Chapter 17 #2
Below us, Darian crouches, one knee to the ground, tracking the Obcasus. The creature hovers, shifting its weight from one spiral to the next. It’s testing him now. Learning.
“You said this wasn’t about strength,” I say softly.
“It’s not,” Mallen replies, his voice low. “Either he withstands death, or he doesn’t.”
The Obcasus slams down again, this time with devastating force. The entire arena vibrates. The air trembles with a pressure that spreads through my bones.
Darian rolls. Fast. Fluid. Controlled. When he lands, he lashes out, sword cutting through the thick body of the thing—and it splits. Not a graze. Not a surface wound. A true division.
The Obcasus obeyed him.
Mallen stiffens.
Darian turns and moves again. Every step is intentional. Every swing carves the air like music—deadly, elegant, precise. His blade arcs, and the Obcasus divides again. Then again. It’s fragmenting before him, unraveling as he presses on, forcing it to fracture to survive.
My breath catches. This isn’t just defense. He’s dominating it.
The Obcasus circles behind, striking from two sides now. He turns, fast enough to parry. A blur of motion. He moves like he’s been trained by fire and made for this moment.
And still it comes. Fiercer. Hungrier.
The air darkens. The black smoke thickens until it gleams, tar-like, in the light. It rears and collapses. A hundred strikes. A hundred evasions. Darian weaves through them like a man dancing with his own death.
But even he begins to slow.
His movements are less sharp as the effort takes its toll.
I see it in his shoulders. His breath. The tremble in his thighs as he pushes forward. Sweat shines on his skin and still he moves. Still he fights.
The Obcasus breaks toward the other tributes, flowing like a breached dam. The crowd gasps. The men below freeze.
Darian moves.
He surges after it, reckless and too fast, his boots pounding the blood-soaked sand. He throws himself into its path, sword raised—and brings it down.
The blade punches into the heart of the Obcasus, and the world freezes.
A perfect, impossible stillness.
Then—
Collapse.
The blackness recoils around him, spiraling up, devouring itself as it tries to consume him whole. Darian is swallowed, completely encased in a cocoon of churning smoke and dark light.
I jolt forward.
Mallen’s hand grips my arm, steadying me before I fall. But his jaw is clenched, and his breath has gone silent. His restraint is absolute—but only barely. His pulse throbs beneath the thin leather of his gloves.
“He’s—” I choke on the words.
I can’t look. Can’t breathe. Can’t think.
He’s dying.
I know it the way prey knows the instant before jaws close around its throat. The Obcasus is devouring him from the inside out, a living storm of death magic, and I am certain of this because its magic belongs to me. It’s not just smoke or shadow—it’s hunger.
It’s feeding on him.
And it’s fueling the darkness locked in me.
Then I see him.
Darian.
Still inside the storm. Still standing.
His back is arched, his body taut with agony. His hands shake around the hilt of his sword, still buried in the Obcasus. His face tips to the sky. His mouth opens in a soundless roar as the shadows tear at him.
But he does not fall.
He endures.
He breaks the storm open with nothing but his will.
He roars—not in pain, but defiance—and the gale answers him.
It flares, shrieks, trembles on the edge of unraveling.
Then, piece by piece, it yields. The darkness recoils from his skin, shattering around his form like a mirror struck by lightning.
He doesn’t destroy it with brute force. He refuses it. Commands it. Bends it until it breaks.
The Obcasus fractures.
Splits into a thousand shards of shadow and disappears, as if it had never been there. As if death itself bowed its head and retreated.
The crowd erupts.
Darian crumples.
He sinks to his knees, his sword falling beside him.
The remaining tributes rush forward—some to help, some just to touch him.
His chest rises and falls like he’s been dragged from the edge of a cliff.
One tries to steady him, but Darian flinches like he’s been burned—like whatever just touched him was worse than the Obcasus.
I sway.
Mallen catches me. His arm bands across my back like steel.
Too steady. Too possessive.
“You saw it too,” I whisper, my voice trembling. “He mastered the Obcasus.”
“It’s the labyrinth, then,” Mallen replies.
He doesn’t sound disappointed that there will be a third trial.
Or concerned. He’s not blinking. Not breathing.
His gaze is locked on Darian like a man watching a funeral procession.
And when he speaks, it’s not with fear or doubt—it’s with a calm that fractures at the edges.
As if every word is threaded with rust. Or something long buried in him is clawing its way back to the surface.
“Let’s see how he fares against what waits inside.”
His fingers flex against my spine, not with comfort but control.
He’s unraveling. Not openly, but it’s there. In the grip that holds me too long, and the fingers that cling a little too tight. In the way his gaze lingers on Darian with a look that holds no respect.
I should pull away, but, right now, I need him.
I look down at the place where the Obcasus vanished.
The ground still pulses faintly. And I feel it.
Not just beneath my feet.
Inside me.
Cold. Familiar. Insatiable.
The Obcasus wasn’t just reacting to Darian. It was watching me. It knew me.
I press my hand against my ribs, but it’s no use.
The magic is stirring.
It’s trying to get out.
And my father is smiling.