Chapter Forty-Six
KAEL
The wind tightens around me, the pressure sinking into my chest like an invisible weight. The world outside the tunnel of turquoise light is gone—nothing but silence, nothing but this.
Elyssara stands beside me, breath shallow, eyes wide, lost in whatever truth the heavens are whispering to her. But I don’t hear what she hears. I hear something else entirely.
A slow hum grows, deep and resonant, a vibration that isn’t sound but feels like it’s pulling me apart thread by thread. My body locks against it, every instinct urging me to resist, but it doesn’t matter—the heavens have already decided.
The sighing shifts, curling through my mind, pressing into my chest like something alive, something searching.
And then, it speaks.
Not with words. Not with sound. But with haunting certainty.
“You were sent to destroy her.”
A cold stillness settles into my spine. No. It can’t be right. The heavens are wrong. They have to be fucking wrong. But the words press deeper, slicing like steel between my ribs.
“You are the balance. The blade at the throat of power unchecked.
If she’s destroyed, the world is saved. If she isn’t, all is lost.”
I don’t breathe. I don’t move.
The air feels thinner, sharper, pressing into my skull until it might split open.
“She is not salvation, unless destroyed. She is ruin. And you are the one that must destroy her before the fire spreads.”
My fists clench at my sides, nails digging into my palms, but the pressure in my chest won’t ease. The weight of the words coils in my gut like a slow-turning dagger.
Elyssara is shifting beside me now—her face soft with wonder, or hope, or with relief perhaps. She doesn’t look at me, doesn’t see the way my breath comes sharp and uneven, like something inside me is fracturing.
She doesn’t know what I’ve heard.
The wind around us begins to fracture, the tunnel of light flickering, fading. Reality is rushing back in, the Stars overhead returning to their watchful stillness, but the words remain.
Heavy. Unyielding. A command. A fate.
Destroy her.
The silence that follows is absolute. The mountain air bites against my skin, sharp and cold, but I barely feel it.
Elyssara exhales, steadying herself. And smiles. She fucking smiles. The sight of it almost cripples me.
I force my face into something unreadable. Something she won’t question.
She doesn’t know what I’ve been told.
And Stars help me, I don’t know if I can do it.
And Stars help us all if I can't.