Chapter 45
Chapter Forty-Five
SACHA
“To defeat monsters, one must risk becoming monstrous.”
Wisdom of the Wandering Sages
Power floods back through me like wildfire burning through a forest. When my vision clears, it’s to see Ellie crouched over me, with eyes of polished silver.
“Mel’shira.”
Her hand grips mine, and she leans down to press a fierce kiss to my lips.
“I’m not going to lose you again,” she breathes.
“Then let’s finish this.”
I push to my feet, testing my balance, and reach for my power.
The shadows respond instantly to my call—fluid, eager, alive with renewed strength.
I lift my head to find Sereven. He’s standing a few paces away, watching me with an expression that reminds me of a predator who has discovered that the prey he hunts has teeth of its own.
“You’re supposed to be dead.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you.” I cast a quick look around, tracking where Mira is hunched against the wall, one hand pressed to her side. Varam lies still beside her, and I force down the despair that tries to rise at the image.
“I still command the power of a thousand Veinbloods.” Sereven’s voice brings my attention back to him. “You have only shadows.”
Fire bursts from his palm in a concentrated stream.
I raise a hand, darkness forming a barrier that absorbs what they can, but the sheer heat forces me to move back, ducking when ice shards whistle past my head.
Stone spikes rise from the ground where I stood moments before, sharp and high enough to impale a horse.
My shadows probe forward, testing his defenses. There are still places around him where my shadows cannot reach, and I’m careful to keep from touching them, for fear of feeding him more power.
His breathing is shallow, every move he makes more unsteady than the one before.
“The power is killing you.”
“It’s a price worth paying to see you destroyed once and for all.” He laughs, blood flecking his lips. “But you won’t kill me, little brother. You’re too weak for that. You never could make the choices that strength requires.”
“Like the choice you made to murder our mother?”
“That was necessary. She didn’t understand what I needed to do.” The indifference in his voice turns my stomach.
“She loved you.”
“Love is weakness.” He spits the words like they taste foul. “She loved me, loved you, loved our father. And that love made her blind to what was coming. She made excuses, convinced herself she could change my mind.”
“What was coming?” I talk in the hopes of keeping him distracted as I inch closer.
“Change. Evolution. The strong replacing the weak. The Authority offered order. Structure. A world where power served purpose instead of ruling it.”
Shadows that aren’t mine snake across the floor. They’re twisted and wrong, nothing like the darkness I know. They whip out to tangle around my ankles, trying to pull me down. Mine respond, fighting against them, pulling them off me.
“And father? Was killing him part of your evolution?”
“He was executed when the Authority took Ashenvale.” Genuine regret seems to cross his face, before the mask reasserts itself. “That was … unfortunate. I’d hoped to convince him to join us.”
Every admission is a knife between my ribs.
This is my brother. The person who taught me to hold a sword, who used to sneak honey cakes from the bakery for us to share.
Now he talks about our parents’ deaths like they were necessary sacrifices for some greater good that exists only in his twisted mind.
“You led them inside our walls and let them massacre the people we were supposed to protect.”
“I opened the way for necessary change. Every death served a purpose.”
“Purpose?” The word comes out strangled, as shadows lash at his wrist, trying to stop another ball of fire before he can aim it at me. “What purpose did mother’s death serve?”
“It proved I was ready.” He doesn’t even hesitate.
“Ready for what?”
“To put order above emotion. I was ready to choose a future with the Authority.”
Order above emotion. He killed our mother to prove to himself, and them, that he could. That he was worthy of the power they were offering him, that he’d shed every last trace of the weakness they taught him to despise.
The horror of it threatens to overwhelm me. He killed everyone who loved him for the promise of power.
My head turns, seeking out Ellie. She’s standing behind me to my left, silver light crackling around her fingers. Her eyes meet mine, tired and worried, but ready to fight with me. And that’s when I understand.
I have something he doesn’t.
“Ellie, I need you.” I don’t take my eyes off Sereven, but I let every barrier between us crumble.
I open myself to her completely. I share my grief, my rage, my love, and my desperate need to end this horror.
I let her feel what it means to face the brother who destroyed everything, and the knowledge that one of us won’t leave this cavern alive.
She gasps, and through the bond, I feel her immediate understanding of what I’m asking. She doesn’t hesitate. Her power floods into me like liquid lightning, but it’s not just that. It’s connection, trust, and the absolute certainty that we are stronger together than we could ever be apart.
Her power doesn’t fight mine. It dances with it. We become something new in that moment. No longer Shadowvein and Stormvein, but a single force that encompasses both fury and protection, destruction and creation.
This is what he can never understand, what the Authority could never teach him. True strength doesn’t come from domination but from union. From sharing power, instead of stealing it.
Shadow and storm merge inside me and become one. When I call shadows this time, they come filled with lightning, and silver fire that runs through darkness like veins of starlight. The combined power slams into Sereven’s defenses with a force he can’t avoid.
For the first time since he showed himself, real fear crosses his face.
“No.” He raises both hands to counter our attack. Fire and ice and earth rise around him. “You cannot beat me.”
The magic he hurls at us is uncoordinated, disjointed, and our combined power doesn’t just block his assault, it unravels it, finding the weak points where his stolen abilities fail to work in harmony and tearing them apart.
Blood flows faster from the crystal wounds as his body rebels against the strain of channeling so much mismatched power. The fragments flicker erratically, their light stuttering.
Flames sputter and die before they can fully form, ice melts into slush before it can strike, and stone crumbles back to dust as the magic holding it together fails.
“You think this changes anything?” Desperation bleeds through his voice now, high and strained. “I still have more power than both of you combined!”
He hurls everything he has left toward us in one final, desperate gambit—fire and earth, wind and ice—and the cavern shakes under the assault.
But storm and shadow rises to meet it. Our combined magic doesn’t try to overpower his. Instead, it does what Ellie and I have learned to do together. It adapts, it flows, and it finds the spaces between his attacks and exploits them.
The explosion when our powers meet shakes the chamber. We’re all thrown to the ground. My ears are ringing, spots dance before my eyes, and I drag myself to my feet, spinning around to find Ellie. She’s nearby, on her hands and knees. Lifting her head, her eyes meet mine, and she nods.
Turning, I face Sereven once more. The light in the crystal wavers then dims while I watch, and one by one the shards go dark, and the power surrounding him dies. For a heartbeat, he stares at me, mouth open, and then he grabs the hilt of his sword and pulls it free.
I recognize it straight away. It’s the blade our father gave him before Authority poison claimed his soul.
“You don’t deserve it!” he screams, pointing the sword at me.
“The power. The throne. The loyalty of people who should have followed me.” The words are filled with years of resentment.
The older brother who lost everything to the younger sibling.
“You never did understand the strength it takes to sacrifice everything for a greater vision.”
“Is that what you call it? Murdering our parents? Genocide? A greater vision?”
“It is necessity! The world belongs to those strong enough to claim it. The weak exist to serve or be swept aside. You’re proof of that. Strip away your shadows, and what are you? Nothing! The only way you can defeat me is if you use magic to do it.”
The taunt cuts deep. It isn’t true, but it shows the real divide between us.
Sereven sees power as external, something to be taken, stolen from others, and hoarded like coin.
He has never understood that true strength comes from within, from the bonds we forge with others, from choosing to protect rather than destroy.
I could end this now. He has no power left to defend himself with. One thought and he’d be dead. But I don’t. Instead, I let all but one of my shadows fade. The remaining one forms into a blade, which settles into my hand.
“Stand down,” I tell Ellie without turning around. “Whatever happens, do not interfere.”
“Sacha, no.”
“Promise me, you will not intervene.”
“But—”
“Promise me.”
“I don’t like this.”
“Go to Mira. If I fall, she will need you.” I raise my sword, and meet Sereven’s eyes. “No shadows, no Voidcraft. Just me and you.”
He stares at me for a second, then nods. “To the death, then … little brother.”
We circle each other, and each step brings memories flooding back.
Summer afternoons in the private courtyard behind the Lirien Spire, learning swordwork from a Veinwarden who treated us both with equal measures of patience and exasperation.
The way Sereven always favored his left side slightly, how he telegraphed his attacks with a tiny shift of his shoulder, the combination he used when pressed into a corner.