Chapter 9
brYNN
When my own consciousness returns, the screaming has stopped, replaced by a silence so heavy it feels like it’s pressing the air out of my lungs.
I’m sitting on a bench, my palms sinking into a thick, fine layer of gray silt that covers everything. Ash, I realize… fine and powdery. It’s all that remains of the battle.
I look up, half-expecting to see a suffocating ceiling, but all that remains is a faint, iridescent shimmer that clings to the atmosphere above our coven.
But an unfamiliar power has been released. I can feel it.
It’s a physical sensation, a high-frequency crackle of spiritual energy that makes the hair on my arms stand up. It’s flowing through the air, through the stone, and through me.
But there’s something else too: a hitch in the rhythm of my own soul. Deep inside, in a corner of my mind, something… lingers. A shadow. A subtle, nagging presence that feels like a cold finger tracing the inside of my skull.
A passenger I never invited.
I look around the courtyard and I realize I’m not the only one.
Figures are beginning to stir in the gray landscape.
Darkbloods are rising from the ash, their movements slow, as if they’re navigating through a fog.
There’s a haze in their eyes, a distant, glassy look that seems to mirror the strange feeling in my own head.
I scramble to my feet, my ribs giving a sharp, protesting throb that reminds me I was almost a casualty of this war.
“Nyssa?” I croak, my voice sounding thin and alien in the dead air. She’s the last person I remember seeing before I blacked out.
A shape shifts nearby. Nyssa climbs over a pile of rubble.
My cloak which she’s still wearing is tattered and gray with ash, but her amethyst eyes are clear.
She’s shaking, her gaze darting frantically toward the sky where the dragons were once a roiling storm of fire.
There are no dragons left… just the ash.
Is that what we did? Pulverize them, turn those ancient, massive beings into a layer of dust beneath our boots?
Nyssa is the only dragon left. Perhaps the Ide power—that seemingly sentient, hungry void—sensed she wasn't a threat to us and spared her. She looks at her hands, then at the gray waste, and lets out a broken, shuddering breath.
I leave her to her grief; I have to move. I have to find my family.
I stumble toward the center of the battleground, tripping over the calcified remains of what might have been a dragon’s rib or a piece of the academy’s masonry—it’s impossible to tell anymore.
I spot my mother standing near the ruins of the infirmary.
She’s upright, though she’s swaying slightly, her hands stained with the same gray ash that covers us all.
Director Reinhardt is beside her, his face a mask of grim resolve, his eyes fixed on the shimmering sky.
“Mom!” I call out.
She turns toward me. Her eyes are hazy, that same distant look I saw in the others, but as I reach her, a flicker of the woman I know returns. She touches my face with a trembling hand, her fingers cold. “Brynn,” she whispers. “You're alive. Esme... where is Esme?”
I look around and feel a chill. “I-I don’t know.”
“The dragon took her. Dayn.” Warden Blythe’s voice comes from behind us.
I turn to see the old witch moving toward us with surprising steadiness. Her eyes don’t look glassy like the rest of ours.
“Wh-Where?” I ask. “What happened to you?”
Blythe scoffs. “Who knows where? I suspect they’ll return at some point, though. I doubt he’ll do her harm. As for me.” Her sharp eyes flick to Director Reinhardt. “I wasn’t caught up in the sweep when Merlin broke out.”
Mom exhales slowly, her grip on me tightening. From the shadows of the main hall, more figures emerge.
Ridge and Nyv are supporting someone between them. My breath hitches. It’s Uncle Edwin. Behind them, Isola follows, her face a streaked mess of tears and soot. But as they get closer, my jaw drops.
Edwin is… actually walking. His steps are steady, his posture upright. This is the man I saw nearly cleaved in two, the man whose blood I was literally swimming in a few hours ago. He should be dead. He should be a corpse on a stretcher. Instead, he looks stable. More than stable.
As they reach the light, I see his eyes, and they aren't just Edwin’s. There’s a flicker of that black shadow in his pupils, a double-exposure effect that makes my skin crawl.
“Uncle Edwin?” I murmur.
“I'm here, Brynn,” he says. His voice is deeper, almost vibrating with a strange resonance, as if two frequencies are working to align within his throat.
He looks down at his hands. Dark veins pulse beneath the skin. A grim sort of satisfaction crosses his face. “I'm still here.”
He tugs the collar of his shirt downward and reveals the top of his wound, whose bleeding has stopped completely. Thin, dark tendrils of shadow-energy weave across the jagged gash, as if knitting the skin, healing it.
I stare, baffled, a cold knot of unease and relief warring in my stomach. He’s alive, and for that, I am profoundly thankful, but he isn't the same. None of us are.
I look at Ridge, at Nyv, at Isola. I see the Ide shadows flickering in their eyes. We’re all still recovering from… whatever the hell that truly was.
“Any clearbloods left?” Ridge asks, his voice harsh.
I gesture to our ash-covered world. “If they were in the blast radius, they're part of the landscape now.”
“We’re completing a full sweep to be certain,” Reinhardt says.
We stand there in a broken circle, and I try to allow myself at least a moment of relief. The dragons are gone. The clearbloods can’t get past our new Ide-powered veil. The shimmering sky is a wall no creature can climb. We’re isolated, trapped in our sanctuary of shadows, but for now we are alive.
Even if our library isn’t. My throat clogs at the thought, and I glance toward the smoldering ruins of the library tower. Seeing centuries of meticulously alphabetized scrolls reduced to carbonized confetti feels like a targeted assault on my soul.
And Chad... oh gods, Chad. I scan the rubble, my heart sinking with each empty space where he isn't. Did he bolt?
Is he hiding somewhere, licking wounds I can't even imagine?
My stomach knots thinking about those burning veins spreading across his face, the way he swelled into demon-Hulk, the way his eyes went animal-wild when he looked at me.
Shit. I need to find him before someone else does—someone who might even try to put down what they'd see as just another monster.
He might be feral now, but he's still Chad somewhere in there. Has to be.
The sound of more footsteps breaks through my thoughts. But these aren’t the heavy, rhythmic tread of a soldier or the stumbling of the wounded. These are lighter, controlled… measured.
A man emerges from the jagged ruins of the academy’s main entrance.
Elliott Crane, I realize—a refugee who arrived from Bloodbane Coven a few days ago.
He’s in his mid-twenties, tall, broad-shouldered without bulk.
Dark hair, clean jaw, a mouth shaped for easy charm—the kind of effortless, human handsomeness that would normally read warm, approachable.
Except, strangely, nothing about him feels warm now.
He moves with quiet dominance, gliding through the wreckage with an effortless grace. Long stride, relaxed shoulders, the subtle roll of muscle under cloth as he walks. His body almost seems taller, broader, as if he’s grown fully into it.
His eyes look dark—too dark—and level, shifting only slightly when he smiles.
He brushes ash from his sleeve. “My apologies,” he says. His voice is a smooth baritone that seems to bypass my ears and land somewhere inside my skull. “Full consciousness returns slowly. The transition was... less than pleasant.”
His dark eyes hold ours.
“But I am here now.”
The words hang in the dead air, cold and heavy. I glance at my mother, but her eyes are still fixed on him with that glassy stare. No one seems to know what to make of the man standing before us. He isn’t acting like a refugee from Bloodbane. He’s acting like he owns the ash on this ground.
He tilts his head slowly, then smiles. “Perhaps I should properly introduce myself, though we have been... acquainted in essence for some time. I am Dominic Merlin.”
The name sends a jolt through me. My knees feel like they might give way again. Damn, it’s him. Dominic Merlin, a key architect of our history, the man whose tomb we just unleashed this slaughter from. I see the knuckles of every darkblood around me turn whiter.
“I established the channel between Esme and the veil of the Ides,” he continues, voice smooth, unhurried.
He looks down at Elliott’s hands, flexing the fingers once, slowly, as if reacquainting himself with their span and strength.
“Consciousness requires narrowing to inhabit flesh,” he says softly. “There is always some loss.”
His gaze lifts again, cool and final. “But the crossing is complete.”
He takes a step toward us, and the gray silt swirls around his boots like it’s afraid to touch him. His presence feels like a vacuum, drawing all the heat and light out of the circle.
“On that subject,” he says, voice low, “where is Esme? Where is the woman who bore the weight of my return?”