Twenty Five #2
Serraith burned fast, agitated and manic by the end. He would have been the first to grow impatient in the dark. The first to try and set the world on fire, just to see if he could. But Kael is the predator here.
It’s almost comforting, but terror prickles at the back of my neck regardless.
Efficient. Brutal. No mercy, not anymore.
I stay still, breathing slow, waiting for the world to move.
Nothing comes for me.
But I know, as sure as anything, that somewhere in the dark, fire and shadow are searching for the light.
I move. Not because I want to, but because stillness in the dark feels too similar to death, only slower.
Every step is an act of faith that I don’t possess.
The sand shifts underfoot, sometimes soft as flour, sometimes knotted with hidden ridges.
I keep walking with the ocean on my right, a ghostly anchor to the world.
The sound is everything: crash, hiss, repeat.
It’s my compass and my clock. The rest of the arena offers nothing to measure by.
For all I know, I could walk forever, circling the same patch of the shore, a moth with no flame to follow.
My hands sweep ahead, hoping to find obstacles before they find me. I listen, heart hammering so loud I’m sure it will give me away to the world. My feet make soft shuffling noises in the wet sand. I try to walk without sound, every muscle tensed.
I want to call out for Kael. The urge is so primal, it sits like a knife in my chest. But I clamp my jaw and bear it. He’s not the only thing out here in the dark.
I drift, losing track of time. The death counter becomes a measure—still fifteen, unchanged.
The air shifts, sharp and sour, the way it does before a storm. My skin prickles with it.
Then the world explodes.
Pillars of fire erupt from the sand—six, no, seven at once, in a patternless scatter of flame.
The light is so sudden it burns the outline of everything into my eyes: jagged black rocks rising from the sand like broken teeth; foaming waves crashing against them, the spray gold in the burning light.
The fires stretch into the sky, columns that snarl and spit, some lasting only seconds before snuffing out, the rest pouring upwards in slow-motion torrents.
I drop flat to the sand, covering my head as the heat scorches my back.
My own shadow flashes sharp beneath me, and I flinch.
For a second, I can see the entire arena—a beach of dark-grey sand surrounded by ocean, towers of black rock, wet and shining in the manmade daybreak.
Then the fires begin to die and the world starts to recede back into the void.
I don’t move. I don’t breathe. In the new silence, I hear footsteps.
Not mine.
Not Kael’s.
I don’t know how, but I know it’s not him.
They come from up ahead, where the pillars of fire were the brightest. Soft at first, then growing steadier.
A shadow moves across the sand—impossible, there is no light—but I feel the displacement, the way the world flexes to make room for him.
Atheron.
He steps into the dead spot where a column of fire just was. He’s calm and deliberate, hands clasped behind his back. The dying firelight catches the angles of his face, and for a moment, he looks less like a man and more like a statue made of orange glass.
He puts a finger to his lips and grins.
It’s a warning, or a threat, or maybe just a joke for his own amusement.
He isn’t here for me. Not really. He is here to draw out Kael.
He doesn’t look at me directly, but past me, to the blackness behind, as if Kael will materialise there any second.
We wait like that, a silent stand-off, the world frozen. I wonder if Kael is already here, watching, calculating.
Atheron breaks the stillness by seating himself on a low outcropping, as if he has all the time in the world. He’s so sure of himself, so confident in his victory. I hate him for it.
I hold his gaze for a one heartbeat. Then, on impulse, I break the rules.
I cup my hands to my mouth and shout, “Kael!”
The sound tears the air, the ocean swallowing it and spitting it back louder.
Atheron’s smile widens as he stands, unhurried and pleased. Then, in one fluid motion, he raises his hand and launches a jet of fire straight at me.
It isn’t elegant. It’s designed to maim, and to flare bright enough to draw out Kael.
I don’t think, just react. My Mana comes alive, light snapping up around me in a shield, bright and precise. The fire hits and recoils, licking at the ground and dying in steam.
He wasn’t expecting me to block that so easily. He had forgotten I could be a threat all my own. And now he’s curious.
He opens his mouth, maybe to say something cutting, but Kael is here.
He doesn’t walk in. He doesn’t run.
He just is—mid-stride, as if the world forgot to render him and then inked him in at the last second. His eyes are solid black, hair plastered to his skull with sweat, a gash across his cheek leaking blood.
He says nothing. There’s nothing to say.
He moves straight for Atheron.
The Fireborn is ready, but he’s not quick enough. Kael moves like a wraith, shadows pouring from his hands in arcs that slice through the air. The two of them collide, and it’s like watching two storms meet, elemental and raw. Fire and shadow crashing together, each trying to smother the other.
The sound is overwhelming. Atheron roars, flames twisting off his arms, his hands ablaze.
Kael’s shadows absorb some, but not all—each hit burns, and Kael’s jacket is alight in places.
He doesn’t care. He lets the fire eat at him, gets inside Atheron’s guard, and drives a fist into the hollow beneath his ribs.
Atheron staggers back, winded, as Kael rolls in the sand to douse the flames.
Atheron recovers, grinning, his teeth orange in the firelight. “Give it up, Prince,” he says. “You’re not fit to be Crown.”
Kael spits a mouthful of blood onto the sand.
“And you’re not fit to be alive,” he says. “Let me do something about that.”
They slam together again, and this time, I see what Atheron is doing. He’s forcing Kael to use his Mana. Every strike is a calculated drain, every feint a test. He’s not fighting to win—he’s fighting to tire Kael out, to make him killable.
I want to help, but I don’t know how.
I circle them, staying just outside the radius of their violence. The sand is scalding, the air too hot to breathe. My arms are up, ready to shield.
Atheron feints left, then swings wide, hurling a wave of fire at my head. I duck, but the edge of it catches my shoulder, singeing through my shirt. The smell is disgusting, sweet and burnt, and my stomach lurches.
Kael sees it, and the last of his restraint snaps. He turns all his focus on Atheron, nothing left in him but hatred.
Their speed increases, no longer people but impressions, flashes in the dark, sometimes only visible when a stray fire blast lights them up. The sand is glassing under their feet, shadows burrowing into the earth.
Shadow and fire meet in a vortex between them as dark veins pulse at Kael’s temples. Atheron looks almost giddy, his flames wrestling with the shadows.
A slow smile spreads over his face, and then he laughs.
“Now,” he says.
I don’t know who he’s talking to. There’s no one left.
From the black, another shape bursts forward—fire wearing the outline of a man. For one disorienting second, I think there are two Atherons.
The fiery clone dives at Kael and clamps a flaming hand around his neck. The smell of burning meat is instant and sickening.
Kael howls, and the sound is not human.
I run forward without thinking, raising my hands and dragging up every scrap of light I can. The clone has no wrist, no body I can sever. It’s just fire, Atheron’s will given shape. So I turn on the source.
Atheron sees me coming and tries to shield his face, but he’s too slow. I focus the Mana into a blade, like Kael did in the Dome. This is no time for shields. I aim for his wrist.
The light hits, a razor cutting through the dark. It shears Atheron’s hand from his arm, cauterising as it goes. His scream is pure shock, and I flash back to the last time my light met his skin during a trial.
I don’t even have time to glance at Kael because the light does something else, too. It collides with the swirling vortex between them, a churning mass of fire and shadow, barely holding together.
For a breathless moment, the entire world goes white.
Then it detonates.
The explosion launches me off my feet, spinning me like a ragdoll through the air. I hit the sand once, twice, then tumble into the sea. The water is freezing and darker than anything I’ve known. The ocean grabs me and drags me under, tumbling end over end with no sense of up or down.
I open my mouth to scream, and my lungs fill with salt.
I cannot swim.
My last thought before the world goes black is of Kael, and the hand that has always reached for me.