Chapter 11
Wolfe
“The Moment Before Ruin”
Pain had become a constant companion in this place where time moved like sludge and breath came in ragged gasps that never seemed to fill my lungs.
The sword in my chest pulsed with its own malevolent rhythm, each beat sending fresh agony through veins that felt more like ice than blood.
But it was the ghost of the girl I loved that made me question what little sanity I had left.
Hair the color of blood framed her face. Warm hazel eyes gazed back at me with awe and panic.
She stood before me in this desolate wasteland, magic crackling around her hands over the cursed blade.
Impossible.
It couldn’t be her.
Elariya was safe in the mortal realm, far from this nightmare of ash and shadow.
She had to be. The alternative—that she'd somehow followed me into this hell—was too terrible to contemplate.
Yet there she was, or seemed to be, her lips moving in words I couldn't quite hear over the roar of my own failing heartbeat.
Her eyes held that fierce determination I knew so well, the look she got when she'd decided to fight fate itself. Even as a hallucination, she was breathtaking.
My Ziyka.
Let me die seeing her face. If this is madness, let it be this.
But ghosts and hallucinations weren't supposed to make the world slow around them or the pain ease.
Were they?
“Just another ghost, Wolfe,” Zyrra muttered by my ear. “Another person who doesn’t exist.”
I looked away from the image of my mage and glared at the thing who wore my sister’s face.
“No one is coming for you,” she taunted. “You, my dear brother, will die here in the place of misery and absence. It reminds me of the way I died. Though, I think I lost my mind well before the sickness took me.”
My lips parted to tell her to fuck off, but my strength failed me. This thing had siphoned whatever memories it could from my sister and was using them against me.
Alaric, my brother, stepped into my view, sparking my attention anew. Then Arielle appeared at his side, chanting.
Alaric grabbed the hilt of the sword and pulled in one swift move.
The blade came free with a wet, sucking sound that seemed to echo through dimensions. Then a flash of white light glowed around us, blazing in waves that turned the gray realm momentarily white, washing over the dead ground and making the ash dance like startled snow.
The light was so bright it burned against my closed eyelids and so intense that even the Soulwraiths' shrieking grew distant and muffled.
I fell to my knees, and for one heartbeat, there was only the absence of that constant, parasitic drain, a blessed relief that flooded through me like cool water.
And through it all, I felt hands on me. Warm, real hands that pressed against the gaping wound in my chest. Then the ghost-Elariya leaned over me, her face tight with concentration as Arielle knelt by her side and continued to chant.
Healing magic flowed from Arielle’s palms, and I realized that none of this was a hallucination. Neither was it madness.
Arielle was here.
Arielle was real. And so was Alaric and…
Elariya.
Gods, she was here.
Somehow, by some impossible means, she was saving my life in a realm that devoured the living.
The light began to fade, leaving spots dancing across my vision and the taste of blood on my tongue.
Someone tsked next to me.
Zyrra.
I realized no one else could see her but me.
“Another time, brother. Another time,” Zyrra teased in an eerie sing-song voice. Then she snapped her fingers, and the barrier of light keeping the Soulwraiths out shattered.
Hell poured in from all sides.
The Soulwraiths rushed in like a plague of shadows, their forms writhing and coiling through the ash-thick air with predatory hunger.
They came not in waves but in torrents, a biblical flood of darkness that blotted out what little gray light remained in this forsaken realm. Their faces, twisted into masks of eternal anguish, leered at us with hollow sockets.
The air grew as thick as molasses, heavy with the stench of decay and despair that clung to their phantom forms like funeral shrouds. They moved with the fluid grace of nightmares, reaching with fingers that trailed wisps of soul-smoke.
Bastian and Garrick flew over to form a protective circle around us. Around me.
We were vastly outnumbered. And I didn’t think we’d all survive.
She wouldn’t—Elariya.
The terror on her face broke my heart.
I had to do something.
I was so weak I couldn’t even think straight. In all my three hundred years, I’d never felt this type of frailty.
But there was some power left in me. Power that might have drawn me to this land.
My curse.
The mere thought made the Deathwalker power stir in my veins.
On seeing the imminent attack, I used every ounce of strength I had left in my body.
Strength that might kill me. My powers suddenly roared to life, responding to my desperation with vicious intensity.
Dark energy coursed through my body, the opposite of the mages’ white magic.
The familiar rush of power that came from walking the line between life and death flowed within me. I threw out my hand and tore a gash in reality itself.
The guys wouldn’t have been able to portal out of here. Their magic and essence wouldn’t allow it. It was a death wish to even try on a shifting plane like Morg?ven.
But those rules did not apply to me.
Because I was Death. Not that much different from the fiends that wanted to devour us.
The fabric of the realm would listen to me.
A black hole appeared beneath us. The abyss beyond it howled with winds from somewhere else, anywhere else, pulling at us with desperate hunger.
Without hesitation, I unfurled my wings and wrapped them around Elariya, pulling her tightly against my chest as the portal's gravity seized us both.
I had no idea where the portal led, only that it was away from here, away from the certainty of death.
The last thing I saw before we were dragged into the screaming darkness was Alaric's face, fierce with understanding, as he grabbed Arielle and dove after us into the unknown.
Then I was drifting into darkness with my girl in my arms.
And I had no idea if where we were going was safer than where we just left.