Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
BLORJORN
The poison moves.
I feel it—not as magic, not as something distant and arcane, but as cold. Ice flooding through the place where my hand presses against her wound, rushing up my arm, spreading through my chest. The blight that was killing her is killing me now, and I don’t care. I pull harder.
More.
The black veins on her skin begin to fade—retreating from her heart, crawling back toward the wound. I watch them disappear from her arm, her shoulder, her neck. Watch color return to her cheeks, faint but real. Watch her chest rise with a breath that doesn’t rattle.
She’s going to live.
The thought burns in my chest, bright and fierce and worth everything.
The poison reaches my heart.
Pain.
Not the sharp agony of the brands or the grinding misery of the chains—this is something else.
The red blight finds the curse. And the curse fights.
I feel it happening—the two dark magics clashing inside me, shadow against shadow, poison against poison.
The blight was designed to destroy living flesh.
The curse that stains my bloodline was designed to survive anything.
They tear at each other, and I’m caught in the middle, burning from the inside out.
It should kill me. The blight was already eating at me from the chains. Adding Kielyne’s dose should finish the job, should overwhelm even shadow-cursed resilience.
It doesn’t.
The curse is older. Deeper. Woven into my blood by magic that predates human kingdoms, forged in the cataclysm that broke the Veil itself. The blight poison crashes against it and shatters.
Power floods through me.
Not the cold strength of the blight or the burning rage of battle—something else.
Something that feels like fire and shadow woven together, ancient and terrible and mine.
The oath mark on my arm blazes white-hot, and for a moment, I can see it—really see it—not just raised scar tissue but living magic, threads of light connecting my heart to hers.
The bond has changed.
I don’t understand how or why. I only know that something that was forged in desperation has been reforged in sacrifice, and what was a chain has become something else entirely.
I look down at Kielyne. Her eyes are still closed, but her breathing is steady. Strong. The wound in her side has stopped bleeding, the flesh already knitting itself closed. She’s going to live.
And Hadrin is going to die.
I lay her down gently. Press my lips to her forehead—a promise, a vow that I’ll come back for her. Then I rise.
The cathedral has gone silent.
The battle still rages at the edges—Grothak’s war cry, the clash of weapons, the screams of the dying.
But here, near the altar, everything has stopped.
Orcs and humans alike stare at me with expressions I’ve never seen before.
Fear. Awe. The particular terror of watching something that shouldn’t be possible.
I look down at myself. Red veins crawl across my skin—the blight’s mark, proof of what I’ve taken into myself. But between the red, light pulses. The oath mark has spread, its angular lines branching out across my arm, my chest, my shoulders. Fire and shadow, woven together.
I don’t know what I’ve become.
I don’t care.
Hadrin stands by the altar, frozen, his pale eyes wide. The smile is gone from his face. The confidence, the calculation, the cold certainty that’s carried him through thirty years of war—all of it stripped away by what he’s watching.
He sees death coming. He sees it wearing my face.
“That’s not possible.” His voice cracks. Breaks. “My blight should have—you should be—”
“Dying?” I take a step toward him. My legs feel strange—stronger than they should, steadier than they have any right to be. “I was. But I’ve been dying for a long time, Hadrin. Dying since the Veil-Breaking cursed my bloodline.”
Another step. He backs away, hits the altar, has nowhere else to go.
“Your poison tried to kill me. It just made me stronger.” I stop in front of him, close enough to smell his fear. “Now, it’s your turn.”
He reaches for a weapon—a dagger at his belt, something to defend himself. My hand closes around his wrist before he can draw it. I squeeze. Bones grind. He screams.
“That’s for the brands.” I twist his arm until something snaps. “That’s for the chains.”
He tries to pull away, to escape, to do anything but stand here and face what’s coming. I don’t let him. My other hand finds his throat, lifts him off his feet, pins him against the cracked granite of the altar.
“And this—” my voice drops to a growl, “this is for her.”
I could make it slow.
Could take him apart piece by piece the way he promised to do to me. Could let him feel every ounce of agony he inflicted on Kielyne, on me, on every orc he’s tortured and killed over three decades of war. The rage inside me wants that. Wants him to suffer.
But Kielyne is lying on the cathedral floor behind me, alive but unconscious, and every second I waste here is a second I’m not getting her to safety.
So I make it quick.
My hands find either side of his head. His eyes meet mine—pale, flat, seeing nothing now but his own death reflected in my gaze. His mouth opens, maybe to beg, maybe to curse, maybe to make one final threat.
I twist.
The crack of his neck breaking echoes through the cathedral. His body goes limp. I let it fall.
Hadrin is dead.
The man who hunted Kielyne, who tortured me, who threatened her brother, and tried to break us both—dead. Just meat now. Just another corpse on a floor already covered with them.
I should feel satisfied. Triumphant. Something.
I feel nothing. Just the cold certainty that it’s done and the burning need to get back to her.
I crouch over Hadrin’s body. Find the sigil brands still strapped to his belt—the weapons he used to attack the blood oath, the tools designed to break what binds us. I tear them free, hold them in my hands for a moment.
Then I crush them.
The metal screams as it crumples, ancient magic sparking and dying, the work of years destroyed in seconds. I grind the pieces under my boot until nothing remains but twisted scrap and fading light.
No one will ever use those against us again.
The cathedral groans.
At first, I think it’s the battle—Grothak’s war cry, some new assault from Hadrin’s forces. Then I feel the floor shift beneath my feet. See cracks spreading across the ancient stone. Watch a chunk of masonry fall from the vaulted ceiling and shatter against the flagstones.
The wards.
Hadrin’s magic was holding this place together. The same power that trapped us, that sealed the exits, that turned the Veilspire into a cage—it was also keeping centuries of damage from finally bringing the whole structure down. And now that he’s dead—
“Captain!” Grothak’s voice cuts through the chaos. “The cathedral’s collapsing!”
I’m already moving. Already running toward where I left Kielyne, my boots pounding against stone that shudders with every step. Another piece of ceiling falls—this one closer, close enough that I feel the rush of displaced air.
She’s still there. Still unconscious, still breathing, still alive. I scoop her into my arms, cradle her against my chest, and turn toward the entrance.
The great doors are buried under rubble. The ward wall that sealed us in has collapsed, but the debris behind it has created a new barrier.
“This way!” Vekra’s voice, somewhere to my left. “The passage we came through—it’s still open!”
I follow her voice. The war band is retreating, carrying their wounded, fighting through the chaos of falling stone and panicking soldiers. Hadrin’s army is breaking—without their commander, without the wards holding them in formation, they’re scattering like rats from a burning ship.
A pillar crashes down inches from where I’m running. I dodge, keep moving, shield Kielyne’s body with my own as debris rains around us. The ceiling is coming apart in chunks now, great slabs of stone tearing free from supports that have held for centuries.
“Move!” Grothak appears beside me, blood streaming down his face, his axe notched and dulled. “The whole thing’s coming down!”
I see the passage ahead—a gap in the cathedral’s rear wall, the unwarded entrance the war band used to reach us. Light streams through it, pale moonlight that looks like salvation.
Twenty feet. Ten.
Behind us, the great stained glass window—the one that’s glowed red since before anyone can remember—explodes outward. The light inside it dies. Whatever power sustained it is gone, destroyed with Hadrin, and the Veilspire Cathedral is dying with it.
I dive through the passage.
Hit the ground hard, twisting to take the impact on my shoulder, keeping Kielyne protected against my chest. Roll, come up running, don’t stop until I’m clear of the shadow of the walls.
Then I turn and watch the cathedral fall.
The Veilspire collapses slowly at first. One wall buckling inward, pulling the roof with it. Then the other walls follow, crumbling like sandcastles in a tide, centuries of stone and prayer and bloodshed all coming down in a thunderous roar that shakes the earth beneath my feet.
Dust billows outward in a massive cloud, swallowing the moonlight, filling the air with grit and the taste of ancient mortar. I turn my back to it, shield Kielyne with my body, feel the debris patter against my shoulders and hair.
When I look again, the cathedral is gone.
Just rubble now. A mountain of broken stone where the holiest site on the Bloodscar Plains used to stand.
Somewhere under there, Hadrin’s body is buried.
Somewhere under there, his remaining soldiers are crushed.
The army that hunted us, the trap that nearly killed us, the general who promised to break us both—all of it destroyed.
It’s over.
The words don’t feel real. After days of running, fighting, bleeding, dying—after everything Hadrin put us through—it’s just... over.
“Captain,” Grothak’s voice, rough with exhaustion, “the little healer—is she—”