Chapter 32
OATH-STONE: ONE DAY LEFT
AMARIA
We didn't stop because we were tired. We stopped because the canyon was the only thing that could hide us.
My thighs gave out on the descent. Loose scree, bad footing—I slid the last twenty feet into the gorge on momentum alone. The moment the ground leveled, my legs locked. Pack straps had worn chafed channels into both shoulders, and the skin beneath had gone.
Kaelen had driven us into the Shatter-Canyon—a jagged gorge of obsidian glass born of an ancient Veil-lash. He claimed the chaotic magic bleeding from the cliffs would scramble our soul-scent, blinding the Hounds for a few precious hours.
It was a reprieve, but it felt like a trap.
Moonlight turned the cliffs into mirrors, reflecting every flicker of our torches, every spark of restless magic in kaleidoscopic, fractured light.
I collapsed against a wall of black glass. The burning in my spine was a constant thrum, a reminder that while we were hiding, the Veil was still breaking.
"Up."
Dreadscale loomed over me.
"I can't," I wheezed. "Kaelen said rest—"
"Kaelen said hide. I say prepare."
He didn't wait. Never did. He grabbed my arm and hauled me onto a narrow obsidian ledge that overhung bottomless dark. His dragon tattoos glowed ember-orange, its scales rippling with restless heat.
"You fused thirty heartbeats at the Flame Gate," he rasped. "Tomorrow we need fifty, or people die."
I laughed. It came out broken—more breath than sound.
"You know, most mentors offer encouragement before the impossible task. 'You can do this.' 'I believe in you.' That sort of thing."
Dreadscale's expression didn't change. "Do you need me to believe in you?"
I thought about it. Longer than I should have.
"No," I said finally. Though it would've been nice.
He studied me for a moment. Whatever he saw made him nod.
"Good. Then stop talking." He gestured to the field of broken shards. "Mend it."
I blinked. "What?"
"The shards. Pull them together. Fuse them while you hold the count." His dark eyes held mine. "Give yourself something to focus on besides the pain. Make the pieces one."
I looked at the scattered debris. Hundreds of fragments. Glinting edges catching the light.
Like the Veil, I thought. Broken into a thousand pieces, waiting for someone to stitch it back together.
I stepped into the center of the clearing and shut my eyes.
"Fifty," I whispered.
I drew both Marks up and in at once, letting them spiral together the way Dreadscale had taught me.
The first shard lifted. Then another. Then a dozen more. Every one of them sharp enough to gut me if I lost focus. Encouraging.
Ten.
The fragments hovered around me like a slow-motion explosion frozen in time. I felt their weight in my mind—each one a point of focus, a tether to the present. Wind cut through the gorge and the shards shivered with it. Behind me, a rebel coughed. A pack buckle clinked against stone.
Twenty.
More pieces rose. They drifted toward each other, edges kissing, beginning to fuse. The hum of power vibrated through my teeth.
Thirty.
I pushed harder—
The fusion wobbled. The Unravel and Griefweaver lurched apart, repelling each other, and the hovering debris trembled.
"Stop." Dreadscale's voice cut through the strain. "You're pushing outward. Directing. That's not how you become a master."
"Then what—"
"Reverse it." He moved closer, his presence an anchor at my back. "The old tales warn that shadow consumes. That you must fight it. Run from it. But one would fight their shadows for eternity. You must devour them. Consume them."
I gritted my teeth. The shards were starting to fall.
"Don't feed the Marks," he said. "Feed on them. Devour them. Transmute them into a new entity."
Devour.
I stopped pushing. Stopped trying to direct the flow outward.
Instead, I opened. I became the chasm.
I released the Light—bright, burning. And the Shadow, cold and hungry. I let them crash together inside me, felt them... dissolving. Peaceful. Folding into me.
Thirty-five.
The debris steadied. Rose higher. It was freeing, like falling back for eternity. It was obvious. Just let them in.
Forty.
The jagged pieces from the canyon were fusing faster now—seams melting together, fragments becoming whole.
The dark pieces drifted inward, joining, building.
A shape was forming. A curve. The ground under my boots had gone warm.
Heat radiated up through the obsidian in slow waves, keeping time with the fusion—each piece that joined sent another pulse through the soles of my feet and into my shins.
Forty-five.
Don't stop. Don't stop.
Forty-eight.
The last shards slotted into place.
Fifty.
The power stabilized with a sound like a bell struck underwater, deep and resonant and final.
I opened my eyes.
A mirror hung in the air before me.
Massive. Perfect. A disc of fused obsidian glass, polished smooth by the magic that had made it, reflecting the moonlight in ribbons of silver and black.
My face stared back at me from its surface—hollow-eyed, filthy, and grinning like someone who'd gotten away with something she had no business pulling off.
The Veil above the canyon went still. For five heartbeats, the world stopped screaming.
"You didn't conquer it," he rasped. "You became it."
My reflection watched me from the mirror, still hovering, still impossible. My fingertips drifted to the mirror's edge. The glass was warm beneath them. Alive.
A single shard broke free from the edge—a petal of black glass, shimmering with captured moonlight. It floated down into my palm.
Sharp enough to draw blood.
I closed my fist around it then pocketed the shard tenderly.
"Again," I said.
He almost smiled.
"Tomorrow. Rest now."
I stumbled back toward the camp, and for the first time in days, the weight on my shoulders felt lighter. Not gone. Just... manageable.
Like broken glass learning how to be a mirror.
We broke camp before dawn, because of course we did.
Sleep was apparently a luxury reserved for people who weren't marching toward the end of the world.
The night had settled into the rock overnight and turned the whole gorge into a box of ice.
Bedrolls peeled off the ground with a sound like tearing skin.
Someone's hands were shaking too hard to tie their pack—I could hear the buckle clicking against itself, over and over, until a second pair of hands took over without a word.
Nobody stretched. Nobody ate. We just moved, stiff-jointed and dead-eyed, folding our lives into bundles small enough to carry at a run.
A skill we were all getting disturbingly good at.
The canyon walls narrowed as we climbed, obsidian giving way to rougher stone, darker and older. The wild magic seeping through the cliffs had bought us hours, not days—the Hounds wouldn't stay confused forever.
That's when I felt it.
A rumble rolled through the ground, deep and so low it was almost below hearing, more vibration than sound.
I stopped. Sniffed the air.
I caught sulfur, faint but potent, and char, like something had burned hot and fast and then vanished.
"Dreadscale." I snared his arm as he passed. "Did you feel that?"
He didn't slow down. "Wind."
"That wasn't—"
He launched onto his stallion and spurred into a gallop before I could finish.
Fine. Keep your secrets, you terrifying bastard. I'll find out anyway.
But I didn't forget the rumble. Or the sulfur. Or the lie.