Chapter 9 Start with Brilliance, End with Screaming
(The Villain’s Journey)
Kazimir
Arabella made the suggestion as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
She pulled away completely, turning to face the Heirloom.
“You said it yourself, the land of Solandris resisted you. But it’s my land.
My blood. The First Hero’s blood runs in my veins.
He’s the one who forged it, if all accounts are true.
Maybe it’s not just about amplification.
Maybe it needs a specific key to turn the lock.
And time is more critical now than ever, right? We need to return to Solandris.”
It was logical. It was brilliant. It was absolutely terrifying. The thought of that corrupted power touching Arabella—she was connected to it more than I was. If she wore the Heirloom now, what would happen?
“It’s too dangerous.”
“More dangerous than you going back in there alone and getting your mind scrambled?” Her perfect eyebrow arched in challenge. “You can guide me. I can be your eyes. We do it together. Anyway, it’s not like I haven’t worn it before.”
Her logic was infuriatingly sound. And the stubborn set of her jaw told me she wasn’t asking for permission. She was telling me what was going to happen. Godsdamn, I lov—cherished that about her.
I let out a long, slow breath. “Fine,” I ground out. “Try it. But if you feel anything wrong, you take it off immediately. Understood?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Daddy.”
I scowled at her. “You don’t have a daddy kink.”
Her lips turned up wryly. “No, because my father is a bastard too, though not—” Arabella sighed and left the rest unsaid. She didn’t need to compare our fathers, though I felt much angrier at the way she’d been treated than any ill treatment I’d ever received at the hands of my mother.
She approached the pedestal, lifted the circlet, examined it briefly, took a deep breath, and settled it onto her head.
For a second, nothing happened.
And then, she gasped. Her eyes went wide, not with pain, but with awe. “Kaz,” she whispered. “I can feel them again.”
I placed my hands on her shoulders, focusing her. “Good. Find the lines that run beneath Solandris. Show me.”
I closed my eyes, opening my mind to our bond, letting her act as the conduit to the Heirloom. The world dissolved, and the vision she was seeing flooded my mind.
It was breathtaking. A glowing web of pure energy, veins of golden light crisscrossing the continent, pulsing with the lifeblood of the realm. I saw the smaller lines converging on Skyspire, feeding our fortress, and spreading out in every direction.
And then I saw Solandris.
And the breath caught in my throat.
The ley lines there weren’t gold, but a dead, necrotic black, like veins filled with poisoned blood. The infection was centered around the capital of Sunspire but already spreading, tendrils of darkness creeping outward, poisoning the magic of the land.
I cursed. “That’s what happened on the battlefield. We were too close to the corrupted lines. My magic tried to connect with them through the Heirloom, and…” I trailed off, remembering the searing pain, the feeling of something alien invading my power.
“It’s spreading,” Arabella said, her voice tight with concern. “And our magic is connected to each other through the Heirloom. That’s why we felt it.” She told me briefly of the screams she heard, as if dozens of lives were abruptly ended. “Does it have something to do with Auremar?”
I was still holding her, still watching the black ley lines. “Most likely. Sebastian told us Auremar rounded up the heroic bloodlines, didn’t he? He must have gotten what he needed.”
Arabella shuddered. “So they’re all dead? Every remaining descendant of the First Hero?”
I squeezed her shoulders. “We can’t know that yet. But it’s a safe bet that Auremar had to find a lot of them”—my jaw tightened in anger—“to equal one of you.”
Her voice was hollow. “And since he couldn’t get me, he…”
“That’s my assumption, yes.” My own voice sounded distant, as if it belonged to someone else. I felt the vision of the ley lines fade as Arabella’s focus faltered, but I didn’t need to see it anymore. The image was burned into my mind. I released her shoulders and took a step back.
I was this close. The outpost was ours, the army positioned, Solandris’s border defenses crumbling. And now—
Without the Heirloom’s full might, pushing deeper into Solandris would be suicide. I’d be stretching my resources against the kingdom’s full strength if they were allowed to rally. We needed to fix this and return within days. Days. Not weeks. Not months.
But even as I thought it, I knew. This wasn’t a loose connection or a misaligned rune. This was rot. Corruption. Poison spreading through the very foundation of the power I’d spent a decade hunting.
The victory at the outpost now felt hollow. Our grand first step into conquering the kingdom had landed on rotten ground. The ultimate prize, the power I had clawed and killed for, was nothing more than a festering disease.
I had been too late.
The absurdity of the failure was so immense, so spectacular, that I started to laugh.
It started as a low, incredulous chuckle that scraped my throat raw.
Ten years of planning, of bloodshed, of relentless ambition, only to discover that sanctimonious bastard Auremar had poisoned the well with his incompetence.
It was like conquering a brothel only to discover it was a leper colony.
The laugh grew louder, sharper, tipping over the edge from bitter amusement into something unhinged. It was the sound of a man’s carefully constructed world cracking down the middle.
And just as quickly as it began, the laughter stopped. The air in the small chamber crackled, growing heavy and cold.
My magic erupted without conscious thought—a shockwave of dominion energy that shattered the closest chair and part of the wall behind it. Splinters of wood and fragments of stone rained down around us.
It wasn’t enough. My fist clenched, and the next chair didn’t explode, it merely unraveled as my dominion magic unmade it. It collapsed in on itself and then disappeared.
“I spent a DECADE!” My voice cracked, a ragged edge to it that I’d never allowed anyone but Arabella to hear. “Tracking down every scroll, sacrificing everyone who stood in my way. I built an entire bloody EMPIRE for this moment! IT WAS MINE!”
I seized a jagged shard of the chair and hurled it across the room.
“Kaz!” Arabella’s voice barely penetrated the roaring in my ears.
My magic surged again. The obsidian pedestal cracked with a sound like breaking bones, a spiderweb of fractures racing across its surface before it collapsed into a pile of glittering black shards. The air temperature plummeted so rapidly that frost crystallized on the walls.
I kicked the remains, my composure fractured beyond recognition.
“Do you know what it’s like to build your entire identity around a single purpose, only to have it rendered meaningless?
What it’s like to claw your way up from nothing, to earn every ounce of power with blood and pain?
” The room darkened until the angry glow of my runes was the only source of light.
“I’m going to peel Auremar’s skin from his body.
And then I’m going to make him watch as I use it to bind the grimoire that details exactly how I’ll unmake his precious kingdom. ”
I whirled toward the door, my magic crackling around me. Every fiber of my being demanded violence—blood and screams to drown out the howling failure in my mind.
“Kaz.” Arabella’s voice sliced through my rage.
I froze, one hand already on the door, fingers digging into the wood. My gaze snapped to her, the rage momentarily suspended as I registered the shimmering barrier between us—a translucent shield she’d cast to protect herself from the destruction I’d unleashed.
Shame cut through my fury. But it was the look on her face that truly arrested me. It wasn’t fear. It was a deep, quiet hurt that I didn’t have the first clue how to decipher. I had just laid my soul bare, my ambition, my entire reason for being, and in response, she looked wounded.
I reeled in my shadows, feeling like I was failing a test I hadn’t been given. “I would never—” I began, the words catching in my throat.
“I know.” She let out a small breath. The shield dissolved into sparkling motes of light. “But the chamber is rather small for your magnificent wrath, and I wasn’t keen on picking splinters out of my skin all evening.”
Her attempt at humor didn’t quite mask the hurt in her eyes.
“Besides,” she added, gesturing with her chin, “I was protecting the Heirloom.”
My gaze followed the gesture, and with a jolt of alarm, I remembered with dawning horror that the godsdamned thing was still on her head.
The Heirloom was now a direct conduit to that magical plague. Using it wasn’t just dangerous; it was an invitation for that corruption to flow directly into the bearer. Into us. Into my wife.
Rage, hot and sharp, mingled with a cold, terrifying dread. “Take it off,” I said, my voice dangerously quiet. “Arabella. Take it off now.”
She tried to. Her hands flew to her head, scrabbling at the golden band. A look of panic flashed across her face.
“I can’t,” she choked out, her fingers sliding uselessly off the smooth metal. “Kaz, it’s… it’s stuck.”
I grabbed it to help. The Heirloom of Dominion flared with a blinding golden light. The metal burned my fingertips, searing hot as if fresh from a forge. I tried to wrench it free, but it clung to her as though fused to her skin.
“It’s burning!” Arabella cried out. “Kaz, get it off me!”
I gripped the circlet more firmly, ignoring the scorching pain that lanced through my palms. The runes carved into my bones flared in response, muting the waves of agony up my arms.
“Hold still,” I commanded, though my voice betrayed more fear than authority.
Arabella cried out as I pulled harder. “Hurry,” she gasped between ragged breaths. “It feels like it’s melting into me.”
The golden light intensified, becoming so bright I could barely look at her.
The metal began to liquefy beneath my grip.
Not loosening. Transforming. Sinking into her flesh like molten gold.
She screamed. Then, with an audible shimmer, the circlet vanished.
Her screams turned to whimpers, then silence as her eyes rolled back.
“Arabella!” Terror clawed through my chest as she slumped forward into my arms. I cradled her limp form against me, my heart hammering with a panic I hadn’t felt since I was a child facing my mother’s knife.
The Heirloom had sunk into her flesh as if it were nothing more than a mirage, leaving only the faint, gilded outline of a crown tattooed across her forehead.