CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Hundreds of rows of silver and blue armored soldiers marched, all at the command of the goddess behind us. Her arms were outstretched before her, guiding the troops to enact a mass execution of the villagers beyond.
Rumbling bounced along the clouds as booming footsteps shook the ground. Lightning struck the soldiers, one right after the next, dropping groups in their tracks, disregarding which side they fought for.
What is going on?
“What do we do now?” I asked desperately.
Raven landed along the slope of the hill, picking at the blood dripping from his drenched onyx wings. Raveeka shot into the air, diving toward the advancing lines. She purged through them, slowing them down little by little.
“That sour crackle in the magic?” A deep, unfamiliar voice startled us. We all whirled. “My son’s signature rot.”
Godsire. Noctis’s father.
Run, Caelyn. Please, Noctis begged desperately.
Ruby wings whipped across Noctis’s face, careening his body through the air and crashing into the muddy ground. Lightning struck at his head, but he flipped, narrowly missing the strike.
I stepped between them. His father’s face was carved in the same severe lines as Noctis’s, as though shaped by a steadier, harsher hand.
A jaw cut sharp as the blade clenched in his fist, unyielding and precise, framed a mouth set in quiet authority.
The fiery hair that decorated his head cropped shorter, falling slightly and resting just above his eyebrows.
He wore no armor—the sign of someone who knew their own strength.
“What is your purpose for being here?” I demanded, rage surpassing the fear.
“I am Throk’nawan, and I can be wherever I please, mortal.”
He lifted his hand, and the world lurched, something unseen seizing me and hurling me sideways. I slammed into the mud beside my Blood Tie, the impact knocking the breath from my lungs. Noctis was there an instant later, scrambling to drag me back to my feet.
“You’re leading the Terraguard armies,” Jun murmured. “I’ve seen you before.”
Throk’nawan’s eyes found Jun’s and held. A slow curl dragged his lip upward, pulling his nose with it, baring teeth that looked more like a threat than a smile.
“And now, you all will help me with your titan and my prick of a son.” Lightning flashed behind him, illuminating the contrasting storm clouds. “Every realm touched by this war belongs to me.”
“We will not,” Noctis yelled, rage and fury taking over. He stormed forward but was quickly thrown back, leaving a massive rut in the ground as he slid across, pulling the earth beneath him.
“You have no choice!” his father bellowed, his face nearly matching the roseate color of his soaked hair.
“I will kill you all, and then they will kill everyone beyond this land. Is that what you have been fighting for this entire time? Help this realm crush the sea scum, and when the war is won, we’ll discuss your terms.”
“We will kill the Ocean Mother,” Zahara said, confidence stilling in her tone.
Throk’nawan turned to storm toward her, his blade flipping in his palm. “Let us not pretend you,” he glared with disgust at the stub where her arm had once been, “will make any impact in this war.”
Zahara smiled in his face—like looking death in the eyes and taunting it. “The impact worth making has already been made.”
Throk’nawan shifted his gaze to the sleeping children. “No child so… impressionable,” he spat the last word, “will ever be worth it.”
She flinched.
Jun stepped closer to her, offering a silent comfort. Calvin flanked her other side. All three stood firm before the sire of the god we knew.
“If you cannot see their value, it is because you never learned to look beyond yourself,” she snarled. “What they become exposes the hands that shape them.”
“Let me diminish this distraction for everyone’s sake then,” Throk’nawan spat, and the clouds shifted.
They split and gurgled, rain pouring and flooding the ground.
He lifted his hands, power glowing a brilliant white like lightning within his palm.
He threw it forward, aimed for the slumbering, drenched children.
“NO—” Zahara hurled herself into the path of the strike before I could even scream her name. Lightning tore through her chest in a blinding explosion, sinking into flesh and bone with a sickening crack that illuminated the battlefield in violent white.
Her body convulsed brutally, back arching as the power ravaged through her, every tremor sharp and unnatural. The smell of burning flesh filled the air.
Then the strength left her all at once.
Zahara crumpled to the ground like something cut from its strings, limp and unmoving, her trembling hand weakly clutching the ruined fabric over the wound as smoke curled from between her fingers.
Noctis attacked with wind right as his father did, but the godsire predicted it, reflecting the power off himself. It dissipated around him, as if it hadn’t been an attack, but merely an offering to cool the godsire down. He continued to throw power into his father, but it made no difference.
“Zah!” Calvin cried. He and Jun sprinted towards Zahara, reckless in their pursuit to save her. It was all I could do to stand beside Noctis and give them cover. Time. I prayed it would be enough, but an ache of knowing that no gods would listen settled in my bones.
They fell into the mud at her side. Jun tried to force his power into her, but the godsire threw him aside, meters away. He crawled back, desperately trying to make it to her. His nails dug into the muddy ground, clawing to reach her.
“No…” I whispered. I moved to advance, but Noctis grabbed my wrist firmly.
Calvin’s hands fisted in the glistening grass beside Zahara, tears and rain one and the same pouring down his face. A scream erupted from his slumped body, breaking apart into sobs.
Beside me, Noctis unsheathed his sword, bouncing on the balls of his heels. I could feel the nerves within him—the overwhelming fear his father brought out of him. He shifted and cast out his magic again, but just like before, it bounced right off the godsire.
Throk’nawan shifted toward the three. Zahara’s lips moved slowly, murmuring words too quiet to hear.
Her eyes flitted closed. Jun cried her name over and over as he was thrown backwards, crawling back each time.
The repeated action had begun to leave permanent indentations in the muddied and blood-soaked ground, coating Jun’s hands.
“Rather ironic, isn’t it? The healer who has always been able to mend and restore now drenched in blood, unable to fix even what’s right in front of him,” Throk’nawan drawled.
Jun shoved back into the sludge, his face twisting in pain. It was the frantic desperation in his eyes that stood out, wild, searching, as if he could will the situation to change by force alone.
“You are all weak. Empathy, love, fear. It all makes you weak,” he seethed. His hand flew out and Calvin’s leg snapped. Zahara’s head that lay in his lap slipped to the ground.
Her lips opened and closed. Breath escaped slowly.
“Luca,” she finally whispered between the blood that began to pool in her mouth. Her lips tilted in a sad, knowing smile. Her hand fell from her chest, collapsing and stilled like her unbeating heart.
He needed to pay for this.
I shook off Noctis’s trembling grip and lunged toward Zahara, ripping the tunic from her still chest, inky black skin marring the strike.
Jun finally reached her, a soft glow emanating from his hands.
He poured it all into the woman he considered a mother—every ounce he could give.
That was the thing about him. He wouldn’t think twice before sacrificing himself for the people he loved.
I shot forward, ready to tear the heart from the godsire’s chest with my own hands, to feel it still beating, hot and furious, as it pumped its last into my grip before finally going still.
A blast of air slammed into me from Throk’nawan, hitting me with brutal force, hurling me back like I weighed nothing at all. I struck the edge of the hill hard enough to rattle bone, pain blooming sharp and immediate through my ribs as the world spun.
There was nothing I can do. Nothing anyone could do.
Calvin only shook in rageful silence, his face crinkled in agony.
Not for his shattered leg bone, but for Zahara who never got to see her little boy avenged.
For the woman who found life again after losing the one thing she loved.
For the one that welcomed all aboard her ship and fought for them all.
She was safety. She was home. She was dead.
“Keep going!” Calvin screamed, his face blossoming in crimson splotches. A broken sound tore out of him as he struck the ground. Once, twice. Like the world could be punished into fixing itself.
Throk’nawan laughed, a cruel vicious sound to our ears as Jun gave what little he had left in his reserve of power. He shook under the weight of her life, fingers pressed uselessly against the wound that no longer answered him. He tried anyway, but there was nothing to heal anymore.
Jun’s strength gave out all at once, and he sank into the sludge beside her, shaking too hard to stand.
The godsire turned on his heel and paced before his son.
I fumbled to turn around in the mud, and my heart fell further at the expression etching into Noctis’s face. Our bond trembled, not from anger or rage… but from fear.
“You will kill the Ocean Mother. Then, you will report back to me. You are weak, and you will not disgrace me with your chosen company,” Throk’nawan spat at his son, his arm outstretching to display a show of power. A globe of white flickering light grew in his palms.
“They are my family,” Noctis attempted to respond, but the words shook. He fidgeted with the blade in his hand. His father caught the movement and chuckled.
“Even after all these years, son, you’re still afraid of me?” he chided. “Excellent. I’ve done precisely what I’ve needed. Now go.”
Noctis shook his head. “No.”
Raveeka snuck up behind me, breaking from the battle below. “Should I kill him?” she asked quietly.
“I want him to suffer,” I seethed, rage burning me from the inside out. Just a little bit longer. It was all we needed.
Throk’nawan continued in Noctis’s face. “You were trained from the moment you were born for this,” he spat angrily. “Your mother was soft just like you.”
“Don’t speak of her.” Noctis tried to be brave. He desperately clung to an illusion of confidence, but it fell flat.
“I ensured it was agonizingly slow when I killed her,” his father drawled, enjoying every word. “And making you watch was the best part. It was supposed to make you stronger. But even she made you weak.”
I tried to send comfort down the bond but was met with a solid blockade.
Noctis lunged, his footwork tripping. He slashed his long sword at the neck of his father, but it abruptly froze inches from his throat.
“You never learn, son,” Throk’nawan spat. “How many times have you attempted that same strike and failed?”
Rage simmered beneath my skin, prickling every nerve ending.
Noctis fell to his knees, his face scrunched in agony under his father’s powers. Calvin whimpered at my back. Each small cry fueled me further.
Throk’nawan lifted his blade over his head. It glowed a luminous ruby, reflecting off the water droplets that crash around them.
Noctis’s head dropped in realization. In defeat.
The coin, he begged me in my mind. He wanted me to sever our bond, because he was accepting death.
But I would never allow it.
A sickening roar from the godsire ripped through the skies, thunder accompanying it. Lightning flared in every direction like disoriented chaos. Instead of a strike to kill Noctis, Throk’nawan’s massive wings crashed to the ground, completely sliced off, blood spraying from his back.
I conducted the rain droplets, forming them into a long blade. The godsire collapsed knee first into the ground, breaths labored as he held up his feathery appendages that did not move to his will anymore. His pained eyes burned into me, but vengeance would be beautiful.
Each tiny droplet of water in the sky became a needle, and I shoved them deep within his skin, earning an agonizing scream. I would make it slow for him. I would ensure he knew pain and who it came from. But I would not kill him.
That was an honor only Rhak’torvain––God of Aetherkin Bound––deserved.
He gurgled against the water I shoved down his throat, raking his fingers against his neck at the lack of air.
But I held firm. I released the power just enough for him to get a sip of a breath—just enough to keep him alive—and then filled his mouth and lungs back with icy water.
He would pay. For Zahara. For leading the Terraguard armies in a war for dominion over my Bound.
For hurting my Noctis. He was unworthy of the blood coursing through our veins.
Noctis stood with confidence and stared at his father, the blade casually twisting in his palm.
“Secure him,” he ordered Raveeka, and she obliged. Tendrils of power flitted from the trident at her will, surrounding the godsire. He jumped to his feet, ready to fight back.
“Still,” Raveeka said, and Throk’nawan obeyed. His eyes did not follow direction, however, as they looked between each member of the crew in fury.
The godsire was bound before he could blink.
“Kill him,” Calvin ordered, his voice snapping into a calm, controlled line so abruptly it felt like a mask locking into place. His expression smoothed over, eyes steady, jaw set.
Noctis faced his father, and for the first time since Throk’nawan arrived, he looked at him without flinching, radiating a quiet energy.
“Killing him is a mercy he doesn’t deserve.”