Chapter One Hundred Eight
Death Is a Door
He fell in fire and rose as storm.
Darkness.
Cold.
His soul sank beneath an icy shadow.
Viktor gasped—
and no breath came.
No lungs.
No body.
Only fire still pulsing through the stone in his fist.
Above him, a seam tore in the veil.
Light bled across the dark, already narrowing.
Chains rattled. Souls pressed against the breach like moths to flame.
One broke through. Blue eyes, ragged and burning.
“Adamar.”
His twin’s hand pressed to his jaw, grief carved into his face.
“Tory. You shouldn’t be here. Father needs you—"
“That damn dog,” Viktor choked, “is still alive.”
He almost laughed, the sound hollow in the dark.
“Gabriel… will see him fed. He’ll watch over Father.”
Adamar’s eyes welled, sorrow breaking like light through smoke.
“Tory—”
Viktor shoved him hard toward the tear.
His jaw set, iron.
His voice like thunder.
“Go. Before she knows you’re gone.”
Darkness pressed closer.
The seam narrowed, light bleeding to a thread.
“Go.”
Adamar’s gaze flicked from Viktor to the veil.
Viktor’s vow cracked the void itself:
“Death is a door, Adamar. I am the storm that breaks it.”
His twin clutched his hand once, then tore away—vanishing into Elysium’s glow.
The seam sealed behind him.
Gone.
Silence thundered.
Then her voice came—no longer silk, no longer poison in a goblet, but jagged glass dragged across the dark.
“You cannot unmake me, Seraphim. Ashakar feeds. The Host waits. Even fire breaks, but I will endure.”
The prison heaved with Zeporah’s rage.
Chains rattled.
Souls shrieked in answer.
Viktor bared his teeth.
The stone pulsed in his fist, spilling light through his fingers, crawling his veins like stormfire in glass.
He ran.
Toward the pit.
Toward her fury.
Toward the void.
The stone split wider—white fire screaming through him, consuming shadow, consuming fear.
He hurled himself forward.
Chains split.
Souls cried.
The veil cracked open.
The Ruakite became storm.
The prison shattered in fire.