Chapter 65
Rune
Dawn arrived without sunlight.
Rune felt it instead, a thinning of the dark, a subtle loosening in the air as if the world itself hesitated.
The camp lay hushed beneath thick clouds smothering the sun, tents stretching across the valley beneath the Hydell Hills like a waiting host of ghosts.
No birds stirred. No banners snapped. Even the wind was quiet, fires banked low, shadows drawn close as though listening.
Tonight, the Blood Moon would rise.
The Rift bled faintly through the overcast sky, a dull red seam stitched across the Heavens, pulsing slow and patient. It tugged at him with every breath, a reminder of what waited and what could no longer be delayed.
Rune stood outside of his large tent with a view of it all.
All seven courts lined behind the tents of their Dominion lords. The humans, fae, and Minotaurs would join them when the time came.
An army prepared for annihilation.
Drakon circled the sky in lazy circles, but at a distant screech, he glanced at the gray griffin flying over the ridge. The Sun Sorceress would see that the Beacons strategically placed among the high hills would light up the dark when the time came.
Either way, everything was prepared.
“Sire.” Deimos appeared in a puff of smoke.
“Do you have what I asked?”
He presented him with a rolled-up scroll of parchment, and Rune tucked it away into his shadows.
Deimos kept his head bowed but the unease was clear in the nervous twitch of his tail. “Are you sure about this?”
No…but the decision was made.
Calla and Hadeon emerged from the trees, already dressed in armor, their expressions despondent.
“You have served me well,” Rune said. “I trust you will do the same for her.”
All three lowered to one knee and bowed their heads, clamping a fist over their hearts.
Turning away, Rune stepped into his quiet tent.
Alora lay face down amid rumpled sheets, one arm tucked beneath her pillow, her back bare where the covers had slipped. Her hair spilled across her shoulders in loose disarray, catching the faint glow of the Rift like threads of fire. Every soft breath she drew struck his chest like a blow.
This was the shape of everything he would lose.
Rune crossed the tent quietly and knelt beside the bed. He brushed his fingers over her shoulder, light as a whisper, committing the warmth of her skin to memory. He pressed his mouth to her temple, lingering longer than he should have, his breath unsteady despite his will.
Forgive me, songbird.
The first step away from his mate was the hardest. The second made it hard to breathe. On the third, he clung to the memory of her voice that he would never hear again.
Rune turned away before the thought could fracture him.
The portal opened soundlessly at his command, shadows folding inward upon themselves. He stepped through without looking back.
The Ruins of Khar Avalen greeted him with cold winds coming in from the roaring sea beyond the cliffs.
Stone pillars rose from the earth like jagged teeth, their surfaces etched with ancient sigils worn smooth by time and old magic. The air was dead here. No insects. No life. Even the fog lay unnaturally still, clinging to the ground.
The only thing that grew was a field of spider lilies. They gently fluttered as he strode toward the circular stone dais in the middle of the pillars. The weight of it pressed into him, memory and inevitability intertwined.
This was where the desperate bargained for false hope.
Where mercy had ended.
As he climbed onto the dais, his gaze fell on the wrecked opening where he had torn through from the pit below. It was too dark inside to see anything beyond the top of crumbled statues. Too dark to see where the Scry Mirror remained.
It had nothing to show him now.
Rune lifted his hand.
For the first time in centuries, it shook. He closed his fists until the tremor stilled. Then at his silent command, the stone reformed itself to cover the opening until the platform was unblemished.
He drew out the scroll Deimos had given him, its edges yellowed and brittle, script faded but still the old array was clear. The kind of knowledge meant to be buried, not preserved.
After studying it for a moment, hellfire sparked at his fingertips and Rune cast them over the stone. Thin and precise lines shone crimson as the Soul Anchor took shape at his feet.
Power hummed through the ruins, low and hungry, recognizing its purpose. His shadows writhed in frantic whips, pulling against him.
“This is for her,” he reminded them and they slowly calmed.
The shadows only mirrored his dread. Because he knew, there was no coming back from this. The Soul Anchor would take him, hollow him, bind him beyond time for eternity.
But it would seal the Rift and reinforce Vorak’s prison. The Realms would stand and Alora would live.
The cost was worth it.
He exhaled and began the final glyph—
“Rune!”
The scream tore through the ruins, cleaving straight through his chest.
Rune froze and the Hellfire in his hand guttered out.
He knew that voice. He would know it in oblivion.
Light flared behind him and he flinched, thinking it was the sun. But he looked over his shoulder, and the white glow glared from the boughs of an Elder Tree he’d forgotten was there.
Alora stood before it, her skin glittering with magic. He blinked and she vanished from sight only to appear in front of him. She tackled him off the platform and they fell among the flowers.
“What are you doing?” she cried, hitting his chest with her small fists. “Why! Why would you do this when I finally have you again?”
“Alora…” Rune cupped her face and her tears rolled down her cheek, landing on his. His throat tightened. “Listen to me.”
“No.” Her fingers wrapped around his wrists.
Her hands were warm. Alive. Too alive for the path either of them had chosen.
“What you told me in the throne room,” Alora said, her voice breaking. “That was you declaring me your successor, wasn’t it? You had me sit in your place because you were not going to be here to fill it. After everything we endured, why are you leaving me?”
For a moment, the world narrowed to the space between them.
Rune yanked her down, holding her tightly against his chest.
He had been carefully arranging the pieces as a man prepares his own grave, careful and thorough, so she would not have to. Hoping she would not realize it until it was too late.
“No matter how much we prepare …none of us will survive Vorak’s coming,” Rune murmured. “The only way to stop him is to seal the Rift that I created.”
She pulled back, anger and love warring in her teary gaze “You don’t know that. You have given up before we tried to fight him!”
He sighed. “Songbird—”
“Why is it that when I need you to be selfish, you choose not to be?”
Because when it truly mattered, his first instinct was to always put her first.
“I have been selfish my entire existence, Alora.” Rune sat up, his throat tightening.
“I waited until the last possible day to do this to have as much time as I could with you. You think this isn’t difficult for me?
I want a life with you. I wanted everything…
that we should have had.” He brushed her stomach lightly and her face fell.
“But I will not let you sacrifice yourself for me again.”
Tears welled on her lashes. “Why must it be you?”
Because the Fates had foretold it so from the beginning. He had not forgotten the prophecy they had given him.
When storm-winds swarm and the Heavens bleed,
The curse will wake, and the dark will feed.
To tip the scales, the star must rend,
Or thy bloom will wilt to Death’s own end.
He had always known what star the Fates meant.
The words echoed through the bond and Alora’s eyes widened. Her breath quickened, her complexion going pale.
She shook her head. “No.”
“Alora—”
“I refuse to believe there is no other way.” She launched to her feet and shouted at the sky, “Sunneva!”
The name reverberated, echoing through shadow and stone.
Rune got to his feet. “Why are you calling her?”
“Because this was what she was waiting for.” Alora scowled. “Sunneva! I know you hear me!”
Frost bloomed across the floor in answer, creeping along the walls like veins of ice until the air itself chilled. From the misted air Sunneva appeared, serene as ever, her hair pale as dawn fire, her blue eyes lit with quiet knowing.
Sunneva smiled with that strange, knowing curve of lips that carried the weight of a thousand veiled riddles. “Took you long enough.”
“What is unmade by death may only be remade by life,” Alora clenched her fists. “You were speaking of the Rift. What price do we need to pay to fix it?”
“At last,” Sunneva said, her voice like a sigh of wind over snow, “you are asking the right questions.”
At that, she arched a brow at Rune pointedly and rolled his eyes. Was that why she had refused to tell him before?
Sunneva lifted her hands, and frost spun into the air like threads of silver, weaving shapes that shimmered in the dim chamber. Two figures formed in miniature—one cloaked in shadow, the other bathed in light—circling each other as though caught in an eternal dance.
“As there is dark, there is light,” Sunneva said softly, the frost-figures twining closer with each word.
“As there is death, there is life. Mortal and immortal. Shadow and flame.” The two shapes pressed palm to palm, their frost-limbs threading together, until they glowed as one.
“A union between two can do what one alone cannot.”
Alora’s breath caught as the figures merged, their light steadying into a luminous tether. “You mean… both of us?”
Sunneva inclined her head. “The Soul Anchor entraps one soul alone, forever. But a Soul-Covenant is a tether between two souls that can bind the Rift into place.
Rune’s eyes narrowed. He had learned long ago to listen for the trap buried beneath a god’s honeyed words.
“But?”