Chapter 28 #2
“My Godbeast tells me everything,” she purrs. “Yours, apparently, doesn’t. But he’s quite the legend in Elysium, everyone knows the tragic tale of how his Goddess chained him.”
“We’re not here to talk, Liona,” I snap, mentally stumbling over the fact that her dragon can speak.
I let the whip crack and Decay magic coils along the spiked tip, hissing as it evaporates into the air.
Her grin deepens. “But maybe we should,” she muses. “Considering how close you and your Godbeast have become.”
I feel the weight of unseen eyes pressing in from the arena rails. I know the kingdom is listening through the Divinity Gazes’ projection.
But they don’t deserve Kaelzar’s story, not his past. My grip tightens around the whip’s handle as the memory of our dance in the garden flickers to life.
My jaw locks. She saw us growing closer, and now whatever she’s doing is her pathetic attempt to make me what? Doubt him? Look down on him? Get angry?
I consider letting the rot devour her before she says another word, but the urge not to kill snuffs that thought out instantly.
“My Godbeast told me yours once won a tournament,” she says casually, still circling.
“Claimed the right to stand beside his goddess as her strongest. Left behind those he grew up with, even the girl who stood by him when he was no one. What was her name again?” Liona pauses, tapping a finger against her chin.
Then her eyes widen, as if she’s just remembered, and she hisses the name like a viper. “Mia.”
Kaelzar growls low beside me. The sound reverberates through me, making my stomach knot.
“Stop.” My voice cracks with fury, with a fierce need to protect Kaelzar’s pain no matter the cost.
“Why?” Liona’s eyes glint with cruel glee. “Did I strike a nerve?” She leans in. “Kaelzar betrayed everyone to serve Calista. You see, even the most loyal beasts will trade devotion for power if the price is right. You think he won’t betray you if the opportunity presents itself?”
Kaelzar doesn’t look at her. He looks at me. Just a flick of his eyes cracks something inside me. Then I understand.
This isn’t a petty cruelty. Liona knows how his chains work. She knows what Calista’s control does to him if he only thinks wrong about her. She wants to activate them so he’s incapacitated and out of her way.
The realization makes my stomach drop, because she’s found his weak spot. My weak spot. But I won’t give her the satisfaction of exploiting it.
I step forward, whip alive with decay. “You’ve said enough, Liona.”
I strike, aiming short of her shoulder to scare her, the rot-charged tip glinting in the light. But before it snaps, pain explodes in my side.
I scream as a ribbon of water slams into me, and her dragon sends a violent jolt of static surging through the current. My body seizes, my limbs lock. I hit the ground.
Kaelzar lunges, but his movements are stilted, wrong. Chains already flicker over his skin, biting into his flesh. He doubles over with a ragged gasp.
Liona laughs. “Shall I tell you why he really earned those chains, Raylane?” She glances toward the arena rails, lips curving as if she can taste the crowd’s reaction.
“I know why,” I grind through my locked jaw. And for the first time since the Trial began, I realize I might have no choice but to use my magic to hurt someone on purpose. The thought of it paralyzes me even more than Liona’s magic does.
“Oh no,” she says, her smile sharp. “Not the neat little answer Calista must have given him. Not some random attack on her territories that no one had cared about for centuries. I mean the real reason his village was attacked that day.”
She circles us slowly, her narrowed eyes drinking in Kaelzar’s silence as he fights through the pain, the chains grinding into his skin. Her dragon sends another jolt of energy through me the moment it senses my control returning, and my muscles seize once more.
“You see,” she says. “Zoya’s lands border Calista’s monster-infested forests.
And when it became clear that the Witch Goddess had finally found a Shadeblood capable of wielding magic strong enough to rival the God of Night and Stars himself, Zoya knew what would come next.
Calista would send her bred army across the border.
Everyone in Elysium knew she lived for one purpose alone—to take revenge on the gods who cast her out after she killed her husband. ”
Liona shrugs. “Zoya couldn’t allow it. So she devised a plan to destroy Kaelzar before he ever reached her gates.
Through her spies, she learned that Kaelzar had been ordered to leave his family and friends behind to serve Calista.
So she struck where it would hurt most, hoping to wound them just enough to make him defy her orders and stay. ”
Liona pauses. Lets it settle. Watches the chains grind deeper into his flesh and smiles. There’s calculation behind her grin, a predator’s awareness that the crowd is listening.
Then it hits me. It’s not just me she’s after.
Every word she spews, every glance she throws toward the stands, it’s all for them.
The spectators here and the thousands watching through the Divinity Gazes.
She’s not trying to break me because she hates me, she’s trying to take what I have.
The crowd’s favor. She must believe that if she can drag me through the dirt in front of all of Calcatra, she won't just win this challenge, she'll steal all my followers once I'm out of her way.
“But things turned out even better,” she continues, as her Godbeast sends another current of magic through me, “when that attack made him realize his true feelings for that unfortunate girl. Calista’s fiercest warrior, reduced to a lovesick fool, no longer driven by the desire to please his Goddess. ”
Liona crouches. “So Calista gave Kaelzar a choice: bow and take the chains or watch the girl die screaming.” A beat of silence.
“He chose the chains,” Liona finishes, her eyes gleaming as she savors Kaelzar’s reaction, the ferocity with which his chains rip at him.
“Your mighty Godbeast. Your protector. He chose slavery over love lost.” She leans closer.
“So tell me, Raylane, how does it feel, knowing he once groveled at someone else’s feet? ”
She wants me and the audience to believe Kaelzar isn’t trustworthy, that he’d eventually betray me just as he did Mia.
But that’s not what I hear. Her words cast the story in a very different light—one of love and sacrifice, not of betrayal and blind loyalty to Calista.
He chose to keep Mia alive, giving up any chance at his own happiness by taking the chains Calista offered to spare her from torture and death.
Kaelzar’s roar erupts, feral and broken, the storm finally breaking. Shadows burst from him, crashing into the dragon’s side. The chains over his torso pulse, and he screams as blood pools beneath him.
The dragon reels back, which buys me just enough time to regain control of my body.
I drag in a breath like it’s my first, then snap the whip before my conscience can stop me, before it can remind me of the promise I once made not to harm. Veins of decay surge forward in jagged streaks toward Liona and her Godbeast.
“He gave up his life, his freedom. For her!” Liona shrieks, scrambling back from the creeping rot. “Do you really think he’ll choose you, Raylane, when Mia’s back in his arms—”
Her scream turns into a screech as one of my decay tendrils slashes her ankle. I grit my teeth and force myself upright.
Liona’s words are meant to break us both, but I won’t let them. She might know some of the history, but not all. Mia is gone, killed by Calista in the most gruesome way.
Before I can send another surge of decay, the dragon lunges, its teeth bared. The ground cracks beneath its weight, shards of earth flying.
I barely have time to react before it’s nearly on me, moving with terrifying speed.
Kaelzar drags himself forward, blocking its path. Shadows peel up from the ground, coalescing into jagged spikes that crash against the dragon’s body. The impact ripples through the arena, a thunderclap of power.
But Kaelzar falters.
The chains across his chest tighten more, and his summoned shadows flicker, their edges dulling.
The dragon seizes the moment, clamping its jaws down on Kaelzar’s shoulder, dangerously close to his throat. A deep, guttural growl escapes him, and blood surges from the wound in a heavy flow, darkening the earth beneath him in seconds.
My heart twists. “Stop!” I shout, my voice cracking with desperation.
But Liona only presses her advantage. Water swirls around her hands, then crashes toward me in a violent wave.
It knocks me flat, icy shock stealing the breath from my lungs. Kaelzar roars in defiance, casting shadows to shield me, but his frame shakes with the effort.
Guilt and rage war inside me. My fists clench as Decay magic simmers beneath my skin, begging to be released. I don’t want this, I don’t want to lose control and let it run rampant, but Liona isn’t stopping.
She sends another wave, this one aimed at Kaelzar.
The dragon is still latched onto him, sparking with electricity. Kaelzar’s body spasms, back arching violently, his chest exposed and torn. Deep gashes line his torso, fresh and brutal, carved by the grinding of enchanted chains.
And yet… even in agony, he stretches out flickering tendrils of shadow to shield me.
I can’t let him suffer like this. I can’t let him die trying to protect me.
Liona meant to drive a wedge between us, but she’s only made me realize that watching my Godbeast suffer is the one thing powerful enough to eclipse my guilt. The part of me that once hesitated to harm withers away, leaving only a primal need to protect him.
With a cry of anguish, I drop the whip and fling my trembling hands forward, unleashing the magic I’ve always feared.
Decay spills from my palms.
Dark, spreading, unstoppable. It ripples through the ground, silent and deadly, curling toward Liona like sentient ivy.
Her eyes widen. Confidence fractures into pure terror, as if she didn’t expect my magic to come from anything but my whip. She gasps and stumbles back, clutching her chest as the rot licks at her boots. The leather cracks and flakes apart like dead leaves.
“I didn’t want this,” I whisper, voice breaking, tears clouding my vision.
But the decay doesn’t care. It climbs her legs, slithering upward with a cruel elegance. Her skin pales, then splits, as if the life is draining from her veins.
The dragon—her loyal Godbeast—releases Kaelzar and rushes toward her, helpless.
It paces around her in frantic circles, as if it can stop what’s coming. Its body shimmers faintly, flickering, fading. It looks up at her, lets out a mournful roar then begins to unravel. Its scales glint, then vanish, its form disintegrating.
Liona staggers, folding in on herself as the decay creeps across her chest. She drops to her knees, eyes locking with mine.
There’s no hatred there now, only fear.
The decay pulses faintly, as if savoring the moment. Her dragon lets out one last, low growl before its body dissolves completely into light and mist. The bond between them snaps.
Liona collapses, breath hitching once, then silence. The decay, satisfied, recedes into the ground like a tide pulling back, leaving behind cracked soil and a terrible stillness.
I drop to my knees, chest heaving as the tears come, hot and unrelenting. My heart aches with the weight of what I’ve done, every beat is a reminder that I crossed a line I can never uncross. The crowd’s horrified hush and its delayed roar barely reach my ears.
“I didn’t want this,” I whisper again, my voice trembling, as if saying it aloud could somehow take it back.
I stagger, clutching my side where the pain still makes it hard to breathe. The next moment, the life I just took repurposes itself, turning into Blood magic, healing magic that instantly fixes my wounds.
This is how it works, how it always works. The decay must come first. Death must be given before life can be reclaimed. It’s the cost of my magic: something must rot, something must die, so something else can live.
But the healing does nothing for the hollow in my chest. Nothing for the image of her eyes locked on mine as the life drained out of her.
My breath shakes as I try to rise, but my legs give out beneath me. I just kneel there, trembling, surrounded by the ruin I’ve caused. The silence feels deafening. Was this what Calista wanted? Was this what it meant to be her Champion?
I wipe at my face, smearing tears across my skin. My hands are stained. My magic is silent. I stare at the earth where Liona fell for another moment, before the world crashes back in.
When I lift my gaze, Zyrel and Seraphina already stand atop their pillars: two claimed, one still empty. Mine.
My breaths come in short, ragged bursts. I can feel the crowd watching, weighing every movement, every falter. But there’s no time for guilt. No room for shame. I half crawl, half stumble toward Kaelzar.
His face is twisted in pain, every muscle in his body trembling with the effort to keep control over his thoughts. The dragon’s bite took his flesh but not these damned chains. They are still cutting into him.
I press my forehead to his, trying to steady both of us.
“I’m sorry I let her say all those things,” I whisper, pushing the remaining Blood magic into his body, healing the wounds just as the sharp chains open new ones. “You’re a good person, Kaelzar. Don’t let her make you forget that. Just tell me what to do. Tell me how to stop the chains.”
“I’ve done it many times before,” he grits out. A wet, sickening sound comes from his wounds, flesh tearing apart. It turns my stomach. “I just need a minute, Trouble. Don’t worry about me. Go.”
He nudges me toward a remaining pillar. I push and push my Blood magic into him until I have nothing left. And while the chains keep cutting, keep grinding, at least the gaping wound over his shoulder is closed.
“Go. Now.”
I tell myself it’s better to give him space, to let his mind settle without me hovering, so I rise and turn toward the pillar. The straight path leads directly through the blackened heap where Liona had stood only moments ago.
As I pass it, I hold my breath. Moving my legs is the only thing keeping me from collapsing beside her remains and begging for forgiveness.
I force my eyes forward to the pillar, to the box waiting at its peak. And as I leave what’s left of Liona behind, I repeat the same five words in my head, over and over.
Just one more to go.