Chapter 43 #2
When the flames clear, Varam collapses to his knees, his clothes blackened and smoking.
Sereven gives a flick of his wrist, casual as swatting a fly, and he’s thrown backward the same way Mira was.
He hits the ground beside her on his back with arms and legs spread at unnatural angles.
His eyes are closed, his chest doesn’t rise and fall.
There is just a terrible, awful stillness.
My world narrows to that single, unbearable sight. Varam—my closest friend, the man who stood beside me through every battle, who never once questioned my right to lead—reduced to a broken form against unforgiving stone.
Shadows explode around me, responding to the grief and rage coursing through me. They tear across the cavern, seeking Sereven with murderous intent. But when they reach him, the crystal devours them, and the feedback sends agony tearing through my skull.
“You bastard!” I launch myself forward, abandoning any strategy I had formed, any plan I might have conceived. There is only fury now, only the need to make him pay for what he’s taken from me.
Sereven meets my charge with a combination of fire, wind, and earth, all manifesting at the same time in ways that shouldn’t be possible.
The attack sends me sprawling onto my back.
I hit the ground hard, rolling to absorb the impact as best I can.
When I come to a stop and look up, Sereven is standing over me, crystal shards blazing with a sickly blue light.
Blood drips down his face from beneath the crystal pieces, but he shows no sign that it’s weakening him. If anything, the carnage seems to energize him more.
“Do you remember when we were children?” His voice has taken on an almost conversational tone, as if we're sitting by a fire sharing memories instead of locked in mortal combat.
“You always believed you could save everyone. Always thought your protection was enough to keep the people you cared about safe.”
I try to push myself upright, but my body doesn’t respond properly.
The constant drain from the crystal's presence is making me weak, and turning my shadows thin and insubstantial.
Even my connection to the void feels distant, filtered through layers of interference that grow thicker with each passing moment.
“I tried to teach you better.” He raises his hand. “Tried to show you that sentiment makes you weak. But you never learned. And now look where it’s brought you.”
Power erupts from his outstretched palm.
Fire, and shadow, and ice, and stone, all directed at me with killing force.
I try to roll aside, but my body doesn’t respond fast enough.
The attack is too broad, too powerful, and covering too much ground for me to evade them all.
My weakened shadows offer no protection against the onslaught.
This is it. This is how I die. Not in battle, but overwhelmed by power wielded by someone who was supposed to be my closest ally, my blood, my brother.
Then silver light explodes from across the cavern, as Ellie throws herself into the path of Sereven’s assault.
Her power meets his in a collision that shakes the foundations of Blackvault. Where lightning encounters his power, the air twists and bends. The sound is indescribable—like thunder made of breaking glass, like the earth itself is screaming in protest.
But even her intervention isn’t enough. The combined assault is too much for any single power to counter, and I watch in horror as the chaotic energies begin to overwhelm her defenses, pushing through her lightning strikes and getting closer to her body.
She’s going to die protecting me. Just like Varam. Just like everyone who has ever made the mistake of standing close enough for me to care about them.
The realization breaks something inside me.
All the control I’ve kept over my emotions, all the strategic thinking that has kept me functional through years of war, and loss, and torture, and captivity.
It all crumbles in the face of watching the person I love most about to sacrifice herself for my failure.
My shadows respond to the breakdown, becoming wild and uncontrolled.
They pour out of me like blood from a severed artery, no longer following my commands, but feeding off the emotions I can no longer contain.
When they encounter Sereven’s dead zones, they don’t dissipate, they turn violent, lashing out like whips.
Some reach the crystal shards themselves, twining around them and ripping them partially free. Sereven screams as they shift in his flesh. But it’s not enough. The crystal glows brighter, and burns through the shadows once again.
“This is what you have never understood,” he shouts, voice strained. “Power without the will to use it properly is worthless. Strength wasted on protecting the weak is no strength at all.”
Blood is flowing from his eyes and nose now, but he doesn’t stop, and he doesn’t retreat. I don’t know if it’s the crystal or his own twisted obsession that’s driving him forward, demanding more violence, more destruction, and more proof of his superiority over me.
Ice spears hurtle toward Ellie’s position. She manages to deflect most of them, but one grazes her shoulder, sending blood spattering across the platform. The sight of her injury sends fresh fury through my already fractured control.
“You want to see strength, Sereven?” I snarl, desperation and fear for Ellie making me reckless beyond all reason. “Let me show you what protecting people really means.”
I reach for Voidcraft again. “Haael devan korveth’an!” Let stillness claim what corruption has seized.
The incantation tears out of me with the last of my strength, filled with every memory of the people I’ve loved and lost, every promise I’ve made to keep others safe, every moment of joy and devastation I’ve found in this dark world. I don’t aim it at Sereven, but at the crystal pieces.
The shadows find gaps in his defenses, spaces where the crystal’s influence doesn’t quite reach. They tighten around him like a noose, sliding around his throat, his arms, his legs, seeking to immobilize him long enough for the Voidcraft to take hold.
The blue light flickers, and Sereven staggers.
“Impossible! You shouldn’t have been able to—”
He doesn’t finish, instead he straightens, the crystal flares.
My Voidcraft shatters and falls apart. Pain beyond description tears through my connection to the shadows, and every single one of them collapses, their essence being drawn into the crystal.
It feels like having part of my soul ripped away.
“You still don’t understand. The crystal doesn’t just take power. It takes everything. Your memories, your will, your identity. It will all become part of me, like all the rest.”
The pulling sensation intensifies, and I realize with growing horror that it's not just affecting my shadows.
The crystal is reaching deeper, trying to drain my very essence.
The part of me that has always been connected to darkness, everything that makes me who I am—it's all being drawn toward those pulsing blue fragments.
I try to sever the connection, to pull back before any permanent damage can be done. But the crystal's grip is too strong, too persistent. No matter what I do, I can’t get free of its hold.
My knees hit the cavern floor, weakness spreading through my body. Around me, the shadows begin to fade, turning transparent and insubstantial as their connection to me turns weak. Sereven advances, moving with renewed confidence now my primary defense has been stripped away.
“This is how it ends, brother. You on your knees before me, where you always should have been.”
He raises his hand once more, and power builds around him. More power than anyone should ever be able to channel, and it’s all focused on erasing me from existence.
And I have nothing left to stop him.
The crystal has taken too much, drained too deeply into the well of my abilities.
Even if I could find some reserve of strength, some hidden cache of power that has escaped his hunger, it wouldn’t be enough.
Not against the accumulated might of thousands of Veinbloods twisted into a weapon of pure destruction.
Ellie is shouting something behind me, but her voice is distant and distorted. I want to turn, to see her face one final time, but my body won’t obey my commands. The crystal's drain has left me hollow, emptied of everything that once made me dangerous.
This is what I deserve, perhaps. The final price for all the people I failed to protect, all the promises I couldn’t keep. Varam lies dead because I led him here. Mira is broken and unable to escape. Ellie will die because I was too weak to end this when I had the chance.
The failures pile up like stones in my chest, each one heavier than the last. Every choice that led to this moment, every mistake that brought me to my knees before my brother.
Maybe Sereven is right. Maybe sentiment really is weakness.
Maybe caring about people really does make you vulnerable in ways that ultimately prove fatal.
“Goodbye, Sacha.” Sereven’s voice holds something that reminds me of the love we both once shared for each other. “I am sorry it had to end this way.”
In the crystal shards embedded in his face, I can see reflected images of everyone I’ve failed to save. Their deaths will be my last sight before oblivion claims me.
I close my eyes and wait for the end.