Chapter 73
Symbols ignited across the Grimoire’s pages, long-dormant wards flaring to life, as the book glowed white hot. The beam pierced straight through it, burning through ink, through vellum, through the spine itself.
The entity screamed a final time, and then the Grimoire detonated. The explosion was silent but blinding. Pages shredded into ash. The cover split into two clean halves. Black smoke was sucked inward, not outward, pulled into the collapsing shape of the book itself.
The Grimoire folded in on itself like crumpling stone and shattered. Fragments scattered across the altar like broken glass. The entity’s voice faded into a whisper that twisted into nothing. The ritual light snapped off.
Poppy dropped to her knees, and the valley fell silent. Only the soft sound of water dripping from the moonwell remained.
Mingxi shifted back into human form beside her, gasping. There was blood on his skin, but his hands were already reaching for her.
“Poppy… Poppy, breathe. I’ve got you.”
Caelan stood farther back, drenched, panting, staring at the shattered remnants of the Grimoire with a storm-dark expression.
Lysandra lay unconscious on the ground, the right side of her body pale and cracked—but the cracks were no longer black. They were fading, slowly, painfully.
The valley was starting to breathe wrong. Not with revenants. Not with magic. With aftershocks—the kind that meant the Grimoire’s shattering had scattered something poisonous into the earth itself. Mingxi felt it as a prickle under his skin.
“We’re leaving,” he said, already adjusting Poppy’s limp form in his arms. “Now.”
Her breath fluttered against his collarbone, shallow and unsteady. Moonlight still clung to her skin in weak flickers, fading like embers losing their glow.
Caelan hefted Lysandra carefully. She shivered despite the warmth of his coat, pupils blown wide, her gaze unfocused, darting as if she were trying to follow too many things at once.
“We move east,” Caelan said. “The ground there won’t hold the shards’ corruption.”
Lysandra gave a soft, broken laugh. “They don’t chase,” she whispered. Her voice tilted sideways, as though she were speaking to the air instead of them. “They crawl. Crawl, crawl, crawl toward the brightest moon.”
Mingxi’s grip tightened on Poppy instinctively.
Caelan’s jaw hardened. “Keep moving,” he said.
They climbed the rocky incline, boots slipping on the wet stone where moonwell water still pooled. Poppy stirred only when the wind brushed her cheek, her lips parting, breath hitching.
“Ming…”
The word fell apart halfway out of her mouth, and Mingxi nearly stumbled.
“I’m here,” he murmured, lowering his forehead to her temple. “I’m right here, Yueguāng.”
Her fingers curled weakly in his shirt.
“She knows you,” Lysandra whispered.
Mingxi bit out. “She trusts me.”
“No.” Lysandra’s voice sharpened unexpectedly. “She knows your light.”
Caelan shot her a warning look, and she hissed sharply, collapsing against him with a gasp.
“There!” Her head jerked toward the tree line. “No… that’s later… that’s another path, another tide…. another—”
Her breath snagged, and then she went still. Horribly still.
Caelan froze mid-step. “Lysandra?”
Her eyes rolled upward—and her voice came out not entirely her own. “The sea-claimed warrior will fall. Not in water—in shadow. Not by blade—by bond. His tide will turn for her, and because of that, the darkness will take its chance.”
Caelan stared at her.
Mingxi, already tense from the ritual backlash, looked sharply at the unconscious girl in his arms, but Lysandra immediately shook her head, wild and terrified.
“No,” she whispered hoarsely. “Not Poppy. Not her.”
Mingxi exhaled shakily.
Caelan stiffened. “Then who?”
Lysandra’s voice cracked. “I don’t know her face. I only know she matters. To you.”
Caelan exhaled once, hard, and Lysandra clutched his coat with trembling fingers.
“So many currents… your path splits. Two futures. One bright. One dark. And she—your tide—your anchor—she hasn’t arrived yet.”
She sagged in his arms, gasping.
Caelan looked shaken in a way Mingxi had never seen, and he focused entirely on the girl in his arms. Poppy had gone cold. Not dangerously—just inward, too far inward.
He angled his mouth near her ear. “Yueguāng,” he whispered, voice low and frayed. “Stay with me.”
Her brow furrowed faintly, and he felt her inhale before she whispered back, barely audible, “Don’t… leave.”
Mingxi closed his eyes, a breath of relief shuddering out of him. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promised. “Not ever.”
Another tremor rippled through the ground—silent but heavy, the kind of danger only magic could detect.
Lysandra lifted her head weakly. “Too late…” she whispered.
They ran until the forest changed color.