Twenty Seven #2
I land on my knees, sucking wet air into my lungs, vision swimming in pain and adrenaline. The sand is freezing against my skin.
The Overseer’s mask leaks a pink-white fluid that evaporates the moment it hits the air. The Overseer shudders on the ground, hands covering its face, unable to correct the damage.
I can hurt them.
The realisation is so violent, I begin to laugh.
The Mother Shard’s response is immediate.
Every Overseer on the beach howls at once, their voices merging and breaking apart into something hideous.
“Stop this!”
“Do not—”
“You are my—”
“PLEASE—”
The word is so loud it rattles my teeth.
The army of Overseers stutters. Some split at the seams, opening and closing like torn parchment. Some wink in and out of existence, appearing in one place, then another, in staccato blinks. Some are stuck in a loop, repeating the same movement again and again.
The chanting is gone.
The only sound is the noise of a god in panic, yanking the strings of every vessel it owns.
They swarm in an instant. Every Overseer rushes forward, their movements no longer ritual or elegant. Their faces are set in a thousand variations of terror and violence and grief. The sound of their bodies is a stampede of shattering glass.
I throw up the biggest shield I have ever made, around Kael and me. The dome is golden-white, so bright that the rain trapped inside turns to diamonds as it scatters. More veins of red run through the shield, pulsing in time with my own heartbeat.
The first Overseers slam into the shield and are repelled, smashing back like birds into glass.
More crawl over it, climbing on each other, pushing faces and entire bodies against the barrier.
Some try to phase through, their faces stretching into the dome, mouths open in silent shrieks, before the light forces them out.
The sound of the rain on the dome is deafening. The air inside shudders as the pressure outside mounts. Kael is next to me, crouched, one hand on my back, the other pressed to his chest. His shadows are barely alive, flickering in and out like the last breath of a candle.
I am shaking so hard I can barely hold the shield.
The world outside is chaos—so many hands and faces, all screaming at me to stop.
But I won’t.
Kael looks at me, eyes so black that for a moment I lose myself in them. He smiles, weak but honest.
“You’re going to break yourself to save us, aren’t you?” he says, blood mixing with his teeth.
I put my hand over his. The shield falters at the touch, but it holds. “I won’t give you up,” I say, and the words come out raw and desperate.
He exhales, the smile barely holding. “I was doomed from the moment I laid eyes on you.”
Overhead, the death counter stutters.
Sixteen. Sixteen. Sixteen.
I won’t let it change again.
The Mother Shard’s voice returns. This time it is not a scream, not even a threat, but a low, broken sob.
“You could have been everything.”
The light starts to buckle.
I squeeze Kael’s hand, and he squeezes back. “You are everything,” he says, so soft it breaks me.
I brace myself.
The shield is going to fall.
The dome fails, not all at once but in a riot of cracks, each one splintering out from the last until the surface is nothing but a shell held together by the last threads of my willpower.
Kael’s shadows swirl at the cracks, trying to patch them, but it takes more from him than he has left, and he chokes, coughing blood.
Skeletal fingers push through the nearest crack, bones snagging on the light before stretching inwards. Then an entire arm, then a half-formed face, a stranger’s lips moving in a silent scream. Dozens of hands crawl over the surface, battering and scraping at the thin membrane, desperate to breach.
Kael looks at me, face wet with rain and sweat. He puts a hand on my cheek, gentle and final.
“Don’t” he says.
“Don’t what?”
He smiles, lips trembling.
“Don’t die for me.”
I try to say something, anything, but all that comes out is a ragged breath. My hands shake so hard I almost lose the last of the shield, but I hold it, just a second more.
A new fracture splits the dome, directly above us. A long, slow whine, like a spring pulled too tight. The cracks fan outwards, and I feel the pressure change, as though the world is holding its breath.
I glance at the red counter, then back at the cracks, then at Kael. “I’m sorry,” I say.
He shakes his head, drawing me close. He presses our foreheads together, the touch almost searing.
“I’ve been dead since the moment I was born,” he whispers. “But you make me want to live. Even if it’s just for you.”
The pressure in my bones is too much. The pain is blinding, and I know I can’t hold it much longer.
I make a choice.
I let the shield fall.
Not because I failed.
No.
Because I choose to.
The dome shatters in a hail of light, the pieces dissolving before they hit the ground. A dozen Overseers surge towards us, glass masks gleaming, skeletal hands outstretched.
Kael shoves me back. “Stay behind me.”
I grab his arm and pull him round to face me. “Run,” I say, desperate. “Please, Kael. I can hurt them. I can hold them off. I won’t lose you too.”
He looks past me at the swarm, jaw tightening. For a moment, I think he’s going to refuse.
But he looks back at me, his smile turning small and sad and certain. “I told you, you were dangerous.”
Then he’s gone. Into the shadows. He fades between one heartbeat and the next, vanishing beyond the chaos. The Overseers twist and writhe, searching for him for a few frantic seconds before turning back to me.
I try to ready myself, but there is no way to prepare for the press of their bodies.
They hit me all at once, an avalanche of hands and glass and static.
I’m driven to the ground, knees digging into the wet sand, back arching as the weight of them piles on.
One grabs my face and I smell the metallic tang of my own blood.
Another claws at my ribs, fingers pressing so hard I feel the scrape of bone.
A third catches my shoulder and squeezes until the world blurs with pain.
I scream, but the sound is lost in the swarm. Thunder cracks so close it feels like my skull is shattering, but the Overseers are relentless, trying to pull me apart.
I end up flat on my stomach, hands pinned above my head, spindly feet on my spine, crushing me into the sand.
My cheek scrapes against grit, blood and rain mixing in the little hollow where my face is pressed.
I try to move, to summon any kind of light, but the hum in my head is so loud, so vicious, that I can barely even twitch my arms.
And in that crushing dark, the world opens up.
Time slows to a trickle.
I hear her voice. Not booming. Not divine. Not even loud.
Right next to my ear, a gentle whisper.
“It could have been you, my Light.”
The words are warm, familiar, and for a fleeting moment, I almost give in.
But then I remember Marissa dying in my arms.
I remember Nyxen and Vaelis, and the way they never let go.
I remember Kael, and the last thing I saw of him before he slipped into the shadows: a smile that said goodbye.
And I say, “No.”
The word is tiny. But it’s the only thing I have.
The world reacts, and there is no word for what happens next.
The rain above stops, mid-fall. The hands pinning me freeze in place, then start to dissolve, not into dust or shards, but into nothing.
The bodies of the Overseers, so heavy and solid a breath ago, start to lose their outline, splintering at the edges, then evaporating from the world.
Erased, mid-scream. The humming that filled my ears goes silent in an instant, all the noise cut off at once, leaving only the sound of the sea and my own breath.
The effect radiates outward.
The blackness of the beach gives way to light as the world turns white-gold from the sand to the horizon. For one surreal moment, the entire world is made of sunlight born from me.
When the effect fades, there is nothing left of the Overseers—not even ash.
The storm resumes, but it’s just a storm now.
I roll onto my side, gasping for air, rain hitting my face in cold sheets. I try to stand, but my legs won’t hold me. I vomit in the sand, retching until my ribs hurt, then I retch some more.
When I can finally move, the first thing I do is look for Kael.
He is nowhere.
He must have run, as I asked.
Or he is dead.
I pray it’s the first.
Then I hear it—not a sound from the sky or the sea, but from everywhere at once. From inside the crystal tower, from inside my own skull, from beneath my feet.
The Mother Shard is weeping.
Not a god’s scream, not the thunderclap of retribution, but a slow, deep, unstoppable sobbing. The sadness is so immense, so old, it feels like the sky itself could collapse from the weight.
I want to curse her. But I can’t.
“Kael?”
Nothing.
Just rain. Just the sea. Just the sound of the Mother Shard crying.
My chest caves in around the grief. I sit there, knees in the sand, head tipped up towards the sky, listening to the sound of something immortal breaking.
I force myself to look at the Shard. It still stands, but now there is a crack—one clean line, splitting the crystal from top to bottom. A wound that cannot be healed.
The sixteen turns to gold, still burning at the centre, alive and incomplete.
But a god is bleeding because of me.
I stay there in the rain, waiting for Kael. I know he will come.
When his hand finally finds my shoulder, I almost break apart.
“Luceris,” he says softly.
I turn toward him.
The storm still rages overhead. The Shard still weeps. The count still burns sixteen.
But Kael is alive.
And for the first time since entering the Blood Rites, I don’t know what happens next.