Chapter 49 #2
From the doorway, Blaise’s voice coils into the ruin, low, silken.
“You could dress it up as suicide,” he whispers. “But who would believe her hand held that blade? Better, perhaps, to leave her to the river—let them whisper she drowned of shame. The story doesn’t matter, Caelith. Only the truth does.”
He leans into the words like a knife twist.
“Remember what those poets say about men like you? That you're cursed to destroy what you cherish most. I used to think that was just pretty words. But here we are… They’ll call her a traitor’s whore, and you her executioner. You should’ve listened, Zeriel—could’ve spared yourself the scars.”
Zeriel’s grief detonates through the bond, a black hole collapsing inward, dragging me with it. My breath catches, sharp and panicked, as if the air itself has been stolen from my lungs. I clutch my chest, fighting to breathe against the weight pressing down.
Lithborn emotions are like no other—vast, relentless. They feel too deeply, and the walls they raise are brutal, crushing things, grinding away every softness until only a weapon remains.
Leave my head. The command is a jagged, broken thing, choked with a pain so profound it’s a wonder he can still stand.
I stumble, clutching the stone railing, the phantom grief clinging to me like a shroud.
Temple, please stop, I think desperately. This is counterproductive. We have enough to contend with already.
But the temple doesn’t relent. It seethes as though its very stones rage against the lies they’ve been forced to witness.
We stagger onto a landing, a circular chamber where the stairs split.
Blaise is gone, dissolved into shadow, but several other champions are with us now, panting, their faces drained.
Rook Fenvale grips the wall, knuckles bone-white.
Even Raine Selwyn’s composure falters, disturbance flickering in her eyes.
Zeriel drags himself upright, Blaise’s absence igniting a cold, merciless fire in him.
He takes the left staircase without a word, a hunter catching a scent. The grief in him has crystallized into something harder, sharper: a promise of retribution. The thought is so clear, so absolute, it rings through me like a struck bell. He won’t get away.
I follow, scrambling up worn stone steps, the others a desperate clatter of armor and frantic footsteps behind us.
The temple—or whatever is attempting to control it—seems to sense our renewed purpose.
The assault shifts from memory back to matter.
The stone carvings along the walls begin to move.
A winged beast cracks itself free from the wall, its body like a stag’s but armored in living stone, its head an owl’s skull crowned with curling antlers.
Eyes of molten amber blaze in its sockets, predatory and fae-bright.
It lunges for the nearest target, Damiar Korren.
The mountain fae lets out a bellow of rage and, with a brutal shove, sends the ward of Kayan Hallowen, Champion of the Central Valleys, stumbling directly into the creature’s path.
The stone beak clamps down with a sickening crunch of bone and a single, choked-off scream.
The horror of another death clamps my chest, but Damiar doesn’t break stride, using the man’s death as a stepping stone.
Kayan curses in rage, his snarl cutting across the chaos. “You already threw your own to the reavers, Korren—now you steal mine?!”
The staircase itself begins to unravel. My heart slams into my throat as sections of stone fall away into the darkness below, leaving yawning gaps.
Zeriel clears a chasm five feet wide with a powerful leap, his focus locked on the path ahead.
I follow, my boots skidding on the landing, the drop a dizzying blur.
This isn’t a race, it’s a culling. My thought is a ragged edge of panic as I hear the traces of the noise of the crowd from outside. We’re a spectacle trapped in a box.
Let’s try dropping the trapped part, Zeriel sends back, his resolve a wall against the chaos.
The air itself becomes a weapon. Arcs of violet energy, raw and unstable, begin to lash out from the walls, hissing as they tear through the space between us.
“Behind the pillar!” Raine Selwyn shouts, pulling her ward—a young woman with wide, startled eyes—into cover.
But the energy is unpredictable. A bolt ricochets off the archway and slams into the girl’s chest. Her body convulses, a strangled breath escaping, before she crumples bonelessly to the floor.
The acrid smell of charred flesh surges in the air.
Raine stares at the girl, her face for a single, stark moment utterly broken.
Then the expression is gone, shuttered behind a mask of cold fury. The survivors press on, the pack thinned, the desperation honed to a razor’s edge. Somewhere beyond the stone, the crowd roars—cheering, damning. The emperor won’t waste a moment of it.
And I’ll be lucky if I get out of this alive.
We burst through an archway at the top of the stairs and suddenly emerge onto a wide, windswept parapet high on the temple’s exterior. Zeriel has led us outside.
We are fully exposed, the arena a dark bowl in the distance, its roar carrying faint but unmistakable through the evening air. Overhead, imperial dragons drift so near I can make out the gilded edges of the palanquins strapped to their backs. This is the stage Pellvorn wanted. The emperor wanted.
The parapet circles a central, crumbling spire. At its peak sits a wide, altar-like platform.
Then I see it. A shard of black crystal, no bigger than my fist, resting on the weathered stone. A faint, sickly light pulses from within its depths, like a heartbeat stolen or trapped.
Selen’s shard. Or at least the one she asked us to take.
Then I spot Blaise. Tucked into the crumbling masonry at the base of the spire, a shadow within shadows, his crimson tunic a smear of blood against the gray stone. He’s not advancing. He’s waiting.
And then I see why.
From the shadows of a crumbling archway, they emerge.
Something worse than the stone beasts. They look almost regal at first: pale wings feathered like swans, long necks arched with deceptive grace.
But frost blooms across the stone where their claws land, and their breath rolls out in sheets of rime.
Ancient things, once bound to the winter courts I imagine—beauty wrought in ice, perfected for the hunt.
A fitting choice for Emperor Sylthan.
Chaos erupts. The other champions, caught by surprise, scatter as the creatures swarm the parapet. I hear a scream, cut short by a wet, tearing sound.
In the ensuing madness, Blaise moves. He breaks from his cover, a silver glint of purpose in the gloom, and launches himself at the spire. He begins to climb, his movements swift and sure, his eyes fixed on the shard at the peak.
The bastard timed this. He must have spotted the beasts behind that archway.
Zeriel’s body tenses beside me, a low growl rumbling in his chest. His focus is split between the immediate threat of the skittering drakes and the sight of his nemesis escaping toward the goal.
“Go,” I say, my voice cutting through the din.
He turns his head, surprise flickering in his eyes, and through the tether I feel the spike of it—swift, fierce, threaded with a flash of protectiveness, possession, an instinct to shield, as if that is his by right.
“Go after him,” I repeat, my voice almost a growl as I shove a drake back with a kick. “I’ll handle this.”
For a heartbeat his emotions grind against mine, mostly controlled except for a torrent of intense reluctance. Then something shifts behind his eyes—a recognition that burns between us, as if he’s seeing me as not just an ally. An equal.
He gives me one sharp nod. Be careful.
Then he leaves, a blur of motion, racing for the spire. Blaise is already almost a quarter of the way up, but Zeriel moves with a brutal efficiency, his powerful limbs eating up the distance. The two men quickly lock into a vertical race, hatred and ambition driving them up the crumbling stone.
I turn back to the chaos. Of those I can make out, Kaine Thornecairn—Champion of the Northern Territories—appears to be faring best, driving back the wyrms with twin gnarled spears. One of the drakes lunges at me, its ice-sharp jaw snapping inches from my face.
I twist away, grabbing a loose piece of masonry and bringing it down on the creature’s head even as I reach inward, into the tether, into that dangerous thread of power thrumming in my blood. No time for caution.
The drake shudders mid-lunge, feathered wings flaring wide as my will slams into it with a force that surprises me.
It crashes into one of its kin with a shriek of fury, sending both sprawling.
They’re faster, stronger, more disciplined than the reavers—every strike sharp, every movement cutting with the precision of winter’s bite.
Their breath rolls out in veils of mist, frosting the ground, freezing the air in my lungs.
But I fight with a desperate, gutter-born ferocity, turning their speed against them, forcing them to collide in the narrow space, warding off those who approach the spire.
Their pale wings thrash above me, a storm of feathers and frost that weaves a canopy so wild and blinding I doubt anyone watching from above can see what’s really happening beneath.
But as I move, a colder hollowness spreads through my chest.
What am I doing?
I’m holding the line, playing the part of the loyal ward, so Zeriel can win this round.
So he can get to the top, beat Blaise, and…
what? Destroy the shard? Play right into the emperor’s hands, proving that this ancient temple is a source of corruption that must be purged?
This temple… likely one of the last left of its kind.