twisted in the wrong direction; Atheron is in a heap, eyes closed and unconscious, bleeding from a split in his temple.
But it’s not them I care about.
Lyssandra is at the island’s edge, her body sprawled, clinging to the slick stone with every finger, her boots skidding uselessly. Her face is slack with shock, her lips moving without sound. Her eyes are wide, her knuckles white as she tries not to fall.