Chapter 22
“Creation survives because, over and over again, someone chooses to love another person more than they love themselves.” ~The Great Luna
Gerick stared at the book waiting. He knew what was coming the moment the Great Luna had told him that the foundations had started shaking. It was as if she’d poured into his mind exactly what was coming without actually telling him.
“Why are we staring at the book?” Peri asked. But Gerick just held up his hand. The high fae huffed but didn’t say anything more.
He counted under his breath, grounding himself, preparing himself for whatever it was he must do. Great Luna help him; he hoped he had the strength to do it. Then . . .
The Nushtonia screamed.
The sound tore through the Draheim Realm hard enough to split stone beneath Gerick’s boots.
Every draheim in the forest rose at once, ancient shadows shifting between the trees as silver mist exploded outward from the mountainside where the book rested atop the altar stone. Lucian swore sharply beside him while Lilly’s magic flared instinctively around her hands.
Just as he thought, the foundations were collapsing. And Myanin was at the center of it.
The Nushtonia pulsed violently again. Then split open. Not physically.
The air above it fractured instead, gold light ripping through the clearing in jagged lines as ancient magic poured outward hard enough to bend the surrounding trees.
Inside the tear . . .
Gerick saw her.
Myanin stood in a corridor of burning parchment while Shade fought creatures made from living shadow around her. The book itself had begun unraveling, pages ripping loose into the air like dying birds, as the corruption surging through the foundations reached upward into the Nushtonia.
The prison was breaking.
“Myanin!” Gerick shouted.
Her head jerked toward him.
For one impossible heartbeat, their eyes met across realms. Relief crossed her face so fast it nearly killed him. Then the corridor beneath her feet cracked open. Darkness surged upward. Shade caught her before she fell.
And Gerick understood. The book had never trapped Myanin accidentally.
It had pulled her toward the unresolved fracture in her soul because the corruption feeding through the realms thrived on divided truths. On broken vows. On love twisted against itself until it became guilt and possession and fear.
The Nushtonia fed on hidden things.
And Myanin . . .
She had spent years trying to split herself into pieces that could survive loving two people differently, even if she hadn’t realized it.
The foundations could not stabilize around division.
They required truth.
Gerick stepped toward the fractured opening before anyone could stop him.
“Gerick,” Lucian snapped.
“He’s figured it out,” Lilly whispered.
Of course, she understood. Lilly had loved two people differently, so of course she’d see before the others.
The corruption exploded through the tear in the realm again, slamming into the edges of the opening hard enough to destabilize the entire clearing.
The draheim roared through the surrounding forest.
Gerick never looked away from Myanin. And he realized the moment she saw it. The understanding.
“No,” she said immediately.
Even across realms, he heard the panic in her voice.
Shade’s eyes locked onto Gerick’s.
There was no triumph in the djinn male’s face.
Only dread.
Good.
Gerick would have hated him if there had been triumph.
“You don’t get to do this,” Myanin shouted.
A sad smile pulled briefly at Gerick’s mouth. There she was. Furious even now.
“The foundations are tied to truth,” he said quietly.
The tear in the realm carried his voice to them.
To her.
The Nushtonia howled around Myanin and Shade as pages tore free from the corridor walls.
The book was dying.
Or changing.
Perhaps both.
“You are not making decisions for me,” Myanin snapped.
“No,” Gerick answered softly. “I’m taking the decision away from you. There’s a difference.”
Her face broke.
That nearly destroyed his resolve.
Gerick stepped closer to the opening.
Immediately, the magic binding the realms lashed around him like chains made from moonlight and fire. Pain ripped through his chest, sharp enough to stagger lesser males to their knees.
He remained standing. Because some pain mattered more than survival.
The Great Luna appeared beside the tear in silence. Moonlight bent around her form. Every creature in the clearing went still. Even the corruption recoiled.
“My son,” she said.
Gerick bowed his head once.
“My lady.”
The goddess looked at him with infinite grief. “You understand the choice now.”
“Yes.”
Myanin shook her head violently. “No. No, absolutely not. I forbid this entire conversation.”
Shade moved toward her instinctively, but she shoved him backward without even looking.
“I mean it!” she shouted.
Gerick’s chest ached so badly he could barely breathe.
Not because he feared death.
Because she was crying.
Great skies, he had never wanted her tears. Not once.
The Great Luna stepped closer to him. “The blessing tying your lives together preserved her path when it should have been severed.”
Gerick nodded slowly.
“But now,” the goddess continued softly, “the bond itself has become a crossroads.”
The corruption slammed violently against the tear in the realm again.
The foundations trembled beneath every realm simultaneously.
Far away, another scream.
“That’s Kara,” Peri said, rage filling her voice.
Gerick heard her pain and thought of the child she carried.
Everything was happening at once now.
The realms no longer had time for denial.
“What happens if I hold on?” Gerick asked quietly.
The Great Luna’s eyes filled with sorrow. “The foundations continue fracturing around divided truths.”
Myanin made a broken sound.
Shade closed his eyes briefly.
Gerick already knew the answer before he asked the next question.
“And if I let her go?”
The goddess looked toward Myanin.
“Then love becomes sacrifice instead of possession, and I will dissolve the bond that binds your lives.”
The words settled through the clearing.
Simple.
Terrible.
True.
Myanin crossed the corridor toward him frantically as the Nushtonia collapsed around her in burning strips of parchment and gold light.
“You do not get to decide if I’m worth dying for!” she screamed.
Gerick laughed softly despite the agony tearing through his chest.
“You know,” he said, voice roughened with emotion, “that may be the most affectionate thing you’ve ever yelled at me.”
She hit the tear hard enough to make it ripple. “Gerick.”
His name shattered in her voice.
Shade reached her then, gripping her shoulders as the corruption exploded upward through the corridor behind them.
The djinn male’s silver eyes met Gerick’s again.
Understanding passed silently between them.
Not friendship.
Not forgiveness.
Something harder earned than either.
Take care of her.
With my life.
Shade bowed his head once.
A warrior’s vow.
Gerick looked back at Myanin.
Every version of her seemed to exist at once inside his mind.
The warrior.
The survivor.
The furious female who sharpened grief into sarcasm because vulnerability offended her on a spiritual level.
The female who had trusted him enough to rest beside him in silence.
The female who had tried so desperately to love him correctly.
And Great Luna help him . . . she had loved him.
Just not in the way fate eventually demanded. That truth no longer felt like betrayal. Only sadness.
Gerick stepped fully into the tear. Pain exploded through him instantly.
Magic tore across his skin, silver and gold and black colliding violently as the foundations reacted to his choice.
“Myanin,” he said.
She was sobbing openly now.
He hated it.
“I need you to hear me.”
“No.”
“Myanin.”
“No!”
The command cracked through the collapsing corridor hard enough that even the Nushtonia stilled briefly around them.
She froze.
Gerick smiled softly. “There you are.”
Her breath hitched.
“You were never a burden to love,” he told her. “Not once.”
The corruption slammed upward again.
The foundations shook violently.
And far away . . .
a child cried for the first time.
Every realm stopped.
The sound traveled through existence itself.
New life.
Pure.
Untouched.
The foundations answered instantly.
Silver-gold light erupted through the fractures beneath the Troll Realm, surging outward across every connected realm like living dawn breaking through darkness. The corruption recoiled violently. The creatures born from it screamed.
Kara’s daughter had arrived. And creation itself recognized her.
Gerick felt the shift immediately: the foundations stabilizing–not healed, but holding. For now.
The Great Luna stepped forward, moonlight gathering around her hands.
“General,” she whispered.
Gerick looked at Myanin one final time.
She had stopped fighting Shade’s hold on her.
Not because she accepted this.
Because she understood she could not stop it.
The grief in her face would follow him into whatever waited beyond this life.
Good.
Some selfish part of him needed to know he mattered that much.
“I loved you the best way I knew how,” he said softly.
Myanin collapsed to her knees.
“You deserved that love,” he continued. “Even when you could not return it fully.”
The tear in the realm began sealing.
The foundations demanded balance.
Choice.
Release.
Gerick looked toward Shade.
“If you break her heart,” he said calmly, “I will haunt you personally.”
Shade gave a sharp, wrecked laugh. “I would consider you unworthy if you didn’t.”
Then Gerick turned toward the Great Luna.
And let go.
The magic binding his life to Myanin’s shattered.
Not violently.
Gently.
Like hands unclasping after holding on too long.
Silver light exploded outward across the realms.
The corruption recoiled fully from the foundations for one brief, impossible moment.
The Nushtonia screamed.
Then went silent.
The tear in the realm sealed shut.
And Gerick vanished.
* * *
Nick was crying. Kara would have mocked him for it later if she wasn’t currently too exhausted to remember her own middle name.
Their daughter lay against her chest wrapped in thick cloth while silver-gold light pulsed softly beneath the foundation chamber around them. The corruption had retreated beyond the lower fractures, not gone, but held back now by something fragile and newly awakened.
The baby blinked up at Kara with startlingly blue eyes.
Nick touched one tiny hand like he was afraid she might disappear.
“She’s perfect,” he whispered brokenly.
Kara smiled weakly.
Then the foundations trembled again.
Not collapsing.
Warning.
Verna stood at the edge of the platform staring into the abyss below with ancient sorrow carved deep into her face.
“It is only sleeping,” the elder female said quietly.
The Troll King approached beside her, his massive sword blackened with corruption. “The realms still weaken.”
Verna nodded once. “But now they remember how to resist.”
Kara looked down at her daughter.
The baby yawned.
Honestly? Very rude considering the emotional trauma she’d just caused everyone.
Nick kissed Kara’s forehead fiercely. “We survived.”
Kara looked toward the foundations. Toward the retreating corruption. Toward the fractures still spiderwebbing beneath the realms.
Then she wondered about the rest of their pack, if they were okay, if everyone had survived, or if they even knew. She thought about Raja. And far away . . . deep beneath every realm . . . something ancient still moved in the dark.
Her daughter shifted against her chest. The silver-gold light pulsed again. Temporary. Only temporary.
Kara rested her cheek against the baby’s head anyway. “For now,” she whispered.
* * *
Raja stood alone at the edge of the graveyard as silver light rolled briefly across the dead world beneath his feet. The foundations had stabilized. Interesting. They weren’t healed, just delayed. The child had bought them time. And Gerick . . .
Ah. Now that had surprised him.
Raja smiled slowly into the darkness. Sacrifice. The living did love making themselves vulnerable in the name of hope. How beautifully predictable.
Around him, graves trembled softly beneath the weakened veil between life and death.
The corruption still spread. The barriers still cracked. The foundations still bled. And now? Now the realms had something precious enough to fear losing.
Perfect.
Raja lifted his gaze toward the dark horizon where storm clouds swallowed the moon whole.
“Run while you can,” he whispered softly.
The dead beneath the earth began to stir.
And somewhere out of his reach, for now, a newborn child opened her eyes as the realms trembled once more.