Chapter 28
Dagan
Idris’ Defeat, The Rooted Marches
Power the likes of which I have never imagined surges through me—through us—and for a breath I forget the weight of my own wings.
It pours from my Oona like spring water through cracked stone, clean and relentless, and the Rooted Marches answer her as if they’ve been waiting all their lives to be touched by her hands.
The earth beneath my boots locks.
Every fracture line that has been screaming for weeks goes silent.
Every trembling seam in the realm stills as if Nightfall itself has finally found its spine again.
I draw a ragged breath, and I feel it—feel her—right at the center of me.
Not as a tether. Not as a chain.
As a foundation.
I lift my head.
Across the battlefield, I see it mirrored in my brothers.
Alaric’s storm-light flaring, the air bending around his Dragon form like a bow drawn back to the breaking point.
Kael stands like an ocean given a body, water rising and circling him in a living halo.
Thorne’s flames no longer gutter—they steady, controlled heat like a forge at its hottest, brightest purpose.
Their viyellas are with them.
Not behind them.
With them.
Beside them.
And in their eyes, in the crackling lines of power stitched between mate and Lord, I see the truth slam into place.
Nightfall was never meant to be held by one crown again.
It was meant to be shared.
Idris staggers under the backlash of his own ritual tearing apart. The corrupted Ember ore orbiting him fractures, screaming—souls inside it ripping free like sparks escaping a dying fire.
His disciples falter, chanting breaking into panicked gasps as the siphon collapses and the power snaps back into the rightful veins of the realm.
Idris’ gaze finds me, wild and hateful.
“You cannot—” he spits, mouth foaming with arrogance and rot. “Only one can bear the crown! You are not Prime—”
“I am not,” I growl, and the ground answers with a low, furious rumble.
I feel Oona’s palm press firmer against my chest. I feel the pendant between us pulse like a heartbeat.
But my brothers—my blood brothers, my bonded family—it appears that we are something else now.
I turn slightly—just enough to catch their eyes through the smoke and ash and falling embers.
Alaric’s expression hardens, all storm and command.
Kael’s jaw sets, tide pulling back before the wave.
Thorne’s grin is a flash of teeth and vengeance, his fire roaring hungry.
And I understand, in the marrow of my bones, that Nightfall is done being toyed with.
Done being bled.
Done being threatened by a man who thinks darkness makes him god.
“We four as one,” I roar.
The words aren’t just a battle cry.
They are a vow.
A binding.
A truth the realm has been starving for.
The four of us lift our hands—earth, air, water, fire—and our viyellas anchor us like living keystones.
Oona’s power runs into mine.
Jules’ into Alaric’s.
Phoebe’s into Kael’s.
Delia’s into Thorne’s.
Not stolen.
Not taken.
Not broken.
And not borrowed.
But saved by one another. For each other.
A shared crown.
Together we unleash it.
Not a blast.
Not a spell.
A final judgment.
The wave slams forward, and the world goes white-hot—then black—then clear.
Idris doesn’t burn.
He doesn’t scream long enough to be satisfying.
It is as if Nightfall itself reaches out with an invisible hand, grips his essence, and erases him.
Wipes him from the ledger of creation like a mistake corrected with finality.
His evil doesn’t scatter into the air.
It doesn’t poison the soil.
It is dragged down—down into the deepest bowels of existence, into the raw places where matter is unmade and remade, where rot can be rendered into something useful, if the universe is merciful enough to bother.
And then he is simply… gone.
Silence falls so fast it hurts.
The SoulTakers around us freeze mid-strike.
Their bodies shudder.
Their eyes—those dead, hungry voids—flicker, and one by one, they crumple like puppets with their strings cut.
Not slain.
Released.
The mind-control bonds snap, the stolen souls inside them spilling free in shimmering threads that rise into the air like fireflies returning to the night.
The survivors among our people stare, stunned.
A sob breaks somewhere. Then another.
A miner drops to his knees.
A soldier laughs like he doesn’t remember how else to breathe.
The mess that remains—the bodies, the broken ground, the shattered wards, the grief waiting like a mouth—will have to be dealt with.
Later.
Because right now I turn back to my viyella.
My Oona.
She’s there, breathing hard, eyes bright with exhaustion and fury and that impossible courage that makes me want to kneel.
I cup her face with hands that have crushed mountains and raised fortresses and still tremble for her.
“You did this,” I rasp, voice breaking on the truth. “You anchored me.”
Her mouth curves, shaky and brave.
“No,” she whispers. “We did. All of us.”
The bond hums—steady, deep, unbreakable.
And as the ash settles and the realm exhales like it’s been holding its breath for centuries, I know one thing with brutal clarity:
Nightfall’s last scare was Idris.
What comes next—repairs, rebuilding, grieving—we will face.
But first?
I must bring my viyella home.
A marrow deep need to reassure myself she is whole, safe, mine burns inside of me.
And I know, I know, it will not go away until I have her once more, in my arms, in our bed, in me.
Mine.
Mate.