Chapter 38 Malrik
Malrik
He never looked at us as threats.
I catalog my brothers’ positions without turning my head — instinct, maybe, or the strange leadership that’s fallen on my shoulders since this nightmare began.
Torric is a furnace barely contained, heat rolling off him in waves that make the snow steam at his feet.
Aspen stands ice-still beside him, frost creeping up his arms in sharp crystalline patterns.
Finn’s chaos crackles erratically, sparking and dying like a flame that can’t decide whether to catch.
Darian burns.
His light magic — pure now, uncorrupted — blazes around him like a second skin. He’s not controlling it. Can’t control it. The power is too new, too raw, too tied to the emotions I can feel hemorrhaging through the bond.
And Kieran stands behind Kaia like a wall of ancient stone, every muscle coiled, ready to throw himself between her and whatever comes next.
None of us matter to Alekir.
We’re pieces on a board. Tools shaped for a single purpose. The only one he sees as real is her.
That should comfort me. It doesn’t.
Thorne approaches.
His movements are careful, deliberate — the gait of a man walking through a minefield he helped plant. He looked at Darian once, at the end of Alekir’s speech. That single glance held more guilt than words could carry.
“Into position,” Thorne says quietly. His voice cracks on the second word. “Please. Don’t make this harder than—”
I step between them.
Thorne stops.
“Don’t touch him.” My voice comes out low. Controlled. The voice I learned in my father’s court, when showing emotion meant showing weakness.
Thorne’s expression fractures. “I wasn’t going to.”
“Then step back.”
He does.
I feel Darian’s gratitude through the bond — sharp and desperate and threaded with something that might be shame. His light flickers dangerously, unstable, and I reach back without looking. My hand finds his arm. Anchors him.
I’ve got you.
I don’t say it out loud. Don’t need to. The bond carries it.
A surge of gold-white light splits the air.
I spin, shadows rising instinctively — but it’s not an attack. It’s an arrival.
Lady Virath materializes beside the Gate’s outer ring.
She’s nothing like I remember from the council meetings.
The elegant politician is gone. In her place stands something wrong.
Her pristine white robes crackle with an aura that doesn’t belong in this realm — too bright, too sharp, like light that’s learned to cut.
Her golden hair whips around her face despite the stillness Alekir forced on the air. And her eyes—
Her eyes are too deep. Too empty. They devour the light around them, leaving only a hollow chill.
She’s not hiding anymore.
And she’s not alone.
The sky tears open behind her.
Nightwraiths pour through — dozens, then hundreds, filling the air like a plague of shadows given teeth. They circle above us, blocking what little light remains, their shrieks splitting the silence Alekir created.
Torric’s fire blazes higher. Aspen’s frost spreads across the ground. Finn’s chaos crackles wild and desperate.
But there are too many. Far too many.
Lady Virath smiles.
“The preparations are complete,” she says, and her voice carries that same hollow wrongness as her eyes. “The ritual circle holds. The bloodlines are assembled.”
“And the Academy?”
“Blind. Scrambling. Exactly as planned.”
I feel something cold settle in my chest.
She was never following Alenya. She outranked her. All those board meetings, all those political machinations, all those demands that Kaia prove herself — it was never fear.
It was positioning.
“You’ve done well,” Alekir says. “The Light Faction’s representative, hiding the darkness in plain sight.”
“Someone had to ensure the path remained clear.” Lady Virath’s gaze finally slides to Kaia. Cold. Assessing. “Your Professor Lira was becoming… inconvenient. Asking too many questions. Getting too close to the truth.” Her smile sharpens. “She’s been handled.”
I feel Kaia’s reaction through the bond before I see it.
Horror. Grief. Rage so pure it makes my shadows writhe.
Kaia doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. But her shadows surge around her — Bob growing larger, Mouse’s growl vibrating through the plateau, Patricia’s notebook blazing with furious light.
I want to kill Lady Virath for that. Want to let my shadows tear her apart.
But Kaia’s darkness wraps around my wrist. Holding me back. Not yet.
Alekir is watching us. Watching me.
And then he laughs.
It’s different from before — not cold and hollow, but bright. Almost giddy. The sound of someone savoring a joke only they understand.
“Oh, but the best part—” He gestures between me and Darian, pale fingers conducting some invisible orchestra. “The Shadow Prince and the Light Faction’s fallen star. Standing side by side. Protecting each other.”
He claps his hands together.
“Isn’t it delightful?”
The word hangs in the air like poison.
“Did no one ever tell you, Malrik?” His voice drops, intimate and cruel. “About your father’s… indiscretions?”
My blood turns to ice.
“The Shadow King did so love his Light Faction lovers. The political advantages. The secret alliances. The children they gave him.”
No.
“You share the same blood.” Alekir’s pale hand moves between us. “The same father. The same legacy.”
The world stops.
I feel Darian go rigid beside me. Feel his shock crash through the bond like a wave — denial, horror, something that might be recognition.
“Brothers,” Alekir says, savoring every syllable. “How perfectly poetic.”
I can’t breathe.
Memories flash — fragments I’d buried so deep I’d forgotten they existed. A boy in the palace halls. Younger than me. Dark-haired. Watching me with eyes that felt familiar even then. My father’s hand on my shoulder, steering me away. Don’t concern yourself with him.
That was Darian.
That was my brother.
“He was the heir,” Alekir continues, gesturing at me.
“You were the spare experiment.” His attention shifts to Darian.
“Placed with my followers because your proximity to Malrik completed the circle. Light and Shadow. Royal blood on both sides. The corruption latched onto you so beautifully because you were designed for it.”
Darian makes a sound like he’s been gutted.
His light magic flares — wild, uncontrolled — and he staggers. I catch him without thinking. My shadows wrap around his shoulders, steadying him, anchoring him the same way I anchored Kaia through her panic attack.
I’ve got you. I’ve got you.
“Touching,” Lady Virath observes. “The lost princes, united at last.”
I want to destroy her. Want to let every shadow in Absentia tear her to pieces.
But Kaia’s presence in the bond holds me steady. Her grief. Her fury. Her desperate need for us to survive this.
Not yet. Not yet.
Alekir spreads his arms wide.
“Now. Shall I tell you what happens next?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer.
“The Gate requires six bloodlines. Light. Shadow. Chaos. Elemental. Berserker. Shifter.” He paces before the glowing stone like a professor delivering a lecture. “All connected to a Valkyrie. All bound by magic older than memory. All aligned.”
The Gate pulses behind him. Brighter. Hungrier.
“Your ancestors sealed the God of Chaos out of fear,” he continues. “They called it protection. Called it duty. Called themselves heroes for trapping a force of nature and claiming its purpose as their own.”
His voice turns bitter. Ancient.
“The Valkyries were never meant to guide souls. That was Chaos’s role. The threshold between life and death — that was his domain. But they feared what they couldn’t control. So they sealed him away and built Absentia on his bones.”
“That’s not—” Kaia starts.
“That is exactly what happened.” Alekir rounds on her. “Your bloodline stole the sacred duty. Fractured the cycle. Trapped souls in a realm that should never have existed. And for centuries — centuries — I have worked to correct their arrogance.”
Lady Virath steps forward, her voice ringing across the plateau.
“The Valkyries were thieves,” she says. “Arrogant children playing with forces they didn’t understand. They took what belonged to Chaos and called it righteousness.”
Her gaze finds Kaia.
“Your parents were the worst of them. So convinced of their own virtue. So certain they were protecting the realms.” Her smile is a knife. “I enjoyed watching the light leave their eyes.”
Kaia’s shadows scream.
Bob lunges — but Kieran catches him, holds him back. Mouse is snarling, growing larger, darkness pooling around his form. Patricia’s notebook is a blaze of furious light.
And Kaia—
Kaia is shaking. I feel it through the bond. The grief. The rage. The desperate desire to tear Lady Virath apart with her bare hands.
But she doesn’t move.
She’s waiting. Calculating.
Good girl.
Alekir and Lady Virath turn toward each other, voices rising in what sounds like a ritualistic argument — timing, energy, the precise moment of alignment. Their words blur into noise, magic crackling between them.
I gather the others closer.
“Now,” I breathe. “While they’re distracted.”
Finn leans in, chaos sparking at his fingertips. “Please tell me we have a plan that isn’t ‘die heroically.’”
“We align,” Kieran says quietly.
Torric’s heat flares. “Are you insane? That’s exactly what he—”
“He doesn’t know.” Darian’s voice is barely audible. Raw. “About the purification. He thinks the corruption is still…”
He trails off. Can’t finish.
“It’s a gamble,” Kieran murmurs. “But it may be the only one we have.”
Kaia says nothing. She’s watching Alekir, breathing too fast, shadows coiling tight around her.
Calculating.
Alekir turns back toward us.
Lady Virath joins him, standing in perfect alignment beside the Gate. Thorne steps behind them, torn but obedient, unable to meet anyone’s eyes.
“Enough delay.” Alekir’s hands rise. “The moon reaches its apex. The bloodlines will align. And the Gate—”
His pale fingers trace symbols in the air.
“—will finally open.”
The Gate pulses like a heartbeat.
The stone beneath our feet begins to glow — six points of light arranged in a perfect circle, waiting for us to take our places.
I look at Darian. My brother. The boy I saw in the palace halls and forgot because my father told me to.
He looks back at me.
Something passes between us — the beginning of something. A recognition that we’re bound by more than magic now.
Brothers.
The word sits strange in my chest. Heavy. Impossible.
But real.
I take my position.
And pray to whatever gods might still be listening that we’re not about to end the world.