Twenty Two #2
Another drop. It splashes on to my ribs, where the shirt is already burned away and the skin is blistered.
The pain burns every thought out of me. I dangle from the chains, knees no longer locking, the world a haze.
When I come back, I am gasping for air, my throat raw from screams I don’t remember.
It’s working though. The manacle on my left wrist has cracked; a thin fracture running the length of the band. I time the next drop, twisting just enough to take most of it on the metal instead of my skin. I pull hard, and I feel the manacle flex—just a hair, but enough to know it’s not invincible.
Another drop. Another wave of pain. This one bounces off the metal and spatters my palm, melting through skin and tendon. My hand seizes, and I can’t unclench even though I want to. Tears stream down my face, but I am so far beyond shame they barely register.
I pull hard on the chain with every muscle I have left. The crack widens. It’s so close. I brace myself, let another droplet hit my wrist, then wrench down as hard as I can.
The manacle snaps. My left arm falls limp, a dead weight, and the sudden shift yanks my right shoulder so hard my vision goes white. I grab uselessly at the remaining manacle with my left hand, using the last of my strength to pull and twist. The weakened band gives, and I fall.
I am not ready for the landing. I crash face-first onto the stone, the burns on my body raging in protest. My hands are too blistered and swollen to help.
I stay down, breathing into the floor, until the pain ebbs enough to let me think. Fiery drops keep falling, splattering the stone around me and spitting tiny beads onto my back and neck. I force my body to move, crawling forward, using elbows and knees to drag myself to safety.
I reach the cave wall and use it to pull myself upright. The skin on my back is a mess—layers of burned and cracked flesh. I can’t tell if it’s blood running down my back, melted fabric, or both.
The only way forward is a tunnel leading deeper into the rock. The air is even hotter here, and the walls pulse with an eerie red light.
I need to keep moving. If I don’t, I’m going to die here.
The tunnels are like arteries—veined in red, pulsing with heat. Every step draws sweat from my skin, soaking through what’s left of my shirt and mixing with the blood. The walls shimmer, bending the light like a living fever.
My back is a map of wounds, and I can barely move my left arm. My wrists are wrapped in shreds of what used to be my sleeves, the blood soaking through so fast and bright that it leaves red handprints behind me, marking my path.
I stagger forward, sometimes upright, sometimes crawling, but always forward.
Beneath the floor, through cracks, I see rivers of fire—wide and slow-moving, full of shapes that gurgle beneath the surface.
Sometimes the floor turns translucent, and I see faces in the fire screaming at me as I limp by.
The air is so hot it feels like I’m swallowing shattered glass. My lips are so cracked that when I try to lick them, my tongue sticks and tears at the seams. My vision narrows further every minute, the world collapsing in until all I can think is: next step, next step.
At first, the whispers are soft, barely there—the faintest hint of the Mother Shard. But soon, her voice fills the tunnels, then my head, overlapping with fragments of old memories and new threats.
“You’re almost there, my sweet child.”
“Why do you run?”
“He cannot save you.”
“You’re not worth it.”
Every time I hear Kael’s name in her voice, I push harder.
The false Kael stands at a fork in the tunnel, arms open, promising comfort or death—I can’t tell which. I turn away, but the shadow follows, walking alongside me for a dozen steps before flickering out. I lose track of time. I lose track of everything but the pain.
I want water. The need for it eclipses everything else. But there’s nothing here but fire and blood and the taste of ash in the air.
Sometimes the tunnels widen into chambers full of jagged rock, the ceiling so far above I can’t see it through churning smoke. In one, I hear a scream echo through the stone, but it’s not mine, not this time. I imagine it’s Serraith. Or Atheron. But maybe it’s just the cave remembering old deaths.
The further I go, the more my mind breaks apart. I am walking beside myself, watching my ruined body stumble through the world. Kael will come for me. He said he would. There will be an end to this.
I want to stop so badly, to lie down and let the heat consume me. The voice says, “Do it. Just be done with this.” It would be so easy.
But I don’t stop. I won’t.
When the tunnel finally opens up, I meet disaster.
My foot lands on soft ash instead of stone, and the whole world collapses beneath me.
I tumble down a steep slope, rolling over and over, my burned skin scraping against the grit.
I try to catch myself, but my hands can’t close around anything.
Every time I hit a rock, my ribs flare and my bones shift.
I’m not sure if they’re broken or just unwilling to hold together any longer.
The slope ends in a narrow slit of daylight—no, not daylight. It’s the glare of open flame. I punch through the gap and drop through the floor, tumbling again before landing on my side on a shelf of black rock. The impact knocks the air from my lungs.
I lie there, gasping, staring up at the death counter. The number is still twelve.
When I roll over, the world resolves.
This is a stage, built for violence. The ceiling is lost in smoke and shimmering heat, lit from beneath by a river of liquid fire that splits the chamber down the middle.
The walls shine like obsidian glass, overlapped in jagged sheets.
The cracks catch the pinkish light spilling from the Mother Shard’s crown and her death counter above.
It pulses steadily—twelve.
Still twelve. Still alive.
The fight is already everywhere. There’s no build-up, no time to process.
Just instant, breathtaking brutality: Atheron and Serraith on the far side of the river, both wreathed in blinding orange flames, their movements choreographed and precise.
Kael and Vaelis stand on the near bank, not twenty paces from me, holding the line.
Shadow and flame tear at each other across the span.
Kael is the first to notice me. Our eyes meet, and he breaks from the battle so fast he leaves a shape of himself behind. For a moment, the world stops. The pain, the fire, the noise—none of it matters.
He’s alive. He’s here.
Then the world restarts. Serraith yells a warning as Atheron unleashes a jet of fire across the gap. But Kael is already moving, crossing the stone toward me in long, desperate strides.
I try to stand, but my legs won’t cooperate. I crawl, dragging myself towards the edge of the fight.
Kael reaches me first, hands already on me, and for a second, I am back in the dream—unsure if he will break me or hold me, or both.
His fingers hunt for unbroken skin. They find none, so they settle at my collarbone, trembling just enough that I feel it through the burns.
“Little rabbit,” he says, voice so quiet I barely hear it over the battle.
I try to answer, but the only sound that comes out is a whimper.
“What happened to you?” he whispers, as if the words cost him something.
I open my mouth, but nothing comes. My throat is scorched and shredded raw. I shake my head, the world swimming in and out. “I... couldn't get out.”
He moves his hands down, finding my wrists. He turns them over carefully, like he’s afraid they’ll fall off. His mouth twists, his jaw going so tight I hear a molar crack.
He studies the damage, adding up the burns and wounds and arriving at a sum he cannot bear. For one fleeting second, his whole face goes blank, all feeling sucked out of it. Then in the next breath, it all comes flooding back, too much to contain.
He stands without looking at me again, then turns, slow and terrifying, back to the river of fire.
The change in him is absolute.
The whites of his eyes are gone, replaced by a bottomless, monstrous black.
The shadow inside him erupts—not as the elegant, swirling tendrils I’ve seen before, but as a mass, a living storm with no end and no mercy.
The darkness spills up and out, filling the space above and behind him, spreading across the stone and blotting out everything it touches.
It’s not beautiful. It’s not even terrifying.
It transcends both. I imagine it’s what monsters see when they close their eyes to sleep.
The world seems to strain beneath the effort of holding him in place.
He doesn’t speak. He just steps forward, and his shadow follows. Vaelis tracks him, keeping to his right.
Across the fiery span, the Fireborn are waiting, assessing.
Serraith looks almost euphoric, vibrating with anticipation.
Atheron is cooler, his smile brittle but dangerous.
He’s already alight from head to toe, flames leaping from his body at random, coalescing into long, whipping tongues that snap and retreat.
I try to stand, but my knees are gone. I slide down the wall, watching. Every instinct tells me to get out, to run, to do anything except bear witness. But I can’t look away.