Chapter 45 #3
Her smile held nothing pleasant as Fire swallowed the creature from its feet upward. She would have burned the entire fucking Sanctum down before she let it reach them.
Raiden fought differently. Anyone who thought Cindralith’s war clans trained wielders to rely solely on Fire wouldn’t have survived long enough to correct the assumption.
He moved first—low, fast, close. A Shadowkin lunged, and Raiden stepped inside its reach instead of retreating.
He caught one arm, turned his hips and used the creature’s momentum to drive it over his shoulder, dropping his knee across its throat before sending Fire straight through its chest.
Another attacked from behind. Raiden pivoted and drove an elbow into its face before the magic followed.
Every movement became the next, hand into knee, knee into blade, blade into Fire.
His injured shoulder slowed him, but he adjusted without complaint.
Lidia saw the weakness and moved onto his left without being asked.
Raiden never thanked her. She never announced what she was doing.
They simply rearranged themselves around each other and kept fighting.
Then I saw Vareena.
She was beside Lyra.
That surprised no one, but the Light did. Three Shadowkin broke toward them. Vareena raised both hands, and gold flooded the space between them, two broad bands crossing into a shield. The first creature struck it hard enough to fracture the floor beneath Vareena’s shoes. She held.
The other two split wide.
Vareena changed the form before either reached her. The shield came apart in six narrow blades of Light, each no wider than my hand. She sent them without hesitation. Two punched through the creature on the left. Another severed its arm. Three pinned the second against a column.
Vareena closed her fist, and with it, every blade detonated.
Gold flooded the room, and when it cleared, pieces of both creatures lay scattered across the floor.
“Burn!” she shouted. Kaiz swept Fire through the remains.
Dax had seen the entire thing. “Vareena!” She turned just enough to hear him. “Remind me never to piss you off.”
“You already do!”
“Fair!”
A third creature came for Lyra. Vareena caught it around the throat with a band of gold and yanked hard enough to tear it backward. The Light tightened until black flesh split and its head came free. Lidia burned the body before it finished falling.
Vareena and Lidia looked at each other once.
A single nod.
Nothing else.
I had known Vareena was trained. I hadn’t understood how well. Her father sat on the Elyndorian Council. She had grown up in rooms where political gatherings carried guards and children learned where to stand if somebody drew a weapon. Her magic reflected it—precision, control, no wasted power.
Lyra raised both hands beside her.
Starlight erupted.
Silver-blue power struck a Shadowkin hard enough to send it through the dancers’ platform. Faint gold threaded through the magic now, the change I had watched developing over the past few days. Five Shadowkin turned toward her at exactly the same time. Not Vareena. Not the wounded candidates.
Lyra.
Eiryx appeared beside me. “There.”
“I see it.”
They were choosing. Wraiths would have fed on whoever fell closest. These things had orders.
“Lyra, move!”
She did, and Vareena shifted with her.
Neseryn reached them from the opposite side before the next creature did. Her Shadow caught both its legs and dragged it backward so violently its skull struck the floor twice before she buried a knife through its head. Another came behind Lyra, and Neseryn caught that one too.
Her attention kept finding Lyra.
It had been doing it all night. No matter where Neseryn fought, some part of her tracked Lyra’s position.
She knew why.
So did I.
Lyra didn’t.
The truth could wait if we lived long enough for truth to matter. Neseryn caught my eye across the bodies. Recognition passed between us—not of Lyra, but of the attack. The precision. The dead wards. The operatives I knew were coming. Our childhood. My father.
Neither of us said his name.
We had survived his world together once.
Apparently we were doing it again.
The Sanctum tried to heal itself. Ancient foundation wards woke beneath the newer lattice, symbols blazing across pillars and along the floor. Light and Earth poured toward the damaged sections, and for three breaths the western breach began to shrink.
Then every surviving channel flashed white.
A Light candidate screamed.
She had stepped across one of the gold lines, and her back arched so violently I heard bone snap. Magic ripped out of her. Gold poured from her mouth, her eyes, beneath her fingernails. Her skin split along the veins of her hands as the ward drank from her and sent everything west.
Feeding the breach.
Mistress Calis saw it. “OFF THE GOLD!” People scrambled. The candidate collapsed. Damon reached her, dragged her clear by the shoulders and pressed two fingers against her throat. His jaw tightened. “She’s alive. Barely.”
Vareena was already moving. She dropped beside the nearest channel and held one palm above it. Gold met black and the corrupted ward surged toward her.
“Vareena!” Calis shouted.
“I see it!” Her arm shook, and for one second I thought the corruption would enter her.
Then she changed her Light. Instead of forcing power against the ward, she narrowed it until the spell became dozens of fine golden threads.
They slipped between the corrupted sections, probing the lattice until the channel stuttered.
Her head snapped up. “Dax!” He was already looking. “Under my hand. Break below the joint.”
Dax drove his heel into the floor. Earth erupted exactly where she indicated. The ward snapped.
Light exploded outward and threw Vareena and Dax in opposite directions. She rolled across broken glass and came up on one knee, blood already running down her forearm where a shard had sliced her. Dax shoved himself upright. “You good?”
“Yes.”
He grabbed her forearm anyway and hauled her up. “Next.”
Master Rhovan reached them before they moved. “Show me.”
Vareena pointed toward the second channel. “The corruption is sitting above the foundation binding. If we sever beneath it, we can starve the breach without collapsing the older wards.”
Rhovan looked at her once, then nodded. “Do it.”
Emrin reached the channel first. Vareena directed her lower, and Emrin folded Earth around the corrupted line, containing the discharge while candidates scrambled across the floor. “Clear!”
Rhovan brought his fist down. Stone crushed the channel. Across the hall, Kaiz and Lidia reached the third.
“Heat below the joint!” Vareena called.
Kaiz planted one hand toward the floor. Lidia joined him, and their combined Fire turned the stone white.
The line broke.
The western breach contracted.
A cheer went through the hall.
An actual fucking cheer.
Nobody understood how little it meant.
A Shadowkin rose from Vareena’s own shadow.
She felt it and turned.
Gold snapped into a cage around the creature before it finished forming. The bands crossed over one another, tightening until black limbs pushed between them. Vareena lifted her hand, dragging the creature upward with the cage.
Then she closed her fist.
The lattice collapsed and the Shadowkin came apart inside.
Lidia burned the pieces before they landed.
Vareena looked at her. “Thanks.”
Lidia’s face was streaked with soot and someone else’s blood. “You can buy me something expensive later.”
Vareena laughed once, then another creature went for Lyra and there was no time for more.
The north remained untouched.
That frightened me more than the breaches.
Halos had started moving survivors toward it. Calis stood near him, Light shielding a group of injured candidates while Rhovan kept the damaged ceiling stable enough for them to pass beneath.
“Seal north!” I shouted.
Halos turned. “It’s our only stable exit.”
“That’s why it’s stable.” His face changed.
I pointed toward Lyra. “They’re building a route around her.”
Halos looked at the three broken wards and then the northern arch. Understanding arrived. “Close it!”
Too late.
The northern arch exploded inward.
Human operatives came through the smoke in gray uniforms. One carried a hooked restraint weapon. Another held black glass.
A blood cuff.
Replacement anchor.
I stopped holding back. Shadow flooded the northern side of the hall, killing the nearest lamps and forcing people away. Even the Shadowkin recoiled.
Good.
I had spent years controlling how much magic I allowed other people to see. The Sanctum knew Kieran Nyxara: instructor, Shadow wielder, dangerous when necessary.
Very few people in this room knew what the son of Kaelros had actually been trained to become.
The first operative lifted his hook. My Shadow entered through his mouth. His weapon fell. He clawed at his throat while my magic forced its way down, filling his lungs and threading between his ribs.
I closed my hand. His chest caved inward. Blood sprayed from his mouth. The second operative ran. Eiryx appeared in front of him. He changed direction.
Neseryn waited there.
For the first time all night, I saw genuine panic on one of my father’s men. He reached for the cuff. Neseryn severed his hand. Black glass hit the floor with his fingers still curled around it.
He screamed.
Eiryx ended it with one blade across the throat. For a moment, the people nearest us stopped moving.
Dax stared. Raiden did too. Lidia had gone very still, and even Emrin watched me. Halos’s face gave me nothing, but Calis had seen enough to understand that whatever she thought she knew about my training had been incomplete.
Damon stood several paces away. His gaze moved from the operative whose chest I had crushed to me, then to Lyra. He didn’t ask.
There wasn’t time.
Lyra stood beyond all of them, her face unreadable.
I had frightened people before.
I had never cared less.
My father had sent monsters into her home once already.
He would not take her from this one.