27. Kael
KAEL
The light dies.
One breath, the chamber is a cathedral of gold; the next it’s ash and thunder.
I’m on the floor before I realise I’ve fallen. The parchment lies next to me, torn in two. Shadows crawl like spilled ink across the marble, swallowing the runes that line the floor.
Calis’s screams split the noise—a sound like metal tearing.
Solmir lies half-collapsed on the dais, his mask gone, liquid mercury dripping against the steps.
The fire in his eyes has dwindled to a cold ember, a final extinguishing.
Calis’s voice cuts through the chaos, sharp and bright. “Contain her!”
I stagger to my feet, her words echoing through me.
The runes underfoot are dead. The rod is shattered, glass scattering the floor like a carpet of diamonds. There’s nothing left to contain her with.
In the centre of it all, she stands—barefoot, trembling, her hair a halo of black. Shadows curl around her like living things, protective, reverent. For a heartbeat she looks human again. Then Nyx speaks through her, the sound making the world flinch.
Even light casts a shadow.
The words hit me like a remembered truth I was never meant to learn.
The pillars crack, and the remaining chandeliers fall. And then she runs.
I reach into the well of power within, forcing the flames to ignite my veins. Seconds slip by as I stare at the white brilliance coating my palms, unsure if I’m ready to unleash it.
“Seren!” I shout, but the word is lost in the roar. I run for her before I can think, before the soldiers can close ranks. Glass and marble crunch underfoot. A hand grabs my sleeve: Uri.
His mask is back in place, the gold feathers catching the dying light. “Bring her back to me,” he hisses, his voice stripped of its honey. “Alive. The Light must reclaim what is owed. She must be eradicated—completely. Nothing of her can remain.”
“You can’t control…that.”
“The Light has controlled everything for a century! We have done it before, and we will do it again. Now go!”
His fingers dig into my arm. The mark beneath my sleeve flares white-hot, until it’s unbearable and I jerk away.
My eyes drift to the space where Seren stood. Her eyes were vacant, lost somewhere beyond the room. But the words that tore from her mouth spoke of a different world—a world remade, where light and darkness are equals.
Are the foundations of our world really built on a silent cancer? Spreading through our institutions, rotting everything we call divine? I’ve seen the Hollow. I’ve studied the shadows. I know what decay smells like.
Riven and I lock eyes across the wreckage.
“If you want her, take her for yourself!” The words are out before I can stop them. There is no taking them back. The shockwaves of my defiance ripples through the guards and the remaining Luminaries.
A suffocating stillness settles over the chamber.
“Grab him!” Riven bellows.
I don’t wait. I bolt for the doorway, stepping nimbly over debris. The guards’ armour will only slow them down; I make use of my own weightlessness, sprinting until the gap between us widens into a chasm.
The half-lit corridors feel eerie, the usually brilliant hallways obscured by smoke that drifts like graveyard fog. My scar burns hotter the closer I get to the trail she left behind—as if it knows where I’m going before I do.
I can almost feel her—a pull beneath my ribs, like gravity finally choosing a side. My spectacles slip down my nose as my speed increases, my hair whipping in the tailwind of my own momentum.
The passage splits ahead: one stairway rising toward the sunlit courts, the other descends into the belly of the city. A streak of darkness seeps down the lower path, pulsing faintly as if it were a living vein.
Behind me, the Luminaries’ voices echo. Guards shout orders, their armour chiming in a discordant rhythm. Calis’s shrill prayers compete with Solmir’s wet, rattling groans. The hymn of a dying order.
I look once at the light
Then turn, and follow the dark.