We were falling one at a time, and I knew it wouldn’t be long until I lost another.
And I didn’t know how to find the strength to survive this without them. All of them. I didn’t want to live in a world in which they didn’t all exist.
“Enough.”
I knew that voice.
It rolled over the battlefield and it was as if the world obeyed instantly. The heat of the Seraphim faltered mid-strike and the clash of weapons halted.
The upper triads froze where they were—one of them with a glowing celestial blade poised at Gabe’s throat. A single breath from severing everything. Gabe stood panting, bleeding from histemple, his hands empty and outstretched like he’d been caught mid-parry.
Behind him, Niz roared as his wings failed mid-beat and his massive body crumpled from the sky with a devastating crash, his wyvern form disintegrating mid-fall into spiraling threads of magic and bone. He hit the ground in a heap of naked, bloodied skin, body curling instinctively to shield what he could, even in unconsciousness.
A whimper escaped me before I was openly sobbing, choking on the grief clawing up my throat. My chest wouldn’t rise. My lungs wouldn’t fill. Bastian was gone. Niz was barely alive. Gabe stood on the edge of death. Ronan’s shadows were beginning to disappear as his own strength waned. And Steele—I turned to him, needing something solid, needing the strength that had always been in his eyes.
And I saw what it had cost him to hold me to him.
All of him, blistered and blackened from where he’d held and refused to let go of me while I burned with the stars. His jaw was clenched through the pain, his breath ragged, chest heaving, and still he held me like I was the only thing in this world worth anchoring to.
“Oh stars,” I sobbed, “Steele…what did I do?—”
“You lived,” he rasped, eyes burning with pain and something far fiercer. “You’re still here. That’s all that matters.”
But I saw it now—how much he’d given to keep me in this world. His energy was draining from the amount of runes pulsing all over my skin, giving me everything he had and more.
The sky split with a flash of purple lightning spiderwebbing through the clouds, and down came a lone figure.
The Creator.
No wings, no armor, no battle cry. Just power incarnate, wrapped in a flowing white and gold dress that shimmered like galaxies had been threaded into silk. Her white hair billowedweightlessly, aglow and drifting around her. Her eyes were like molten suns as she dropped down to hover above us, scanning the scene before her.
With a single flick of her hand every weapon the upper triad members gripped was wrenched from their grasps. The steel turned to ash midair, disintegrating into dust and light, as if it had never been forged at all. The celestial sword at Gabe’s neck vanished in a shimmer of ash, and he staggered back, eyes wide, too stunned to speak.
The Dominions and Seraphim froze, and for the first time, they looked small.
She touched down to the ground between us and the triads. Power rippled from her with each breath, rippling out across the battlefield in waves of terrifying energy.
“How dare you,” she said as she surveyed the triad members before us, her voice no louder than a whisper, yet it rolled like thunder across the ruined city, shaking stone and soul alike. “Howdareyou presume that I would ever agree to such violence through my slumber?”
Each word carried the weight of divine judgment.
“Slaughtering creatures of my creation for your own gain?” Her glowing gaze raked across each frozen Seraphim and Dominion. “Trying to take the stars into yourselves to become deities, as if I haven’t given you enough power?”
One of the Seraphim moved forward with trembling hands. Their voice wavered, carrying a strange echo, like two people speaking in perfect unison, a breath out of sync. “We only?—”
“Youonlythought of yourselves above my will,” she interrupted, her voice sharp and cold. “Youonlyclaimed righteousness as an excuse for domination. Youonlydestroyed what you could not control.”
She stepped closer to them, and the air thickened, magic suddenly crawling like frost across the stone as she walked.
“I don’t need to hear your side of this,” she said quietly. “I stand with the victims of your violence.”
Her hand rose, palm open toward the sky. “You will pay for it with your lives.”
She lifted one hand, fingers tipped with molten energy as the triad members all opened their mouths to try and rebut, but there was no time for it. With ease she flicked her hand back and seemed to tear the power from them.
The triad members’ magic unraveled from their bodies. It lifted from their flesh in tendrils and arcs, spiraling toward her hand as she seemed to absorb it.
Their wings blackened and their bodies crumpled. Light bled from their opened mouths and eyes, and when the last of their energy was dragged from their bodies, what remained of them turned to dust.
