Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
ARKEN
Aheavy cloak of mist shrouds the forest floor as I flee through the darkness—running blind, barefoot, and alone.
A horrifying, realm-rending shriek tears through the woods, the dark creature behind me giving chase without hesitation.
The ominous creak of rotting wood follows me into the night, and I flinch at every sharp snap of a broken branch.
I don’t look back. I don’t have time. Right hand blackened with blood and ichor, clutching the wounds across my ribcage, I’m desperate to get back to Sophrosyne before bleeding out.
This time, Kieran isn’t here to save me.
My head feels heavy, too heavy to hold above my shoulders.
My vision blurs, and I can hear the snarls closing in.
The Leshy is gaining on me, and I have no idea how much further I need to run if I hope to survive.
The acrid scent of the daemon’s torn flesh beneath bark and bone burns my nostrils, so intense that I can taste it on my tongue.
It may be delusion or wishful thinking, but I swear I can see the faintest bit of light shimmering through a clearing in the distance.
Keep running, Arken. Run, and find me.
Kieran isn’t here, but the memory of his words spurs me forward. I should have been smarter—should have run from the start, but—
My foot catches on the gnarled root of a giant oak, and I stumble.
With poison seeping into my wounds, my limbs become sluggish, far too heavy to react as I fall.
When the dead weight of my body crashes to the ground, I want to cry out in pain, but all that escapes me is a pathetic whimper.
The slashes at my side scream in agony, the torn flesh already necrotizing, the blood and ichor now mixing with wet soil and debris from the forest floor.
Fuck.
Before I can scramble to my feet, the Leshy is looming over me, faceless and foreboding.
I shouldn’t. This close to Sophrosyne, I really shouldn’t. But I don’t want to die today, and flight gives way to the only option I’ve got left:
Fight.
Gritting my teeth, I draw in as much aether as possible from my surroundings; the air, the mist, the earth—even the dark Shadows emanating from the daemon itself. I pull in so much power, so much raw arcane energy that I feel unstable, like I could burst at the seams at any moment.
I’m out of time. I only have one chance to take this thing out before I’m left fully depleted and defenseless.
With a roaring bellow of pain and rage, pure aether bursts from my palms. Not Light, not Shadow, not Fire—but a white-hot, burning stream of quicksilver heads straight for the Leshy’s heart.
The daemon dodges, just in time.
My heart sinks with the horrifying realization that I’m about to die…
And then a blinding burst of Light aether illuminates the clearing, and a tall, slender, elegant woman with cornsilk hair strides into view.
With her pale porcelain complexion and striking eyes the color of summer seas, she looks vaguely familiar.
Not as if we’d met before, but almost like… I’ve seen her portrait somewhere.
As Light crawls up her arms like an arcane glove, I gasp.
That’s Theia fucking Frey.
Why was the High Scholar of Light, the Lady of the House of Light and Shadow—and Sienna’s stepmother—here in the woods? How did she know I was here?
Though the skies were previously crystal clear, a dark cloud now forms overhead as Lady Frey recites some sort of incantation.
Her eyes glow just before she makes a fluid somatic gesture above her head, and a bolt of lightning—Light aether in its most chaotic form—strikes the Leshy’s torso, and the beast burns so quickly it is reduced to ash within a single breath.
A sigh of relief escapes me, despite the pain and the poison.
“The beast has been subdued!” Lady Frey calls over her shoulder. She keeps her blazing turquoise gaze affixed to me, but the words were clearly meant for others.
Subdued? Fucking Fates, it’s been obliterated.
“We have her cornered now.”
My heavy head is swimming with sea-sick confusion until one by one, they arrive at the clearing.
The Aetherborne. All nineteen of them. The elegant immortals move in silent grace, encircling Lady Frey and I with their ominous and otherworldly presence.
Naturally, it is Elura who speaks first.
“Very well done, my Lady of Light. You may take your leave now.” Her words are soft and lyrical, but those wicked fangs glint in the moonlight.
Lady Frey nods once and does not spare me a second glance before departing, her work here done.
The Speaker takes a slow, methodical stride toward me, the length of her silver-white hair fluttering in the breeze.
“Well, well, well,” she says, the musical lilt in her voice striking a strange, discordant tone in my chest. “If it isn’t our little intruder. Tell me, young one…Just how long did you think you could get away with this?”
“Get away with what?” I ask slowly, tongue thickened by the effects of the daemon’s ichor. “Please help, I’ve been injured—the daemon—”
“The only fiend who currently concerns us is you, child,” Elura responds, as another Aetherborne approaches her side and chuckles darkly.
“Even now, she will deny it,” the less familiar immortal murmurs, bearing a crystal orb between both of her honey-brown palms. “As if such an existence was not already prophesied.”
The Oracle.
“But it is written,” another Aetherborne speaks. Alexei—I recognize the voice and the rich mahogany tones of his skin. “It is known.” The Archivist nods toward yet another approaching god, a grey-skinned male with a terrifying presence and striking orchid eyes.
“And it shall be confirmed,” the most frightening Elder of them all growls as he steps forth.
“Between you and me, Ark, I can’t say I’m afraid of the Aetherborne.
Not all of them, anyway,” Kieran once told me.
“Not because they’re not powerful—they’re just placid.
Peaceful in nature. But the Overseer? That’s one scary son of a bitch.
” The Overseer could read—and manipulate—both your present waking mind and your every last memory.
Which is the last thing I recall before my head explodes, pain bursting like an aura all around me as vicious tendrils of the Aetherborne’s arcana spear through my mind.
I can feel it, viscerally, as my oldest memories are torn to shreds with ruthless aggression.
Such brutal torment is there and gone in an instant, leaving me gasping, my mouth agape.
The fearsome, grey-skinned immortal bears his fangs in my direction before he gives Elura, the Speaker, a single curt nod.
“As we had surmised, then,” Elura says, looking disappointed. “You wicked, monstrous thing. Did you really think you had us fooled? That we did not detect your…aberration from the start?”
“I don’t understand,” I whisper, fighting my own body for consciousness.
“It was simply a matter of waiting. We had hoped you might reveal your plans, not just your weaknesses, you know. Thankfully, there are all too many. And to think what you might have become…”
Another Aetherborne steps forward, copper eyes gleaming, the aether behind them alight. “The prophecy shall not come to pass. Justice will be served.”
Her slender, tan fingers beckon to the female goddess at her right—this one deathly pale, and unlike the other Aetherborne, her eyes do not glow. They are simply milky white, pupilless, and opaque.
Only one of the gods is blind.
Justice herself steps forward, a greatsword of pure aether glowing at her back. She reaches for the hilt.
“Indeed,” Elura agrees, “The Harbinger will now face the judgment of her predecessors.”
The Harbinger?
“I’m not—I don’t—” I stammer out weakly, my words lost to a sea of overlapping, ethereal murmurs.
“We shouldn’t have allowed her to enter the city, knowing what filth she harbors.”
“She cannot be allowed to wreak her havoc upon this realm, or any other.”
“That power was stolen! It is not hers to claim!”
“She threatens the balance with every second she draws breath.”
“Enough!” A single, sharp word from the Speaker leaves them all silent as she beckons to the goddess wielding her massive blade. “Eunomia, proceed. This fractured soul has been weighed in the balance, and we find her wanting. A Harbinger cannot be suffered to survive.”
The Oracle beside her begins to hum, her expression strangely placid.
“Born of Wanderers, and eternally so too, she shall,” she sighs, voice gentle like a song of riddles.
“Yet only the Beginning and the End can mete out true judgment against those who have been star-split…Only punished or rewarded by that which never dies. But how does one wander between life and death?”
“May we never know. We deny you your fate, Harbinger. May you wander the Abyss!” the Speaker proclaims with zeal. “Return unto the void, Source-damned. May she have mercy, for we do not.”
As Justice approaches and lifts her shining sword to deliver judgment for sins I don’t understand, I hear the echo of a familiar rasp call out through the clearing. The ghost of a smile tugs at my lips with what little energy I have left. At least I get to hear his voice, one last time.
“Arken, no!”
I somehow feel nothing and everything, everywhere and nowhere all at once as the Convocation’s god-blade pierces my chest. In an instant, the sharpest pain and the most splendid euphoria exist in terrible tandem. It rends me apart, flesh from soul, and then the world goes black.
A Harbinger cannot be suffered to survive.
“Arken. Arken, wake up.” The voice was familiar, rough and rasping, but soothing all the same. “You’re dreaming, kenna. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
No, no, please no—
My eyelids fluttered open in the dark, but the panic had yet to subside. Fear had me by the throat, and though I recognized I was awake, my limbs remained frozen—locked in place. I could see Kieran in my periphery, even as my wide-eyed gaze remained rooted to his ceiling.
A Harbinger cannot be suffered to survive.
Fates, I could have sworn I still felt the blade in my chest, aether in its purest form piercing me beyond flesh, bone, or marrow—the Nineteen chasing me from dream state to reality.
They knew. They knew. They’d always known. Of course they had. They’d just been watching…waiting for me to slip up. Oh my gods. Oh my fucking gods.
“Hey. You’re okay,” Kieran repeated, dabbing gently at my sweat-slicked skin with a soft towel. “It was just a dream. You were having a nightmare.”
With graceful ease, he slipped one arm beneath my back and another behind my thighs, easing me upright. I let him prop me up like a ragdoll without the assistance of my own muscles, still paralyzed as my mind struggled to return to reality.
“That’s it. Breathe for me, sweetheart. You’re okay. I’m right here, yeah?”
I opened my mouth, but words wouldn’t come out. I couldn’t form them. The best I could manage was a slight nod.
“Were you dreaming about the Wyldwoods?” he asked softly.
Yes. No. Sort of.
Panic grew, my mouth running dry—because what was I supposed to tell him?
I couldn’t tell him the truth without revealing myself, so what was I supposed to say instead?
My breath began to quicken alongside my still-racing heartbeat, taking in short, shallow gasps of air while my eyes went in and out of focus.
My throat felt so tight that even with panting breaths, I could barely get enough air into my lungs—it felt like I was suffocating.
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—
Sensory distraction was a welcome relief as I heard the gentle strike of a match, followed by the scent of smoke, as Kieran swiftly lit the candles on his bedside table, illuminating the darkened room in a soft, flickering glow.
“Shhh, sweetheart,” he murmured reassuringly, brushing his knuckles against my spine. “It’s okay. It’s okay. You’re safe.”
“Fuck,” I croaked after a gulp of air finally made its way into my lungs properly, my body soothed just enough by the sweet relief of his touch. “Shit, I’m so sorry, Kier—”
“Hush,” he interrupted, gently resting a finger against my lips. Kieran was running his hand up and down my back now with a warm, steady motion while keeping his own frame somewhat distanced, giving me space.
“We’re just going to breathe together for a bit, okay, Little Conduit? Just follow my lead.”
I released a slow and ragged breath, watching his bare chest rise and fall, clinging to his example like it was the only thing keeping me tethered to reality right now.
And maybe it was.