Chapter 72 Doom the World
(in the Name of True Love, Obviously)
Kazimir
The Chamber of Petals stank of death and failed magic.
Golden masks littered the floor like discarded party favors.
Piles of ash dotted the floor around the dais.
The chamber walls, partially covered in murals depicting the First Hero’s triumph, were cracked and bleeding some kind of black ichor.
I hadn’t had a chance to ask Arabella or Sebastian what had happened down here.
I only knew they had completed their mission and rescued the captives.
Sebastian had followed us down, his face showing little emotion, for once, but flowers sprouted from cracks in the stone steps, then immediately withered and died. I wasn’t going to stop him if it would save Arabella. Even if she hated me for it later.
But then I’d have to… owe him? Fucking heroes.
I stepped over a battle mage’s corpse, his face frozen in an expression of shock.
Six of them scattered across the floor, throats slit or hearts pierced by shadow blades.
Arabella’s work, judging by the precision.
My wife didn’t do things by halves. The regular guards had fared no better—at least a dozen bodies cooling in their own blood, but some of them were killed with vines and thorns rather than blades.
Sebastian had taken my advice to heart, apparently.
“The door is directly beneath us.” Amaryska moved to the center of the chamber, where a raised dais still showed scorch marks from whatever Auremar had attempted.
“Not a physical door, you understand. The prison exists in its own realm, a pocket of reality the First Hero carved out specifically to contain the Shadow King. This chamber is simply the closest point of contact.”
I felt it the moment I stepped onto the dais—a thrumming in my bones that had nothing to do with my carved runes.
Something vast and ancient pressed against the boundaries of reality, testing for weaknesses.
The part of me that had once entertained the Shadow King stirred, recognizing its missing piece.
No. I slammed mental walls around that recognition. I’d beaten him back once. I wouldn’t let him in again.
“How much blood?” I asked, voice flat.
Amaryska produced a silver bowl from her robes. “Not much. A few drops should suffice, given how weakened the seals already are. The important part is that it’s freely given.”
Sebastian stepped forward without hesitation. “Let’s get this over with.”
“So eager to die for love,” Amaryska mused, producing a ritual blade. “How disappointingly heroic.”
“I’m not dying for love.” Sebastian rolled up his sleeve, exposing his forearm, and I noticed he wasn’t rhyming. “I’m giving so Arabella can live. It’s a simple enough choice.”
She grabbed his wrist, positioning the blade over his vein. “Even if the fate of the world hangs in the balance?”
Sebastian’s perfect face hardened, and I recognized something in his expression.
Something that only recently I’d allowed myself to experience—love.
A muscle flexed in my jaw. Sebastian loved my wife, and I wasn’t sure how platonic his feelings ran.
For a heartbeat—or three, maybe—I thought about telling Amaryska to drain him dry.
But I kept my peace. There’d be time to assess the depths of his feelings later.
The cut was quick. Blood welled up, dropping into the silver bowl with soft metallic pings. One drop. Two. Three.
“That should be—” Sebastian started.
Amaryska’s grip tightened. The blade cut deeper.
“Mother,” I warned. I may have just contemplated Sebastian’s death, but if anyone was going to kill him eventually, it would be me.
“Just ensuring we have enough.” More blood flowed, far more than necessary. Sebastian’s face went pale. “The prison threads are quite stubborn, you know. Better to be thorough.”
“That’s enough.”
She ignored me, watching Sebastian’s blood fill the bowl with avid fascination. His knees buckled. Still she held on, blade pressing deeper while she whispered a spell. His blood poured out of the wound.
I grabbed her wrist, shadow-wrapped fingers crushing until she released him. Sebastian collapsed, clutching his arm. Blood seeped between his fingers.
“You said a few drops.”
“I said it should suffice.” She pulled free of my grip, cradling the bowl like a precious child. “But why take chances? The boy volunteered. I simply ensured his sacrifice would count.”
I knelt beside Sebastian, stripping out of my leather jerkin and tearing a strip from my shirt to bind his wound. His breathing was shallow, skin clammy. He’d lost too much blood, too fast. The wound’s edges had already turned black. Poison.
Rage flooded through me, but I shoved it down. Deal with her after. First, free the Shadow King. Then make her pay.
“Can you stand?”
He tried, legs shaking. “I’m… I’m fine. Do the ritual.”
He wasn’t fine. He was dying. But I had no healing magic to give, and Arabella—Arabella needed this to work.
I helped him to the edge of the dais, propping him against a fallen pillar. “Stay conscious. I’ll get you help after.”
“Sure.” His laugh was weak. “After you free an ancient evil. No pressure.”
Amaryska had already begun setting up the ritual circle, using the conspirators’ ash to draw symbols I recognized from the journal she’d shown me. The silver bowl sat at the center, Sebastian’s blood dark and still.
“Stand there.” She pointed to a position across from her. “When I begin the incantation, channel your dominion magic into the circle. The blood will do the rest.”
I took my position, feeling the weight of what I was about to do. Somewhere above us, my army was probably mopping up the last resistance.
“Ready?” Amaryska asked.
I nodded.
She began to chant in a language that predated human speech, each word scraping against reality, the words she had beaten into me as a child. The blood in the bowl began to bubble. I fed magic into the circle, watching the ash symbols flare with sickly light.
The chamber groaned. Dust rained from the ceiling as something fundamental shifted. The black ichor on the walls flowed faster, forming patterns that mimicked the symbols.
Yes, a voice whispered. Not in my head—in the air itself. Yes, finally, YES.
The Shadow King’s presence slammed into me once again. Not trying to possess me—he had a better vessel now—but recognizing me, acknowledging what I’d been. What I’d rejected.
You could have been a god, the voice said. We could have remade the world together.
I gritted my teeth and pushed more magic into the circle. I didn’t want to remake the world. I just wanted my wife back.
The bowl cracked. Sebastian’s blood rose in a crimson spiral, suspended in midair. Amaryska’s chanting grew louder. The chamber shook violently.
Then, between one heartbeat and the next, something gave way.
The dais split down the middle. Not just the stone—reality itself tore open, revealing a yawning void that swallowed light and sound and sanity. From that void came laughter, ancient and terrible and free.
“He rises!” Amaryska threw her arms wide, tears streaming down her face. “The Shadow King rises! The world will burn, and from its ashes—”
The ceiling chose that moment to collapse.
A chunk of stone above the dais broke free, plummeting toward the tear in reality. Amaryska looked up, still smiling, still welcoming her precious chaos.
The stone crushed her instantly.
I was already moving, grabbing Sebastian and hauling him away from the widening fissure. More of the ceiling fell, the entire chamber coming apart as something vast and terrible pulled itself through the gap between worlds.
No time to process my mother’s death. No time to consider what I’d just unleashed. I wrapped shadows around Sebastian and myself, tearing open a portal with the last of my strength.
The Chamber of Petals disappeared in a rush of falling stone and eldritch laughter. We tumbled through darkness, my portal unstable, uncontrolled. I held tight to Sebastian, feeling his blood soak through my shirt, and focused on the only destination that mattered.
Skyspire. Arabella.
I just needed to know if my wife was herself again.