Chapter 113

The black tentacle burst from my chest in a spray of blood and pain and gore.

I stared down at it, numb, disbelieving.

Was this it?

I’d thought about **** before, but only in the abstract. Growing old. Becoming feeble. Maybe something sudden - a heart attack or stroke. When I did, I thought about who I’d leave behind. The brother and sister I barely spoke to. Jennifer. Emily. The devs and QA teams I’d spent years with.

Would they care? Would I be more than a passing thought? A message in a chat, a name mentioned once or twice before life moved on? Would I leave any lasting impact on the world?

I never imagined it would be like this. Not in the middle of a battlefield. Not with everything I’d built - everyone I loved - still here.

It didn’t matter if I was remembered. What mattered was that they lived. That they wouldn’t have to grow up in a world like this - twisted by corruption, soaked in fear, ruled by things that shouldn’t exist.

The tentacle split inside me. Smaller strands burrowed deeper, wrapping around my heart, crawling up my throat like something trying to wear me from the inside out.

My body locked. Every muscle seized. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t even scream.

“You failed them,” a voice whispered, so close I almost felt its breath against my ear. “You’ve failed everyone.”

Others whispers joined it, overlapping, echoing.

It’s not fair. It’s not my fault. Why didn’t they listen?

Rage flared - hot, immediate, blinding. It wasn’t fair. They hadn’t listened. It wasn’t my fault.

Except it was.

It was entirely my fault. Every choice I didn’t make. Every moment I hesitated. Every time I chose the easier path instead of the right one.

I could have held my tongue with the High Witan. Could have just agreed, killed Brand when they asked. I did it anyway in the end.

I could have gone to Brand first. Talked to him. Asked why. Instead I waited for him to come for us.

I could have given myself to the Iron Nation. Offered my blood instead of Ashlara’s. I’d done it for Serah - why not her?

I could have been honest with the Queen. Could have pushed harder with Crowhurst. Done so many things differently.

It wasn’t fair. But it was my fault.

The weight of that settled over me like it always did. It hunched my shoulders. It bowed my head. It dragged me down to that place I used to live - the one made of deadlines and fluorescent lights and quiet misery. That place between meetings and deadlines. The place I spent long hours in after everyone else had left the office.

The place where everything was always my fault.

The tentacle tore free.

I felt it rip out of me, leaving a hole in my chest that shouldn’t have been survivable. Blood poured out in sheets - far more than my body should have held.

I looked up and didn’t recognize the world.

Smoke choked the air, thick and black, turning everything beyond a few dozen feet into shadow. It burned my lungs, my eyes. Fire rolled across the sky - not lightning, but slow, boiling clouds of flame. Somewhere, people were screaming.

“How did you do it?” a voice asked. Smooth. Gentle. Kind in a way that felt like a lie the moment it touched your ears.

She stepped into view - the woman of parchment, her face a shifting constellation of stars that never quite settled. “How did you take their Faith?”

She knelt in front of me, studying me like I was something fascinating pinned under glass.

“It took me years,” she continued, almost conversational. “Years to understand it. Years to bargain with the Myrddin. In exchange for knowledge… I gave them everything. The world. I was going to become the god of all of it.”

Her lips curved faintly. “And then you arrive and just… do it. No preparation. No sacrifice. No deals. You didn’t even kill anyone.” Her head tilted. “You just took it.”

She set an ugly dagger of blackened metal against my shoulder. It hummed - no, hungered - vibrating against my armor like it wanted to consume me.

“So tell me,” she said softly. “How?”

I coughed. Blood filled my mouth, spilled down my chin. I tried to speak and failed. Tried again.

“I didn’t,” I wheezed. The words scraped out of me. “It was a gift.”

I smiled - something raw and ugly and real -and met the shifting stars of her face. “I didn’t take anything,” I said. “They gave it to me.”

Her face erupted into violent, angry supernovas - anger burning through the illusion of calm - as she drove the dagger toward my throat.

I caught it.

The blade sliced through my hand, bit deep, but I stopped it a breath from my neck.

My blood ignited and my Faith with it - slowly burning away.

She leaned into the strike, poured everything she had into that single thrust.

It didn’t move.

I wrenched the dagger from her grip and threw it aside.

She stumbled back, shock breaking through her composure.

I pushed myself upright, legs shaking, vision swimming. “You could have asked,” I said, taking a step toward her.

Her expression twisted. “No- how are you-”

“You could have stopped this.” Another step. My voice steadied, grew stronger.

“Stop! This isn’t possible!”

“You put my family in danger,” I said, heat rising in my chest, in my throat, in my veins. “You put the world in danger.” Flame swallowed my hand, eating away at it as whatever she’d cut me with tore through my Faith.

“All for what?” I demanded. “Petty ambition?” I bared my teeth. “It’s over.”

Stone speared up from the ground - I shattered it with a thought, mana crashing down like a hammer. Fire surged toward me - I tore it apart with a gust of freezing wind. Lightning split the air - I caught it, twisted it, hurled it back.

She unleashed everything. Faith crashed against me in waves. I met it with magic.

Real control this time. Not instinct. Not desperation. Something sharper. Cleaner. Mine.

Her attacks came unrelenting, precise, overwhelming.

My mana flowed out of me countering everything she threw at me.

My Faith burned like a dying star. The dagger was killing it. Devouring it. Ripping it apart.

And in that destruction… The world flooded with mana.

I dragged it in. All of it. Shaped it. **** it. Turned it into something more.

Fire, ice, stone - layered shields and snapping constructs. My spells tore into her, burned her, broke her focus, chained her in place.

She screamed, striking at illusions that weren’t there. Her chaos unraveled under my Axiomancy. Her light vanished into my Umbrance.

Yveth once told me the difference between faith and Faith. That faith was the belief that something would happen - that it was confidence without proof. Faith was the power that governed the world.

Mana was a shadow of Faith. That spells were like a stone in a lake. The mana could bend reality - cause ripples - but not permanently change it.

I’d responded with the question - what if enough stones were tossed that they filled the lake?

That, she replied, sounded like faith becoming Faith.

I smiled through the blood and fire and ruin. Because I was already throwing stones. And I was hellbent on filling up that lake.