Chapter 46
Amara
The dawn breaks not with birdsong, but with silence.
The kind that hums beneath the skin and sets the heart to trembling.
The Tenders line the path, their heads bowed, hands clasped over their chests. Mirael stands among them, her face streaked with tears she doesn’t bother to hide. Keeper Erania holds her staff high, offering final blessing as Daed and I pass.
They murmur prayers to the Souls, soft and reverent. For the Jewel. For the Awakened. For Estra.
I touch their hands as I pass, each one a goodbye, each one a promise that I will return.
Then I look back one last time at my home, my heart, the Grove that gave me life and light.
“This is it,” Daed says quietly. “Once the gate is open, there’s no turning back.”
“I know.”
He extends his hand, and I take it. The earth stirs beneath my bare feet.
His jaw tightens. “You don’t need to…”
“I do.” I meet his gaze, steady and sure. “You know I do.”
For a moment, the storm in his eyes breaks, not with fury, but sorrow.
Then, with a breath that sounds too much like a prayer, he raises his other hand.
The air splits open with a sound like the world tearing.
Within the wound, there is only darkness, endless and ancient.
The rift widens until it becomes a doorway, a mouth yawning toward eternity.
One by one, they step through. The last of the Blades of Baev’kalath, then Zyphoro, Orios and Solena, Reon close behind, Ronin last of them until only Daed and I remain.
He squeezes my hand, steadying me, the pounding heart, the rushing blood, the swirl of fear and faith. A breeze sweeps through the village, brushing a strand of hair across my face, and he tucks it back behind my ear with a tenderness that hurts.
I manage a breathless smile. “Maybe I should’ve braided my hair before going to battle.”
He studies me, the corner of his mouth lifting. “No. I prefer you like this,” he murmurs. “This is how I want to remember you.”
For a heartbeat, we simply look at each other, the golden threads between us glowing faintly, dusting the air like fireflies only we can see. Then, we turn together to face the void.
The rift seals behind us as we step through, the world stitching its wound closed until all light vanishes. Darkness folds around us, thick and absolute. The Fae move with ease, their eyes keen in shadow, but Ronin and I are not so blessed. I refuse to stumble blindly, so I lift my palm.
A single green flame blossoms to life, small, but it burns bright enough to guide us through the dark.
It does not improve the view.
There is only infinite darkness, an unbroken sea of shadow, but at least now I can see it with my own eyes.
Ronin falls into step beside me, the two of us human among gods, our breaths shallow in the thick, cold air. Together, we walk deeper into the abyss.
Zyphoro’s sharp eyes rake the dark, fingers twitching above the daggers strapped to her thighs, while Orios’ gloved hand never strays from the hilt of his sword.
“No demons,” Zyphoro mutters.
Daed’s reply is low, edged with unease. “It’s been this way since they took Estra. They’ve sealed themselves in An’kel where they know I cannot follow.”
Zyphoro’s mouth twists. “She must be precious to Gygarth. To surrender so much territory. To let us walk his shadow unchallenged.”
A tremor catches in my chest, and the sound that escapes me, half gasp, half sob, turns every gaze toward me. I shake my head, turning from their concern, unwilling to speak my fear aloud.
Because I know Estra is precious.
She was precious from the moment she stirred in my womb to the moment she came screaming into this world.
But Gygarth cannot love, and the thought that she might be precious to him only as the finest morsel in his eternal hunger shreds what’s left of my composure.
“How far must we go, Rook?” Orios rumbles.
Daed comes to a halt, the smoke curling faintly from his armor as he turns. “Here. The void is only the veil between our world and An’kel. No matter where the portal opens, it will lead to the same place.”
All eyes shift to me.
Now is the moment I’ve dreaded. The one I’ve been walking toward since the day I woke beneath the earth.
“The blood of the Awakened opens the gate,” I whisper, more to myself than anyone else. “The earth will drink it… and the void will answer.”
The green flame in my palm extinguishes with a soft hiss.
I push my sleeves to my elbows, baring my wrists to the still air. The pulse beneath my skin beats in time with the trembling of the ground.
I lift my gaze to Daed.
“I need you to cut me.”
He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t plead. We are far beyond the comfort of hesitation.
He exhales once and extends his hand. The shadows at his fingertips coil and twist, shaping themselves into a blade, a weapon both beautiful and terrible. Death Singer. The silver hilt gleams faintly, the purple stone at its center burning like a star as smoke drifts from its edge.
He holds me in his gaze, unblinking. His jaw is clenched, his whole body drawn tight as a bowstring.
“Tell me to stop,” he murmurs. “And I will.”
“I won’t.”
For a heartbeat, silence. Then a tremor of breath, and he draws the blade across my wrist.
Steel kisses flesh. The bite is deep but clean. Pain blooms white-hot, a flower opening in my veins, and still I do not flinch. The darkness beneath my feet quivers, hungry, drinking each drop that falls.
My voice cuts through the void, low and steady, carrying the weight of something ancient.
“Véthari lios an’thera. Véthari lios an’thera. Véthari lios an’thera.”
The words strike the air like lightning. The earth shudders. Then, with a roar that seems to come from the marrow of the world, a gate erupts in fire before us.
Flames spiral upward in violent columns, heat slamming through the air hard enough to drive the others back, but not me. My feet stay rooted. My blood runs in twin rivers down my arms, pooling around my toes before the darkness swallows it whole.
The portal widens. Its edges blacken and crack, spitting embers as smoke and shadow spills through like breath from another realm.
And beyond it, An’kel.
I see the city through the rippling haze. Towering spires of jagged obsidian punch into a sunless sky, where winged horrors wheel and scream, their shrieks carrying across a wasteland of ash and ruin stretching to every horizon. Even the air seems to bleed light. Thin, gray, cold, endless.
At the center stands his temple. A fortress of death, its stairways climbing into infinity, its pyres burning with ghostly flame. Demons writhe in the carvings along its pillars, their twisted faces frozen mid-scream and I know. I know without question. She’s there. Estra.
Hidden within those walls, within the heart of the void and within the grasp of the Father Below.
The more I think of her, the fainter the world becomes.
My vision blurs, my head swims, my limbs turn heavy as stone.
I can barely lift my arms. My brown skin fades toward the pallor of the Fae around me, every heartbeat a distant echo, slow, uneven, thunder in my ears.
My life spills out in waves, feeding the gate that roars before us.
Death Singer dissolves into smoke. Daed’s hands replace it, pressing hard against my wounds.
“That’s enough, wife,” he says. “It’s open. You’ve done it. Now heal yourself.”
His voice sounds far away, like a memory drowned beneath water. Even his face wavers before me, a blur of shadow. All I can see is Estra. My daughter. My little girl.
“Amara,” he snarls through clenched teeth, his voice breaking through the haze. His grip tightens around my wrists, blood slicking his palms. “Heal yourself. Now.”
When I don’t respond, his control fractures. “Amara Tyne!” he roars. “Do as you’re told, just one fucking time!”
I blink up at him, eyes half-lidded, and whisper, “If I heal… the portal will close.”
His jaw hardens. “Then I’ll throw your stubborn ass through it myself.”
He swings his head toward the others. “Go!” he commands, voice booming like thunder through the void. They obey without hesitation, leaping through the portal into the unknown, their figures swallowed by the scorched horizon of An’kel.
When the last of them are gone, Daed looks back at me. “There. They’re through. Now your turn.”
But then he sees it, the blood slowing, thick and dark as wine, the streams reduced to trembling drops. His eyes widen, disbelief warring with fear.
“You can’t die on me again,” he says, his voice trembling in its fury. “Do you hear me, Amara? You can’t. Do what you must, but you will heal.”
It’s not that I want to refuse him. I do not wish to die. It’s that I don’t yet know how. Keeper Erania’s voice returns to me, a whisper in the dark. How can you bring life where only death dwells?
And then I remember my answer.
The one I have always carried.
Life endures.
Warmth blooms beneath my skin, slow at first, then bright enough to chase back the darkness. My veins flood with green light, pulsing in time with my heartbeat until it spills from me.
From the folds of my sleeves, vines unfurl, winding down my arms in slow, serpentine curls.
Heart-shaped leaves burst to life along their length, trembling as though drawing breath for the first time.
The vines loop and twist, finding my wrists.
I gasp when they slip into the open wounds, a brief, searing sting, then release and where blood once flowed, blossoms bloom.
They fall in a cascade, a waterfall of petals and light spilling into the void.
Wherever they land, the dark recoils. The blossoms spread, climbing the fractured walls of the gate, threading through black stone and shadow.
Life surges wild and uncontained, vines racing up the scorched surface until a scattering of green and color blooms where only ash once lived.