Chapter 64

Brinja and Issa screamed. Torvek started shouting. I was already running.

I didn’t know what was happening - only that the children were in danger. I burst into the entry hall just as the double doors flew wide. The kids poured inside in a panicked rush, Torvek second to last through the threshold. A wall of roiling flame surged after them - but Lilae stood her ground. She thrust her hands out, mana blazing, and **** the fire back. Heat rippled through the hall, the air shimmering. She poured more power into it than I’d ever seen her wield, her face clenched with effort as she held the inferno at bay.

A deep roar thundered from outside. Then another. Then a third.

Serah answered them with her two-toned cry, a sound that rattled stone and bone alike.

“Get everyone to the basement!” I shouted to Torvek. He nodded once - sharp, focused - and herded the children toward the back of the hall, throwing open the hidden door that led below.

I sprinted into the courtyard.

A blue, serpentine dragon swooped toward me, its vast head filling my vision. A red blur slammed into it from the side - Serah. Her jaws closed around the dragon’s neck as her momentum carried them both over the wall in a crash of earth and scale.

I ripped stone from the ground with a thought and hurled it at another dragon, its aqua scales flashing in the midday sun just before the slab smashed into its wing. It shrieked, banking hard as it soared overhead, narrowly missing the watchtower. Ashie leapt from the roof, axe raised, colliding with the beast midair in a blur of muscle and fury.

The third dragon wheeled toward me - green, with yellow markings tracing its back. I threw more stone. The first two chunks it dodged. The third and fourth struck home, shattering against its hide without slowing it.

Flames washed across the courtyard. The dragon veered away from the heat as Serah’s massive head rose above the wall.

“This is it!” she shouted, locking eyes with me. “Go!”

Her wings beat once, twice - and she launched skyward after the green drake. The blue dragon hauled itself upright behind her and gave chase.

She was right. This had to be it.

I raced back into the entry hall, heart pounding, and prayed the plan worked. I’d practiced for a week - over and over - but it was still hit or miss, and it always left me exhausted. I shut my eyes, **** my breathing to slow, tensed my legs-

-and stepped.

The air changed instantly. Frigid became cold and damp. Rain lashed down in heavy sheets as wind shoved at me from all sides. Dark clouds smothered the sky, lightning tearing through them in blinding flashes. I’d never seen Seth’s demesne like this. It was usually gentle - soft breezes, mild weather. Now it was a storm given form, raw and furious.

I focused on Seth.

On the way he made me feel - love, warmth, frustration, joy. All of it. I reached for him the way I always did, following that thread that bound us together.

And something was wrong.

The connection was there, but muted. Clouded. As if buried beneath ice. All I could sense was a shadow - a smudge of presence where clarity should have been. I strained, pushing harder, trying to grasp him-

-and he slipped away.

Every attempt drove him farther. Panic clawed at my chest.

Thunder cracked overhead, shaking the ground. I had to find him. He was with Elise. I’d never met her, but Seth had told us about her - white hair, pale skin, eyes too light. He said being near her felt like someone standing just behind him, breathing down his neck.

I shivered, though I didn’t know why. Was this what he felt? That crawling sensation, raising the hair along my neck despite the rain soaking me through?

I reached for it. For that sense of dread and danger. Traced it back to its source.

I found it - or thought I did.

I tensed and stepped again.

The world lurched. I fell to my knees as the air changed once more - warm, dry, heavy with the scent of old parchment and ink. Bright light flooded the space from mana lamps overhead. Dread slammed into me like a physical ****. My instincts screamed to flee. Terror crushed my chest as I scrambled backward, breath coming in ragged gasps.

Before me stood a woman.

White hair. Nearly white skin. A simple white dress. She could have been a sketch brought to life except for the fury in her eyes as they locked onto me.

I tried to speak. Only a squeak escaped. My mouth went bone-dry. Tears burned at the corners of my eyes. I couldn’t breathe. I staggered back until my back hit the legs of a table.

I **** the words out. “W-where is… S-Seth?”

Her face twisted in confusion. Slowly, she pointed toward a pair of doors across the room.

That was enough.

I hauled myself upright and ran, putting as much distance between me and the woman as I could, fear snapping at my heels with every step.

* * *

“I have to ask,” Seth said, his voice ragged. He was already tiring. Brand could feel it - the weakness of Seth’s Faith, bleeding away with every movement. It was almost pitiable. As if the godling didn’t even have enough divinity to sustain himself. A failed ascension, maybe. Too stubborn to fade back into the ether. “Why Ashlara? Mirri? Serah? I know you’re here to kill me - but why target them? And why do it so sloppily?”

Sloppy.

Brand nearly scoffed.

Everything he did was deliberate. Measured. Planned down to the breath and heartbeat. Nothing here was an accident.

Seth was stalling - trying to buy time. Brand wasn’t inclined to give it to him. Still, there was value in letting a doomed godling make one last, fatal mistake.

He stepped in with a feint from the left, then struck hard with his right. Both daggers rang as they collided with the haft of Seth’s staff. Sparks jumped. Seth recovered quickly - good reflexes - but his movements were inefficient. He wasn’t used to the weapon. Every parry cost him more than it should have.

He was on borrowed time, Brand thought. And the debt was coming due.

“I am a god killer,” Brand said calmly. “I only needed to push them a little. Make them stronger. Because once I’m finished with you, I’m going to kill them too.”

Seth laughed. Not a nervous huff. Not hollow bravado. He laughed.

That… wasn’t right.

Brand had learned people. Gods. Mortals. When threatened, they fell back into predictable, base emotions - fear, rage, anguish. Seth had already shown his weakness lay with the others. He endangered himself for them. That should have made this threat devastating.

Laughter wasn’t on the list.

Brand struck again. Seth planted the butt of his staff and vaulted backward - thirty feet in a single motion - landing hard but upright.

“Jesus,” Seth said, grinning despite the blood and sweat. “This is going to be easier than I thought. Seriously, how did you kill the other gods? You kind of suck at your job.”

You suck. The words hit him in a way he hadn’t felt in years. Not because they were true - but because they echoed.

Something old stirred. Irritation, anger, frustration - sharp and hot.

Brand attacked in earnest.

Steel flashed. Stone shattered. Each strike rang out like a hammer on an anvil, the impacts shuddering through the ground beneath their feet. Columns cracked. Limestone burst apart in showers of dust and shards. Seth gave ground, breath coming faster now, heavier - his movements still sharp, but strained, as if every step cost him more than the last.

Small wounds continued to bleed Faith, thin silver motes leaking from him with every cut.

The suppression field still hummed around them, tight and suffocating, strangling the flow of ambient Faith. Brand smiled inwardly at that. It was a beautiful thing - an elegant theft. A gift ripped from Auvrix, the Unbending Measure, at the moment Brand had ended the god’s Will and taken what remained.

Seth couldn’t replenish.

Not here.

Not now.

And Brand intended to make sure there would never be a later.

Seth slipped between two limestone columns. Brand’s strike pulverized one of them, the explosion of stone spraying the air. Seth staggered but kept moving.

Still buying time.

For what?

Did Seth not understand? This wasn’t a duel of endurance. There was a clock ticking, loud and merciless.

“At first,” Seth said, breathless as he backed away again, “I thought you really wanted to kill them.” Brand’s blade scored his arm - Seth hissed but didn’t slow. “Then I figured you were testing for weaknesses.” Another step back. “Now I get it.”

Brand pressed in.

“You’re just an idiot.”

Brand had heard that word his entire life - spouted by idiots who didn’t even know what it meant. From teachers who didn’t understand him. From peers who feared him.

He excelled. Always. He’d placed at the top of every class. He’d always sought new knowledge, took things apart, learned how they worked. He was fascinated the first time he dissected a frog in school. Thrilled when he did it to the neighbor’s cat. Aroused in a way he couldn’t describe when he did it to the girl down the street.

He was anything but an idiot.

“I can see it,” Seth said, voice steady despite the pain. “The wheels turning in your head. So let me give you a little secret.” He smiled. Slow. Sharp. “They’re not gods.”

Seth’s eyes flicked past Brand to something behind. Brand leapt back.

A hundred feet back, a short figure sprinted down the shoreline - the godling Mirri. Or maybe not a godling after all. But if she wasn’t a god, how did she have so much Faith?

“All aboard!” she shouted as the scream of electric guitars tore through the air, wild and impossible.

* * *

My wings hammered the air as I drove after Vyrnaxis, the wind screaming past my scales. I drew a deep breath and loosed my fire. The flame caught him across the tail, green and yellow scales blistering and sloughing away to blackened meat. His scream tore through the sky.

I folded mid-flight, folding my wings tight to my body, and dropped like a stone straight into Korravyn’s path. She banked hard, but not hard enough - my jaws closed on her wing. One violent wrench and the membrane ruptured with a wet tear. We crashed together, earth shuddering beneath us - me landing on my feet, her slamming onto her side in a spray of dirt and shattered stone.

I vaulted the curtain wall just as Vyrnaxis’s fire washed over the cobblestones I’d been standing on. Stone blackened, cracked, and popped under the heat.

If my father had sent them, he clearly didn’t think highly of whatever this was supposed to accomplish. They were weak - for dragons. All hunger and pride, little discipline. More ambition than brains. Still, weak did not mean harmless. We were outnumbered, and even fools could land a killing blow.

I spared a thought for Ashlara as I turned back to the fight. Eryndor - the aqua one - was the only dragon here who might truly test us.

Vyrnaxis slammed into me, his claws locking with mine. We tumbled, snapping and raking, the ground churning beneath us. His hind claws dug into my side, ripping scales free as my jaws closed on his throat again. I rolled, twisted, and wrenched - his neck bending the wrong way as Korravyn crashed into him from the side.

The impact snapped the blue dragon’s spine with a sickening finality.

Korravyn and I released our fire together. Heat collided, flames roaring between us, until my blaze overwhelmed hers and drove it back into her face. She turned her head to shield herself and that was enough. I lunged, clamping my jaws around her neck and biting down with everything I had. Her roar collapsed into a ****, broken sound as her claws raked across my scales.

I leapt back, dragging her with me, trying to stay ahead of her flailing strikes. Her breaths came in wet, rattling gasps. Her blood poured into my mouth - hot, metallic, slick. With a **** heave she tore free, ripping her own throat from my teeth. She staggered back, the wound gaping wide enough to glimpse her esophagus beneath ruined flesh.

Her eyes met mine - glassy, unfocused. She drew breath.

Fire erupted from the torn ruin of her neck, igniting her from the inside out. The flames consumed her in a grotesque burst of heat and gore, and she collapsed in a smoking heap.

I launched myself skyward, wings beating hard once more.

I had to be sure Ashlara was still standing.