Chapter 29 #2
My hands shook as I adjusted my grip, the dagger’s blade thrumming now, lightning crawling along its length in restless arcs. Fear surged up again, fierce and honest and rightly deserved. What I was about to do would not be contained. There would be no taking it back.
I lifted my eyes one last time to the Typhon, to the certainty in his gaze, to the belief that I was already dead.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, not to him, but to everyone who would pay the price for what came next. Then I drove the dagger down, straight into the earth at my feet.
The world split open.
The instant the blade pierced the ground, the scars along my wrists ignited, pain tearing through me so fierce it stole my breath entirely.
Lightning exploded outward in a blinding surge, not striking down from the sky, but ripping up from the earth itself as though the land had finally snapped under the strain.
The force of it threw me backward, slamming me into the dirt as light tore across the battlefield in a roaring wave.
The Typhon screamed.
The sound was monstrous and layered with a thousand other voices as the darkness was torn from him violently.
Ripped free in thick, writhing streams that clawed at the air as though alive.
His serpents convulsed, their bodies thrashing wildly as shadows peeled away from scale and flesh alike, evaporating into nothing with a sound like a great, collective sigh.
Across the battlefield, it happened everywhere at once.
Darkness tore free of bodies mid-strike, mid-flight, mid-scream.
Harpies plummeted from the sky as the shadow fled their wings.
Human-shaped forms collapsed where they stood, weapons slipping from suddenly lifeless hands.
Creatures both great and small convulsed once before falling still, the black corruption streaming out of them in violent bursts before dissolving into the air.
The lightning did not discriminate.
It swept across the land in a relentless tide, burning through every thread of darkness it touched, ripping it from flesh without mercy. The war ended not in victory cries or clashing steel, but in the sound of bodies hitting the ground, one after another, until even that faded into silence.
The Typhon staggered.
Stripped of what animated him, what bound his impossible form together, he collapsed in on himself, wings folding awkwardly as his massive body crashed into the earth with a force that sent shockwaves rippling outward.
Stone shattered. Serpents went slack, their bodies slumping lifelessly across the ground as the last of the darkness fled.
Then there was nothing.
No roar. No clash of weapons. No screams of death.
Just the crackle of dying lightning and the smell of burning and blood hanging heavy in the air.
I lay there gasping, my body shaking uncontrollably as the pain slowly receded, leaving behind a hollow, ringing emptiness that pressed in from all sides. My ears rang so loudly it drowned out my own ragged breathing. My limbs felt distant, unresponsive, as though they no longer belonged to me.
When I finally forced myself to sit up, the battlefield was unrecognizable.
The fog had now cleared. Bodies were everywhere, strewn across scorched earth beneath a sky suddenly too bright and wide.
The darkness was gone. Completely. Not a single thread of it lingered in the air or clung to the fallen.
I had done it.
But this wasn’t a triumph. There was no surge of relief or joy, no sense of rightness to cling to. Just the knowledge that I had ended it the only way I could.
My hands trembled as I pushed myself to my feet, legs unsteady beneath me. I didn’t look at the Typhon again. I couldn’t.
Because somewhere beyond this silence, beyond this terrible stillness, there was only one thing that mattered.
“Atlas!” I shouted, running and grabbing the dagger from the earth as I went. A blade that released back into my ownership with ease.
My ears rang as I ran, a high-pitched whine that blurred the edges of the world, turning everything distant and unreal. Ash drifted down in lazy spirals, settling over bodies and broken weapons alike, softening the devastation into something almost peaceful if I didn’t look too closely.
I didn’t look at all.
My boots pounded against scorched earth as I tore toward the castle, legs shaking, heart hammering so hard it hurt.
The battlefield was still now, too still, the kind of quiet that rang louder than any war cry.
Fallen soldiers lay everywhere, human-shaped forms and mythic bodies tangled together in death, their final moments frozen in the aftermath of the lightning’s passage.
This was my fault.
The thought tried to take hold but I shoved it down with ruthless focus. There would be time for that later. If I survived what came next. If Atlas survived.
The castle gates stood open, blackened by fire, and the bodies of guards sprawled across the threshold where they had fallen defending it. No one moved to stop me. No one even looked up as I sprinted past, their attention fixed inward, toward whatever violence still echoed within those walls.
I crossed the threshold at a run.
Heat washed over me immediately, the air inside was thick with smoke and the scent of burning stone.
Fire licked at the edges of carved archways, blackening gold inlays and turning intricate designs into warped shadows that stretched and twisted as I passed.
My boots struck marble slick with blood, and I nearly went down before catching myself and forcing my pace faster still.
Even in this state, the castle was beautiful.
But I barely noticed.
I followed sound instead, the clash of steel ringing sharp somewhere deep within the halls. It pulled at me, a thread winding through all of the smoke, flames and stone passages guiding me forward when my mind threatened to fracture under the weight of everything I’d just done.
My hand tightened around my dagger as I ran, its presence a dull, exhausted ache now rather than a burning force. My body protested with every step, pain flaring through my ribs and shoulder, but adrenaline drove me on, drowning it out.
I tore through corridors and voices echoed faintly ahead, metal ringing against metal in violent rhythm.
Closer.
I skidded around a corner and nearly slammed into a fallen statue, its shattered remains scattered across the floor like bones. I leapt over them without slowing, breath coming in harsh, ragged gasps, my vision narrowing to the doors at the end of the hall.
They stood barely ajar, gold and massive, smoke billowing from within.
The sound of fighting was deafening now.
I didn’t hesitate.
I burst forward, shoving through the doors with everything I had left, heart in my throat as I entered the throne room.
The throne room was chaos.
Gold and marble gleamed beneath a haze of smoke and fire that flickered across carved pillars and shattered stone. But my eyes locked onto the figures at its center.
Atlas stood tall, and his presence seemed to bend the air around him, power rolling off his body in waves I could feel even from the doorway. His dark armor scorched and bloodied, his chest heaving as he faced the man sprawled at his feet.
Lazaros.
He was on his knees, one hand braced against the floor, the other empty, his sword lying several feet away where it must have skidded across the marble.
Blood streaked his armor and his face, a dark line already carved along his neck where steel had made its mark.
His breath came in harsh, ragged pulls, his eyes wide as they flicked up to his brother standing over him.
Atlas’s blade was raised.
Not wavering. Not hesitating.
At the ready to end this.
For a split second, my mind refused to accept what I was seeing.
This was what I had feared the most. Atlas was winning the fight but would lose the battle, and his brother, should he deliver that deadly blow.
Every moment since the attack from Riley had led to this point.
Every moment spent asking myself if I would be too late.
And this harrowing outcome was no longer in doubt.
The power in the room felt suffocating.
Atlas stepped forward, his grip tightening on the hilt, his expression carved from a place where the decision he had come to was final. Somewhere cold. Something I had never seen on his face before. This was not the man who held back. This was not restraint, mercy. This was execution.
“Atlas!” I screamed. My voice tore out of me, raw and desperate, echoing uselessly off the throne room walls.
He did not stop.
The blade came down.
A thin, horrifying line of red bloomed across Lazaros’s throat, blood welling bright against pale skin as the sword completed its arc. The sound of it, wet and slick, seemed to echo louder than any scream or clash of steel I had heard all day.
“No!” I sobbed, my legs giving way beneath me as the word broke apart in my throat.
As I realized the unforgivable truth…
I was too late.