Chapter 20 Leora
LEORA
The axe begins its descent.
It moves with a terrifying slowness, a gleaming arc of execution carving through the stagnant, dust-choked air. Time does not stop; it stretches, pulling the moment taut until it sings with the unbearable tension of a snapping wire.
Imas looks at me. His lips form the shapes of three words.
I love you.
The sound does not bridge the distance between us, but the meaning strikes me like a wrecking ball at full speed. It hits the center of my chest, shattering the fragile composure I have been clinging to since the first stone fell.
It is not a promise. It is a eulogy.
He is saying goodbye. He is accepting that he—the Master of Night, the Khuzuth Lord who terrified a city—is going to die on his knees in the dirt, powerless, while I watch.
Something inside me fractures.
It starts as a sob, a jagged shard of grief lodging in my throat.
Why? Why is it always this way? Why am I always the spectator to my own ruin?
I was a child when they put me in chains.
I was a girl when they taught me to be invisible.
I have spent my life holding my breath, making myself small, building walls to keep the ocean of the world’s pain from drowning me.
And for what? To stand here, held by the rough hands of soldiers, while the only person who ever saw me—the only person who saw me for who I am—is butchered like cattle?
No.
The word screams through my mind, louder than the roar of the blood in my ears.
Is this my fate? To be the thing that is taken? To be the thing that is broken?
I look at Malek. I see the glee in his red eyes, the arrogant, unchecked power radiating from his skin like heat off a furnace. He thinks he has won. He thinks power is a heavy axe and a loud voice.
He does not know what power is.
He does not know what happens when you compress a lifetime of fear into a single point of density.
The grief in my chest curdles. It boils, turning from the watery weakness of sorrow into something white-hot and solid. It is rage. It is a cold, blinding fury that tastes of iron and ancient starlight.
I am done being the dam, I think.
The soldier holding my hair yanks my head back, forcing me to watch the axe fall.
I do not pull away. I lean into it.
I find the barrier in my mind—the fortress of gray stone I built to keep the empathy out, to keep the Purna curse contained. I don't just open the gate.
I tear the walls down.
My vision goes black. Not the darkness of unconsciousness, but the absolute, starry void of my heritage. I feel my pupils dilate, swallowing the sapphire, swallowing the whites, until my eyes are twin tunnels into the Aether.
The air around me drops fifty degrees in a heartbeat.
The soldier’s hand on my hair freezes. Frost blooms on his gauntlet.
I open my mouth, and I scream.
It is not a sound that vibrates the air. It is a psychic shockwave, a spear of pure, concentrated will thrust outward into the mental fabric of the room.
I do not push calm. I do not push peace.
I reach into the darkest, most terrified corner of Imas’s memories—the place where his god used to live—and I pull it out.
I reconstruct the horror he lived with for centuries.
I take the image of The Serpent—the devouring, endless hunger, the coils that crush the world—and I project it into the minds of every living thing in this room.
LOOK AT HIM, I command the room. LOOK AT THE GOD YOU FEAR.
The psychic blast hits Lord Malek first.
The axe stops inches from Imas’s neck. Malek freezes, his muscles locking up as if turned to stone.
His mouth opens in a silent O of absolute horror.
He does not see Imas kneeling before him anymore. In his mind, I have replaced Imas with a viper the size of a mountain. I make him feel the scales sliding over his skin, cold and wet. Make him feel the fangs sinking into his soul. I make him experience the digestion.
"Get out!" Malek shrieks, dropping the axe. It clatters to the stone floor, missing Imas by a hairsbreadth.
Malek claws at his face. He digs his nails into his cheeks, tearing ribbons of gray skin, trying to rip the vision out of his eyes.
"It’s inside me!" he screams, his voice shredding. "It’s eating me!"
Blood begins to drip from his nose. Then his ears. Then his eyes. His brain is hemorrhaging, unable to process the sheer, crushing weight of the illusion I have forced upon him. The Warrior’s magic within him flares, trying to fight back, but you cannot fight a nightmare with a sword.
The soldiers holding me let go. They don't just release me; they fling themselves away, backing into the walls, whimpering like beaten dogs.
I stand alone in the midst of the chaos. My hair floats around my face, lifted by the static charge of the magic pouring off me. I feel light. I feel terrible. I feel like a star going supernova.
I look at the archers on the balcony. They are trained killers. They are fearless.
I turn my gaze up to them.
You want to see death? I ask them, my thoughts booming in their skulls like thunder. Then see it.
I push the sensation of drowning into them. I fill their lungs with phantom water. I make them feel the pressure of the deep ocean crushing their ribs.
The first archer drops his bow and clutches his throat, gagging, his face turning purple.
The second one screams—a high, thin sound of madness. He looks at his own hands and sees snakes. He sees his fingers turning into vipers that are biting his own wrists.
"Get them off!" he wails, dropping to his knees. He begins to claw at his arms, tearing at his own armor, scratching until he hits flesh.
"My eyes!" another screams, digging his knuckles into his sockets. "The shadows are biting my eyes!"
Chaos erupts. It is not the controlled Chaos of the Khuzuth; it is the messy, wet panic of prey animals trapped in a burning cage.
I look down at Imas.
He is the only one untouched. He crouches on the floor, staring up at me. His face is splattered with mud and blood, his expression one of utter, paralyzed awe. He sees the blackness of my eyes. He feels the storm radiating from me. He knows that I am dismantling an army with nothing but a thought.
He does not look afraid. He looks... vindicated.
But I cannot stop. The dam is gone, and the ocean is rushing out. I am burning through my reserves, burning through my life force. My knees shake. The edges of my vision fray into white light.
I focus on Malek. He is on his knees now, retching blood onto the stone floor, his mind shattered into a thousand jagged pieces.
Die, I tell him.
It is a simple command. A push of empathy twisted into a weapon. I make his heart realize how tired it is. I make his brain realize how much it hurts to be alive. I make his body sympathize with the dust.
Malek gasps. His red eyes roll back in his head. He slumps forward, face-planting into the stone, his massive body twitching once, then going still.
Silence falls.
It is the silence of the grave as if the god of death has comme.
The soldiers are catatonic, curled into fetal balls, lost in their own personal hells. The archers on the balcony have stopped screaming, reduced to sobbing heaps of broken armor.
I sway. The power cuts out as abruptly as it began, leaving a vacuum that sucks the air from the room. The blackness recedes from my vision, and the world rushes back in a blur of gray and red.
My legs give way.
I fall, expecting the hard impact of the stone.
I do not hit the floor.
Imas is there. He catches me, his arms wrapping around me, pulling me against his chest. He is trembling, vibrating with the aftershocks of the power I unleashed.
"Leora," he gasps against my hair.
I try to answer, but I have no voice. I have no strength. I have emptied myself completely.
I gaze past his shoulder, up toward the balcony. One of the archers stands up, swaying. He has clawed his own face into a ruin. He looks down at us, blind and mad, and lets out a final, gurgling scream before toppling over the railing, plummeting to the stone below with a wet crunch.
Then, darkness takes me.