Chapter Sixty-Two
The deepest wounds still leave their mark
But shared, they need not shape the dark
The war does not stop, but something within it changes—like a thread pulled loose from a tapestry. Power stutters across the battlefield. The rhythm fractures.
Elyssara spins, desperate to understand what has changed.
Then she sees it.
Marin stands at the edge of the bridge, her blade dark with blood, her posture steady in a way that does not belong to the chaos around her. At her feet, Maireth lies still.
She did it.
Not for the crown. Not for the war. For herself. For her kingdom. For her wife.
No words pass between them. None are needed. Marin lifts her chin, just slightly. And Elyssara nods.
I will keep your Starbound alive. I will find cracks in the Caelorian strategy. And I will be your ally on the battlefield when the time comes.
That’s what Marin had said. And it is exactly what she did.
Hope blooms in Elyssara’s chest for a fraction of a heartbeat, and it is enough. She turns back to the fight. And runs.
No longer hunting for Kael—she wants Nyrielle erased from her fucking kingdom.
Nyrielle is still moving, her power lashing outward in wide, devastating arcs that tear through the battlefield without discrimination. Caelorian, Nymerian, and Dravari alike caught in the wake of something that has long since stopped distinguishing between ally and enemy. Only erasure.
Elyssara does not slow. Light rises beneath her skin, answering the fury in her chest, the grief, the loss, the sharp, relentless drive that refuses to let this end here. She gathers it, every thread she can reach, and hurls it forward in a blinding surge.
If she’s going to die, she’s going to take Nyrielle with her.
Her strike lands.
The blast tears through the advancing lines, splintering formations and consuming every soldier left exposed.
For a heartbeat, it looks like it might matter.
Nyrielle responds to the chaos, and the smile that curves her mouth is thin, almost amused. Her hand lifts. Unadulterated, divine power answers.
It strikes toward Elyssara with brutal, focused precision, like she’s taking care of a weed with a wildfire.
But it shatters against something else. Nyrielle startles, her serene, queenly expression faltering for less than a heartbeat.
Even gods forget what it feels like to be challenged. Until they are.
Fire roars to life at Elyssara’s left.
Tarrakai.
He stands at the edge of her vision, his vast and ancient form standing beside her like a personal protector. Because he is.
Tarrakai’s power burns through the night sky. Flame pours from him in a relentless stream, meeting Nyrielle’s attack head-on and driving it back with sheer, unyielding force. His onyx scales gleam amber from the flame—beautiful, deadly.
Not even gods escape me. The Ender of Kingdoms growls the words through the bond, and they come out a vicious, lethal promise.
For a moment, Nyrielle and Tarrakai hold. Magic and fire braced against something far greater than either should withstand. Tarrakai jerks, his mammoth form rearing back, an agonized roar tearing from his throat.
His fire stutters.
Elyssara’s head snaps toward him.
Kael.
He hits from behind with devastating force, shadows and lightning tearing through Tarrakai’s form, ripping at wings and flame, his power wild and merciless as it lashes out without restraint.
“Ronyn!”
But Tarrakai holds, barely, the fire faltering but not failing, his teeth bared as he fights to keep Nyrielle’s attention from snapping fully back to Elyssara. His tail whips around in a sweeping arc. It collides with Kael, sending him sprawling against a half-crumbled building.
“No!” Elyssara screams, but before she can move, everything changes.
The air shifts with a weight that presses down on the battlefield like myth returning to a place it was never meant to leave.
Before she understands why, her breath catches, her gaze lifts.
Seren stands at the center of it… and she is not alone.
They descend behind her like a storm made of light and power and memory, their presence folding into the world with a force that distorts reality.
Figures of impossible scale and undeniable, terrible power step into the battlefield as though they have always belonged here—as though they never left.
Their forms are ethereal and beautiful and terrifying.
The gods have returned.
Torrents of fire still spew from Tarrakai’s jaws, and Nyrielle holds the line, locked in an unyielding battle with him. Ancient powers facing off against one another.
Kael tries to drag himself to his feet, blood oozing from a gash on his forehead. Alive.
Relief and horror war inside Elyssara’s mind, but she can’t focus her vision, her mind.
Because the fucking Gods of the Known Realms have returned. Not summoned. Not called. She’s tried that before; prayed on her knees, begged at their temples, pleaded with the Stars themselves. But they have never come when she’s called.
This time, the pantheon has been brought back from the echo-plane by Seren Calvatere, full-blooded witch of The Dreaded. And she World Walked to find them.
You’d do well to remember that you are able to do so much, little witch. That’s what Lara had said to Seren. She knew. She fucking knew Seren would be the one to bring the gods home.
Seren moves. Not with the kind of grace she usually does.
With the savage kind of hurt that only comes with grief.
The golden noose snaps forward in her hand, cutting through the chaos with lethal precision, tightening around one soldier, then another, dragging them from their feet and casting them aside with a force that leaves nothing behind but silence.
She does not hesitate—she moves like someone who has let grief carve them sharper.
Kael staggers to his feet behind her, stumbling toward Tarrakai with his teeth bared. The Ender of Kingdoms senses the movement and swipes at him again with his tail. Kael sees it coming, but it clips him, sending him skidding across rubble and fractured stone.
Gods, save him. Elyssara prays, begs, pleads, her heart clenching at the sight of her Starbound.
A goddess steps forward, eyes fixed on Nyrielle. A goddess Elyssara recognizes instantly. The stories always said she held undeniable grace and beauty—and the stories were right.
Eltheira. Goddess of Harmony and Balance.
The world seems to settle around her, the chaos bending, acknowledging her presence in a way that feels almost like respect.
Her gaze intensifies on Nyrielle.
“You took this too far, sister,” she calls out over the force of the colliding magic.
Nyrielle laughs, though Elyssara doesn’t miss the way her eyes flare slightly. Almost imperceptible, but real. Undeniable.
The sound is sharp, unhinged, threaded with something that has long since broken beyond reason.
“Not far enough,” she replies. Her gaze flicks past Eltheira, searching.
Her gaze settles on Ravira and Halun, Goddesses of War and Peace. They only snarl, power licking at their fingertips like they’re waiting for a chance to use it.
Nyrielle’s eyes track over the pantheon of gods.
Lukis, God of Luck and Trickery.
Lhira, Goddess of Love and Healing.
Rualia, Goddess of Change and Purpose.
Kiann, God of Nature and Rhythms.
But she does not find who she seeks.
“Where is he?” she screams, the words rasping against her throat.
No one answers, and Nyrielle’s power flares in response to her fury, forcing Tarrakai to groan under the force of it.
“Where is Rhex?” she grits out between her teeth. The words are barely audible, but there is no mistaking their malice.
Rhex, God of Deceit and Envy.
The one who hurt her. The one who set all of this in motion.
“I left him in the echo-plane,” Seren announces, her voice cutting cleanly through the space between them.
She does not balk. Does not lower her chin.
Just allows the breaths to saw in and out of her like every one of them costs her a piece of herself.
“He should not have touched you,” she admits, tears now welling in her eyes that have nothing to do with Nyrielle. “You deserved better. But so do we.”
A cry rips from Nyrielle’s throat that sounds like a wound reopening. It is not the sound of grief or sadness or loss. It is guttural. The sound of a plan unfinished. An opportunity missed. Vengeance erased. Completion disallowed.
Then she lifts her hands higher, darkness descending over her features.
And she detonates.
Power erupts outward in violent waves, stolen magic colliding with everything in its wake.
But the gods move as one, their abilities weaving together in ways Elyssara cannot fully track, each strike dismantling a piece of what Nyrielle has built.
Lara rises above them on Vren’s back, directing fire with ruthless precision toward Nyrielle, drawing her attention.
Tarrakai uses the opening. He spins toward Kael, and stalks. Their powers crash in a violent storm.
Marin cuts through what remains of her own forces without hesitation, her blade carving a path that leaves no doubt as to where she stands.
Jax moves through it all like a storm given form, channeling magic that is not her own and making it lethal in ways that should not be possible.
The dragons tear through the sky, their fire no longer scattered, but focused, guided by witches who move with them as though they were born to it, lashing out their own magic in time with the fall of wings.
And Elyssara. She steps forward.
This time, when she gathers her power, it does not feel insufficient. It does not feel like something she is forcing into shape. It feels… aligned. As though everything the Stars demanded has been placed on the board to their exact liking.
Light surges outward, not wild or uncontrolled or reactive, but blinding. Unerring in its precision. Cutting through the space between her and Nyrielle as everything else holds the line.