Chapter 35
Ciaran
The crystal table cracked straight down the center, a clean break that split it into two jagged halves.
The floor lurched underfoot, lines fracturing outward like veins of glass.
The shelves lining the West House’s war chamber emptied in a crash, jars and scrolls shattering in a single unified tremor.
Panomquake.
Ciaran’s chair skidded back as he surged to his feet, his heart a wild hammer in his ribs. His father was shouting—something about the stability of the wards, the records, the House foundation—but none of it reached him.
Because there was only one person alive who could shake Thyria like this.
Hope.
The word ripped through him with the speed of lightning, raw and unequivocal.
His shadows snapped out, curling wild and sharp around his arms, answering the terror roaring through his veins. He didn’t wait for permission, didn’t give his father another glance. He night-walked, slipping into the silk of shadow, faster than his pounding feet could have carried him.
The gardens blurred past. The pines of the West forest swallowed him whole.
He was running blind, hunting her, every nerve in his body reaching for the tether he had left with her—his shadow curled soft around her ankle, his presence always waiting, always watching.
But it wasn’t there.
The weight was gone.
The bond was gone.
He pushed harder, shadows scraping the ground with every step, until he was flying, the forest bending to his will as he tore through it. Her scent should have been clear—the sea wind, the salt on sun-warmed skin—but instead it was faint, opaque, as if distance itself had dulled it.
And then, an incoming ink cut through him. Lenna’s words, trembling, frantic:
Hope is not answering.
He knew already. He had been screaming through his inks, clawing for her, and all he had met was silence. His shadows twined around his throat, restless, raging.
He leapt over fallen pines, debris scattered across the forest floor. The woods were wrecked, entire trunks splintered, roots torn up, the earth ripped apart as if a god had struck the land.
Then he heard them.
The sangins.
Not the screeches of hunger he was used to. Not the frantic calls of beasts on the hunt. No—this was something else. This was a celebration. The guttural sound of feasting.
Ciaran’s blood turned to ice.
He tore forward, faster, shadows flaring sharp enough to cut air. Branches lashed his face, snapped underfoot, until at last the forest broke open into a clearing that had never existed before.
It was carnage.
The earth was cratered, scarred with scorch marks, the remnants of explosions. He knew the signs. He had watched her wield the Fifth Power before, seen how it ravaged everything it touched. Stones were split, trees cleaved, the ground blackened with ash.
And in the center—
Dead sangins piled in heaps, dozens, maybe hundreds, bodies clawed and burned and broken. And yet still more writhed and fought, a frenzy of talons and snapping teeth, shoving and snarling, desperate for what lay at the heart of their circle.
For her.
Ciaran’s shadows exploded.
They roared outward from his body, a torrent of pure darkness that devoured the clearing whole. Hundreds of beasts seized mid-lunge, their shrieks cut short as shadow-thorns pierced throats, eyes, hearts. One by one they fell limp until the corpses blanketed the ground like black rain.
Ciaran stood in the ruin of silence, chest heaving, his vision rimmed in red. And then he unleashed more. More than he had ever dared, more than his body should have contained. His shadows swelled, rose in a storm, covered the skies themselves.
“DIE.”
His roar shook the forest. Darkness writhed from his fingertips, suffocating, slicing, shredding, choking every sangin left alive. They collapsed in heaps, twitching, crushed under the weight of his rage.
When the last one fell, when the storm ebbed—
The clearing was still.
No beasts.
No sound.
Not even her.
Ciaran staggered forward, his breath shattering, his eyes searching desperately.
The ground bore proof of her fight. Crystal shards scattered—the broken case that had once held the South piece of the Queen’s heart. The fragments of the cage of shadows. She had done it. She had destroyed them.
But she had paid.
He pushed sangin corpses aside with shaking hands, flinging beasts away, shadows carving through the mess until—
“Hope.”
Her name broke from him in a whisper that gutted him.
She was sprawled across the ground, black feathers scattered through her blood, skin torn raw. Her body was wrecked, black and red and broken.
His vision blurred. His knees almost gave out. He reached her, hands trembling, and gathered her against him—one arm sliding beneath her knees, the other cradling her neck. Her head lolled against his chest, her hair heavy with blood.
“No. No, no, no…” His voice cracked, a sound he didn’t recognize.
Her chest didn’t rise. Her lips, stained with blood, did not part for breath. Her hand—her new hand, the gleaming creation she had marveled at only hours before—hung limp.
He pressed his forehead to hers, his shadows curling tight around them, wrapping them in black.
He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Only feel the hole tearing through his chest, cavernous and endless.
“She was mine,” he whispered, the words breaking in his throat. “My light. My world. My life.”
The shadows inside him surged, screaming.
“Faster, Son of Darkness.”
The voice was Llunal’s, whispering sharply in his ears.
“Faster. She is coming.”
The Queen.
If her sangins had found Hope, then the Queen was not far behind. And if the Queen touched her, desecrated her body, stole even her death from her—
Ciaran’s arms tightened, cradling her closer. He gathered every shred of shadow he had left, the deepest black of his soul, and drowned them both in it.
The world blurred, bent, broke. He ran.
Through forest, through stone, through the night itself. The shadows carried them, faster than flesh could ever move, the ground vanishing beneath his strides.
Hope’s body was weightless against him, though every step tore him open deeper. Her hair whipped against his jaw, sticky with blood. Her skin chilled in the wind, colder with every heartbeat that did not come.
He had carried her like this before. Twice he had stolen her back from death’s grip, after her Fifth Ceremony and during his Healing ordeal in the Fifth Crusade. He dragged her across that line with magic, rage, and willpower alone. But this—this felt different. Stronger. Definite.
This was no close call. This was the abyss yawning wide, ready to take her.
“Please,” he rasped, voice raw against the wind as the shadows bore them faster, deeper, until the forest melted away. “Not you, please. Not you.”
He did not stop at the West House’s gates, but crossed the epitellia wards that would protect them from the Queen’s arrival.
He did not wait for healers, did not shout for his father, did not care who saw.
He stormed past the war chamber, past startled guards, shadows cracking the marble under his boots.
Straight down to the private Healing chamber.
The white room gleamed with silent light. The walls were carved from crystal, veins of gems glowing faintly in pale colors. The air smelled of salt and steel, of Healing power kept here for those who needed saving.
He laid her on the crystal bed. The white surface glowed faintly beneath her weight, as if even the stone recognized who she was.
“Breathe,” he begged, shadows curling desperately around her still chest. He pressed his palms to her sternum, shadows pumping, forcing, pleading. He poured everything into her—his command, his life, his will, his love.
His whole being roared with a single truth: she could not leave him. Not now. Not ever.
Her lips stayed bloodied and still. Her eyelashes, dark against pale skin, did not flutter.
Ciaran’s jaw locked, his shadows writhing, slamming against the chamber walls. The crystals overhead cracked with the pressure of his unleashed power, shards raining like tears.
“You destroyed them,” he whispered hoarsely, staring at her lifeless form. “You gave everything, and more, my beauty.” He caressed her black hair away from her still features. “My fierce, brave woman. You can’t be gone.”
The word “gone” stuck like glass in his throat, carving him hollow.
He bent over her, forehead pressed to hers, shadows wrapping them both like a veil. His breath came in ragged gasps, his tears soaking into her blood-matted hair.
He had always thought he could beat death. That if he clawed hard enough, raged loud enough, he could steal her back. He had done it before, twice. But this time…this time he could feel it. The silence was heavier. The stillness, even more final.
“Take me instead, Cardinals, Llunal,” he whispered, voice cracking, the words trembling into the chamber’s white air. “Take me. Just not her.”
They didn’t answer, because they weren’t the deities responsible for death.
The crystals around them dimmed, as if in mourning. His shadows sagged, spilling across the floor like black blood.
Ciaran kissed her brow, his lips trembling, and the words tore out of him—final, broken, absolute.
“You were the one thing even death should have feared.”