Chapter 34
AMARIA
Brannick appeared at the edge of the circle, a coil of thick braided rope in his hands. His face was grim, but his voice was steady.
"Need to connect you to the rods," he said. "Skin contact. As much as possible. Kaelen says it'll keep the surge from burning you up from the inside."
I looked at the ropes, rough fiber, glyph-reinforced and strong.
I nodded.
"Your daggers." Brannick held out his hand. "Metal interferes with the grounding."
My fingers tightened on the hilts. Instinct. Reflex. I'd carried these blades since I was old enough to hold them.
But I extended my hands anyway. Hilts first.
He took them without ceremony. Tucked them on the basin behind me.
I unstrapped the band from my forearm—six throwing stars nested flush against the leather—and set it on the basin beside my daggers.
Then the rest. Elbows. Knees. Wrists. Ankles.
Shoulders. One by one, I unclipped every strapped blade and laid them on the stone like I was dismantling myself piece by piece.
The pile grew. Brannick watched it grow, his expression carefully blank.
My body felt wrong without them. Naked. Like peeling off skin I'd forgotten wasn't mine.
Then he started binding. Wrists first. He crossed them behind the rod and the rope cinched harshly against the knob of bone on the outside of each wrist. My shoulders pulled back—not painful yet, but the stretch opened me up in a way that made me aware of every breath.
My spine pressed flat against the void-iron.
Cold metal through my leathers, buzzing against each vertebra.
Then forearms. Then waist. Each loop snugged firm and final, pinning me to the rod until my weight had nowhere to go but my heels. My hands opened and closed on nothing. The hilts should have been there. My palms kept curling around the shape of them, fingers tightening on empty air.
Brannick worked in silence. Efficient. Practiced. His knuckles brushed my pulse on the last knot and he paused—just a beat, just long enough to feel my heart hammering against the rope—then cinched it down.
The glyphs in the fibers lit up against my skin. A hum sank into the meat of my forearms and spread inward, mingling with the Veil's thrum until I couldn't tell where the rope ended and my bones began.
When he finished, he stepped back. Looked at me—really looked—his eyes searching my face.
"Not alone, little flame," he said quietly. "Whatever happens. You're not alone."
I wanted to believe him.
I did believe him.
That was the worst part.
The vanguard flooded the basin, a tide of Enforcer steel. The Hounds ran ahead of them, close enough that I could hear their snarling between the howls.
Kaelen turned from the altar. His eyes found mine across the chaos—bright, feverish, fixed on me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered.
“Now, Amaria!" His voice cut through the chaos like a whip. "Unleash it! All of it!"
I closed my eyes. And opened.
Light rose—hot and spreading fast, flooding the space between my lungs. Shadow answered from lower. Gut-deep and glacial, climbing my spine one vertebra at a time. They met behind my sternum and the collision nearly folded me over. My knees locked. My jaw clenched so hard my molars ground together.
Then they caught.
The two currents stopped fighting and spiraled—a double helix winding tighter and tighter in my core, building pressure with nowhere to go.
Fifty heartbeats. I can hold fifty.
My vision whited out. Came back in pieces—the altar, the conduits, the Rupture, all of it swimming behind a film of heat.
The power tore out of me through every point the ropes touched skin, following the glyph-channels in the fibers, ripping down the conduits toward the altar in a torrent of silver-white and ink-black.
The ground shook. My legs went first. Feeling drained out of them from the hips down like someone had pulled a plug—thighs, knees, calves, gone. The ropes were the only thing keeping me upright. My hands spasmed open behind the rod, fingers splayed and useless.
I was emptying. I could track it—a tide pulling out from my extremities toward my center. Fingers. Forearms. Then the cold crept past my elbows and I knew that when it reached my chest, there would be nothing left.
I held on. Held the fusion steady. Aimed it at the Rupture.
Heal, I thought. Stitch. Mend.
Kaelen's chant intensified. His hands moved faster, more frantic—then he wrenched something from the folds of his cloak—
The Codex.
The one that should have been in my satchel.
Its pages were no longer empty. Glyphs I'd never seen crawled across the pages, festering with sick light.
He lunged, stepping directly into my stream of power.
The Codex captured the torrent like a dam catching a river. My energy slammed into its pages instead of the Veil—redirected, swallowed, twisted.
The runes ignited. Black-and-white flame erupted from the book itself, consuming my power, bending it into a purpose I hadn't chosen—
"Kaelen—" My voice came out strangled. "What are you—"
And I knew—in my bones, in my blood—that I had made a terrible mistake.
"You weren't born to obey fate, Amaria." His voice was calm. Almost gentle. "You were born to end it."
The cold that flooded me had nothing to do with the Veil.
"You'll finish the wound," he said. "By choice or by chain."
I pulled against the ropes. They didn't give.
"You're not healing it," I gasped. "You're Unmaking it—"
"Unmaking the disease." He didn't even look at me.
His eyes were on the Codex, watching my power pour through it like he was admiring his own handiwork.
"The Codex was always a conduit to the Veil—every law, every writ, every caste designation written directly into its fabric.
All I had to do was rewrite its purpose. "
The glyphs on the pages pulsed—my power, filtered through his purpose. And something in those runes had its hooks in me. I couldn't stop the flow any more than I could stop my own heartbeat.
He smiled. "No, you're not healing the Veil, Amaria. You're feeding it one command only. And that command is Unmake."
The roar of the battle swelled—hooves thundered, blades sang, the Hounds snarled, the sound of ripping flesh and screams.
"We tried reform. We tried rebellion. But the rot goes too deep.
" He looked at the howling sky with terrifying calm.
"There is no cure for a system built on the oppression of half its people.
The only honest choice left is to cauterize the wound.
Burn it all away, and let the truth grow from the ash. "
The Codex swelled. My power poured into it, unstoppable, a river I couldn't dam.
I wasn't the healer.
I was the bomb.
The sky overhead split, weeping light and shadow, bleeding timelines into each other. I saw flashes—futures, pasts, possibilities—layered on top of each other like pages in a book being riffled.
Half the rebels froze, staring upward at a vision of the Veil mended, whole, radiant.
The other half saw ruin. A widening void. The end of everything.
The ground lurched. Fissures split the basalt, pulsing with sick light, then dissolving into shimmering nothing. Reality itself was fraying—coming apart at the seams—and I was the thread being pulled.
I fought the ropes. Fought the power pouring out of me. Tried to pull it back, to stop the flood—
Nothing. I had nothing left. The fusion was out of my control, ripped from my grasp and fed into the Codex like fuel into a fire.
By choice or by chain.
And my power—the thing I'd spent my whole life fearing, hiding, learning to control—was tearing the world apart.
And I couldn’t stop it.
The ground bucked beneath my feet.
"Brannick!"
His name ripped out of me—raw, desperate. I found him through the frenzy. He stood at the edge of my circle, weapon in hand, face pale.
"Untie me! Godsdamn it, look at what he's doing!" I thrashed against the ropes, frantic to break the connection. "He isn't stitching the wound! He's tearing it wider!”
He didn't move.
His eyes—the ones that had watched me learn to trust again—flickered between my face and Kaelen's altar. Between me and the male who'd promised him a better world.
"Brannick, please—"
"I'm sorry." His voice cracked. Barely audible over the Veil's wail. "Little flame, I—"
He took a step back.
Not toward me. Away.
His weapon lowered. Like he'd decided this wasn't his fight anymore. Like he'd made his choice and it wasn't me.
"Brannick—"
He turned his face away.
Something inside me shattered. Not from my power. Not from my Marks. From the sound of his boots walking away.
The ropes bit into my wrists. The void-iron hummed against my spine. My power roared out of me, relentless, and the male I'd trusted stood with his back to me while the world came undone.
I screamed his name one more time.
He didn't turn around.
Soldiers swarmed the obsidian spires, swords catching the light of the Rupture. The Hounds ran between them, lean and nightmarish, blurring through the battle, howling, hunting. A well-oiled machine of slaughter. The King must have been so proud.
We were surrounded.
A rebel fell ten feet from me—a young male, barely old enough to hold a sword. The Hound that took him didn't slow down. Just tore through his throat and kept moving, muzzle dark and dripping.
Steel crashed against the edge of the platform. An Enforcer had broken through, blade swinging for a rebel guarding the altar. The rebel parried once—twice—then went down with a wet sound I'd hear in my nightmares.
Another body hit the basalt near my feet. I didn't recognize the face. Couldn't tell if I'd ever known them.
The Hounds were closer now. I could smell them—rot and something burnt. One prowled the edge of the circle, head low, eyes fixed on me. Waiting. Patient as death.
A blade sparked against the void-iron rod to my left. Close enough that I felt the vibration through my spine.
We weren't losing the battle.
We'd already lost it.