Daed grits his teeth, pressing down with all the power left in his battered body. Shadows rise from his skin, coiling around the demon’s arm, trying to drag it lower. The stone beneath them cracks.
“Yield, damn you!” he snarls through clenched teeth.
I summon another surge. More vines spear through the fractured floor, wrapping the creature’s other leg, dragging it down. The demon is forced onto both knees, armor screeching against stone. Death Singer’s tip inches closer to its neck. The creature trembles, resisting, but I can feel it breaking.
So close. So very close.
Then, with a metallic cry, the demon’s sword slips from its grasp and clatters to the ground. Victory flares in my chest until, in a blur of motion, it twists aside, Daed’s killing blow slicing down and shearing through its arm instead. The cut is clean, armor and flesh giving way like paper. Black smoke spills from the wound, thick and writhing.
The creature makes no sound of pain. Not even a hiss.
It crouches low, and in one swift motion, draws a dagger from its boot, slicing through the vines at its feet. In a blink, it’s up, retreating, limping toward the temple steps.
“No, you don’t!” Daed bellows, fury ripping through the air. “Coward!”
He grips Death Singer in both hands, draws back, and hurls it with all his strength. The blade spins through the darkness, trailing smoke like comet tails.
It should have struck. It should have ended this.
But before the blade can pierce the fleeing demon’s back, a massive tendril of smoke lashes from the temple’s doorway, snapping through the air like a whip. It coils around Death Singer, tightens, and with a sickening crack, shatters it in two.
Daed staggers as if struck himself, his whole body jolting with the pain of it. His connection to the weapon breaks in that instant. He falls to one knee, gasping, as the shattered blade clatters to the stone beside the fallen purple gem, its light dying.
“Daed,” I breathe, rushing to him.
He pulls me into his arms, holding me tight as we both lift our eyes to the temple’s towering entrance.
The air ripples. The shadows bend, and then he comes.
Smoke bleeds from the shadows, thick and sentient, coiling upward until it blocks the sky. It gathers and swells, a towering mass of writhing tentacles and gnashing void-teeth, a gaping maw large enough to swallow a world. And above it all, a single white eye opens, the eye that sees all, staring down as if we are insects beneath its heel.
The temple groans. Stone cracks. The city trembles around us.
Gygarth.
The Father Below.
The God of Death.
His roar shakes the foundations of this forsaken world, and while the demons that still live answer with cries of devotion, the few of our own who yet breathe stare in terror.
But I do not bow.
I stand unbroken where I was always meant to. At Daed’s side.
Chapter 47
Daed
Before her.The storm is alive.
It screams as it tears across the cliffs, battering the black fortress of Baev’kalath until even the stones tremble beneath its fury. Waves crash against the sheer walls, spray bursting high enough to soak the battlements. The rain is relentless. It pours down my hair, over my eyes, through the seams of my leathers, filling my boots until the cold is bone-deep.
Before me, a Fae warrior kneels. Filth and rain streak his face, his hands clasp together in supplication. His shoulders tremble, not from the cold, but from the weight of his shame.
“Forgive me, Rook,” he pleads, voice hoarse against the wind. “I was weak. I should not have been tempted.”
I tighten my grip on Death Singer. The storm hisses across the blade, rain running down the steel like blood. My reflection wavers in the violet jewel at its hilt.
