Chapter 20 Dario #2
“Dario!” Elena’s voice cut through the haze. Golden light flared at the edge of my vision, but I couldn’t lift my head. My strength was bleeding out too fast.
I tried to answer her, to tell her to stay back, but my voice cracked, barely a whisper: “Don’t… come closer. He’ll bind you too.”
The green coils burrowed deeper, wrapping around my throat, squeezing. My thoughts stuttered, fragments slipping away into dark static. I clung to the memory of her voice, her warmth, like a drowning man clinging to driftwood.
“You see?” Rindais mocked. “This is the fate of all relics. Snuffed out when their time has passed. Shadows cannot stand against progress, Morelli.” He spat my name like poison. “You should have stayed in your grave.”
Rage sparked in me, hot enough to sear through the pain. He thought me weak—thought me finished.
Not like this. I would not fade here. Not before I tore this smug wretch apart.
I gathered the last of my shadows and hurled them upward in a desperate strike. For a heartbeat, they surged, thick and jagged, wrapping around Rindais’s wrist. But then his eyes narrowed, his lips curled, and his spell burned brighter. My shadows shrieked and disintegrated, vanishing into nothing.
The backlash ripped through me like fire. I doubled over, choking on smoke and agony.
“Dario!”
“Elena,” I gasped out.
“I will not let you go,” she said, her voice trembling but steady, iron beneath the flame.
And then her light erupted.
I felt it before I saw it—the rush of warmth against my fraying form, the pulse of life threading into the cracks where Rindais’s poison had taken hold. It didn’t erase the pain, but it steadied me, anchored me.
Rindais hissed, snapping his gaze toward her. “Foolish creature. Do you truly think you can save him?”
“I don’t think,” Elena said, stepping forward, her skin blazing as if fire ran beneath it. “I know.”
Her radiance collided with the coils around me, searing the sickly green lines where they bit into my chest. Steam rose, and for the first time, the spell faltered.
Hope flared.
I dragged at my shadows, gathering them to the thin cracks she made. They surged weakly, like a starving beast catching scent of blood, but they surged all the same.
The agony didn’t lessen—it sharpened, focused. The fight turned inward. I was no longer battling Rindais’s coils, but myself—my own unraveling. Each second was a knife edge, each breath a choice: give in to the pull of nothingness, or claw upward toward her light.
I clawed.
Come on, you’ve survived a hundred years of darkness. You won’t break now. Not in front of her.
Images flashed through my mind: Meryn’s steady gaze, the weight of the forest’s curse, the taste of ash when Nyx cursed me. And then Elena—her hand in mine as we broke the wards, her voice when she promised to return, the look in her eyes when she chose me over them.
The green coils constricted, but her flame seared brighter.
I forced my shadows into the cracks, again and again, even as each attempt tore pieces of me away. Smoke spilled from my arms, my chest, my mouth….
My strength was fading, slipping away with every passing second. And as I knelt there, my vision darkening, I saw her—Elena, standing before Rindais, magical flames licking up her skin.
Why was she going up in flames? She couldn’t be using her phoenix power for me , could she?
What would happen if she used up too much—would she set herself ablaze, like the phoenix of legend?
Would she come back to life as someone else, even as Elena was gone forever?
“Elena…” I whispered, my voice fractured by the pain that tore through me. My vision swam, her figure a blaze of light amid the choking green. “Don’t… waste your fire on me.”
Her eyes met mine, fierce and golden, and I knew instantly she hadn’t heard a word. Or rather—she refused to listen.
Rindais sneered, his expression twisted with contempt. “You would risk everything for a creature like him? A being of darkness, a cursed soul bound to shadows?”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Elena stepped forward. “I would,” she said, her voice a quiet, steady promise that echoed through the chamber. “Because he’s more than that. He’s more than you or the Elders will ever understand.”
Her voice was thick with emotion, and a faint warmth blossomed in my chest, a fragile, flickering hope.
Anger turned Rindais’s handsome face ugly, and he snarled as he raised his hand toward me, a surge of dark magic striking my fading body, heavy and oppressive.
If this was the way I died, so be it. Once I was gone, Elena would be free to destroy the mage.
Through the haze of pain, I saw Elena, her figure outlined in the blinding glow, her arms raised, her face contorted with pain as flames licked up her whole body.
“I won’t let you take him!” she cried. Her voice shook the walls.
With a surge of strength, she stepped forward, her light growing brighter, more intense, until it filled the chamber, pushing back against Rindais’s magic, consuming the sickly green light that clung to the walls.
Her power wrapped around me, a warmth that seeped into my bones, soothing the pain, and calming the shadows within me.
I managed to whisper her name, barely more than a breath. “Elena…”
She turned to look at me, her gaze soft, filled with a tenderness that left me breathless. “Dario,” she murmured, her voice steady, reassuring. “I’m here. I won’t leave you.”
Her words wrapped around me like a balm, soothing the emptiness within me, and for a moment, I felt something I hadn’t allowed myself to feel in a century—peace.
She was here, beside me, and I would give anything to protect her, even if it meant surrendering to the darkness that awaited me and giving up my life so she could be free.
Rindais’s voice sliced through the air, cold and mocking. “You can’t save him, High Priestess. His fate is sealed. His power was always meant to feed me.” He smiled at her. “And you were always meant to be mine.”
Before I could reach for her, before I could warn her, a blinding burst of corrupt magic filled the chamber, sweeping over everything in its path.