Twenty Eight #2
I reach for Kael, and the rain passes through my hand. His fingers find mine anyway, and somehow, impossibly, they still fit.
We are witnesses. Here to watch what comes after.
The world blurs, colour and sound draining away until only outlines remain. The rain, the tower, the Mother Shard in her crystal coffin—everything gone except for Kael’s hand in mine.
He is here, with me, even if neither of us belong anywhere.
The first thing I see is not the sea or the sky, but an island.
It is the Water Dominion.
I am pulled there, not with my body, but with every sense I have ever possessed.
The cold is instant, and it’s the only thing that feels real.
The ocean goes silent as the water draws back from the shore, revealing the old bones of the world—cliffs and reefs that have never seen daylight in living memory.
Then, from the horizon, the ice comes. It is not gradual.
It is not slow. It runs from the edge of the sea to the heart of the Dominion in a single, merciless sweep.
The cities vanish beneath frost; the domes and spires of the Waterborn glaze over, coated in white.
Every river freezes mid-current as the harbours crack, ships impaled on spikes of frozen spray.
People run, but they are caught. Mothers with children, crews in the rigging, Blessed raising their hands in plea. All of them locked in a moment, preserved in ice.
The screams continue beneath the ice. Muffled. Trapped. Then even those fade.
Frost blooms across every surface until the Water Dominion resembles a jewel trapped beneath glass.
Beautiful. Frozen. Dead.
There is absolute silence as the world stops moving.
Kael’s fingers dig into my palm. I want to tell him I’m here, but I can’t. I try to look away, but the vision pulls me further in.
I see the Air Dominion next.
The floating cities tremble. At first, it seems harmless. A vibration. A shudder running through the enormous rings suspended above the clouds. Then the smallest islands break away. One. Then another. Then more.
Entire districts shear loose and tumble from the sky, towers and homes breaking apart as they fall. I watch them disappear into the clouds below. Seconds later, flashes of impact bloom across the distant ocean.
The larger islands begin to collide, stone screaming against stone as bridges snap and homes collapse. Crowds surge towards nowhere as the Dominion tears itself apart.
Lightning strikes. Not from the sky but from the islands themselves. Blue-white spears erupt from fractured foundations, splitting buildings in half. Every impact leaves crystal fractals crawling across the stone. The air fills with electricity, and people convulse where they stand.
Some burn; some vanish in blinding flashes; some rise, their bodies lifted into the storm as arcs of lightning wrap around their limbs and drag them screaming into the clouds.
The central ring fractures, and for one terrible moment it hangs suspended. Then it falls.
But it does not reach the ocean. Lightning catches it first.
A chain of blue-white current erupts from the broken ring, lashing outward to every remaining island and district. The whole Dominion flashes white, and for one impossible instant, everything is connected—rings, bridges, towers, bodies—held in place by veins of living electricity.
When the light fades, the world is different. The wind no longer obeys. The clouds glow from within. The remaining islands hang in the air, no longer steady, but bobbing slightly, suspended by chains of lightning that crawl between them like living veins.
The survivors rise. Not all of them, but some. Figures wreathed in blue-white lightning climb from the rubble. Electricity crawls beneath their skin. They stand amongst the ruins of their world and look upward, as though listening.
The Air Dominion is gone and something else has taken its place.
Kael’s hand tightens around mine, but neither of us speak because there is nothing to say.
I chose him. One life against the will of a god. And now the world is answering.
I try to scream, but I’m only a ghost.
Ruin’s voice cuts through. “New Crowns will rise.”
Their voice fills the world, louder than the storm, louder than the chaos. “New beginnings require endings. The strong will survive. The powerful will thaw.”
Kael’s hand is all I have. I grip it tight, as though will alone can keep me with him while guilt hollows me out.
We are powerless. We are witnesses.
I try to fight it, to do anything—to twist away, to hide—but it’s futile. Instead, I turn towards Ruin’s presence in the void. I feel its weight, its cruel serenity. “Take me instead,” I say. The words are barely a thought, barely a whisper.
Ruin’s answer comes instantly, no malice or mockery. It is just final. “You already chose,” they say. “The moment you refused the count.”
Something in my gut gives way.
"This is the shape of that choice."
The words cut deeper than any wound from the trials. All of it. The murders. The sacrifices. We were given a choice, and we made it.
That’s the worst part.
I want to weep, but I don’t have the body to do it.
The vision lurches and time snaps back.
I am on the beach, gasping, knees in the sand, hands clutching at the world as though I can piece it back together. Kael is next to me, blood and rain streaking down his face. He is white to the lips, one hand braced in the sand, breath shuddering in his chest.
We made it through. The Blood Rites are over. Kael is alive.
But somewhere beyond the sea, entire Dominions are dying for us.
Ruin calls it a cost.
I wonder what the dead would call it.
Rain and blood and salt run into my eyes as I kneel in the sand. I don’t care who sees me like this. Kael is at my side, one hand on my shoulder. His touch is grounding, but I’m not sure if he means to hold me together or if he’s trying to keep me from flying apart.
Ruin stands a few paces away, the lines of their form no longer shifting as fast. They have settled into something almost human, tall and lean, but with a face that rearranges every time I blink.
The eyes never match, and the mouth is a collection of different smiles, stitched together from strangers I’ve never met.
They pace the shore, bare feet making no mark on the wet sand. The rain flows sideways around their body, parting like a river around a stone.
Kael’s grip on my shoulder tightens, his breath sharp, audible over the hiss of the storm.
Ruin stops pacing and turns to us, hands behind their back. “Your prize,” they say, the words clear and ringing with finality.
They gesture, and above my head the air splits. Two crowns appear, spinning in place. One is white-gold, blinding, woven from light and glass. The other is black as the depths, a living thing of shadow and bone, always moving.
They spiral together, collapsing into two orbs of light and dark before tearing apart. The light drops towards me, strikes my brow, and passes through my skull into my chest.
The feeling is not power, but exposure. Every wall I’ve built, every lie I’ve told myself, it all peels away. The light in me burns so raw and bright that it hurts, fighting me before it settles.
I am a scar with a pulse.
The shadow follows a heartbeat later, sinking into Kael's chest. He gasps, and for the first time since I've known him, he looks surprised.
His eyes are wet, but it’s not rain this time. He’s looking at me like he’s already lost me.
Ruin watches us, and I hate how patient they look.
“Time for you to go home,” they say.
Kael stirs, as if waking from a nightmare. “No,” he says, his hand finding the back of my neck. “We don’t have to—”
But we do.
I stand, swaying. My limbs don’t want to answer me, but the new thing inside me is already hungry. It wants to fight. It wants to become.
I pull away from Kael’s grip. He lets go, but his hand follows, fingers twitching.
I turn on Ruin, all the anger in me boiling to the surface. “You call this a prize?”
Ruin smiles with six mouths at once. “This is more than you ever wanted.”
I bare my teeth and reach for the light. Not the safe, careful kind, but the uninhibited one that killed the Overseers. I let it run up my arms, burning away the rain, the pain, the fear.
I aim it at Ruin and unleash. The blast is not a shield, but a howl—a denial of everything this thing wants from me. The world turns gold, then black, then shatters.
Ruin stands in the middle of it, laughing. They absorb the hit without flinching.
“Not yet,” Ruin says.
They turn to Kael. “Perhaps in time.” Their voice is softer now. “You are his, after all.”
Kael recoils as if struck.
I go still.
“What does that mean?” I say, but my voice is not my own. It sounds like something dragged out of a wound.
Ruin bows.
“Ask the sea.”
The wind lashes Kael’s hair to his face as he steps towards me, taking me in. For once, I am not afraid to be seen.
Ruin raises a hand in farewell. “Until we meet again, Crown of Light.”
Then, with a smile to Kael that is a thousand years old:
“Crown of Shadow.”
Ruin snaps their fingers, and the world cracks.
Kael grabs my wrist. Hard. Desperate. As though the world might take me from him.
Maybe it will.
His mouth opens. He looks like he wants to say a hundred things.
Instead, he says my name.
"Luceris."
Just that. My name.
I think that's enough.
I hold on to him as the world comes apart around us.
Neither of us lets go.
Then everything goes white.