He turns, eyes haunted. He looks every bit the hunted beast I promised to protect. He lifts his hand, trembling, and brushes a shard of glass off the table.
“I know,” he says, voice low. He doesn’t move the shard. It’s embedded in something deeper now. Something alive. “But there’s something you need to understand first.”
I sit beside him, knees dug into cold floorboards. I reach out—“What is it?”
He takes a breath. The room smells of woodsmoke and healing salve. I try to steady my pulse, my throat. I want him alive; I want him whole. I want him without pain.
“The spear,” he says, “is no longer just a tool. It’s part ofit.” He doesn’t need to say Vorfaluka—it echoes through the room. “Killing the creature with the Spear… might tear open the Veil permanently.”
My heart lurches. “What do you mean? The Veil?” I swallow down sudden nausea.
He closes his eyes. Shadows drift on his skin. “The Spear is embedded now — not just physically, but magically. The corruption, the essence of the Vorfaluka… it has merged with it. If I strike from the outside—it could rend the Veil. Let more slip in, let the worlds bleed together.”
I shake my head. “That’s…” I don’t finish. It feels too big. Too dangerous. “What choice do we have?”
He swallows. His side twitches with pain. “There’s one way. A way through.” He places a hand on my knee, and I feel how thin he is—fragile, broken. “I must go inside. Merge with it. Use the Spearfrom the inside.Guide its destruction from within.”
Silence. The shard pulses on the table. I can almost hear it whisper death.
“That’s a suicide plan,” I whisper.
He looks at me, eyes sharp. “Yes.”
I lie back, panic and grief swirling in me. “Don’t say that.”
He kisses me then—soft, desperate. Like he’s tasting farewell or promise. “If I don’t return,” he murmurs, “name your first axe after me.”
I punch his arm—half from love, half from fear. It hurts a little. I laugh through tears. “You’re still being dramatic.”
He grips my hand. His fingers are cold. “Wouldn’t want you besmirched by mediocrity.”
I hug him then, like if I let him go he’ll vanish. My arms around him tight, tears soaking into his shirt, his heart beat fluttering.
Then there’s a loud rumble outside. Wheels screech. Booger and Burnout burst through the door, truck bed full of fireworks—rockets, sparklers, tubes of colored powder. Booger slaps the side of the truck, grinning like he’s stolen the sky. Burnout is braced next to him, a long fuse in hand.
“We’re in, boss!” Booger shouts, fireworks banging against metal.
I pull back, laughing so hard that the grief catches in my throat. Tears slide down my cheek but I don’t wipe them. I laugh because this—this rebellion is beautiful. This defiance in the face of inevitable collapse.
He watches me laugh. The shard glows again, darker now, humming with power I can almost feel in my bones.
We stand in the ruin of what was, in the promise of what might be.
It’s the beginning of the end.
CHAPTER 18
KURSK
Ipull the hood of my cloak tighter, the cavern mouth yawning before us like a ruined throat. Olivia, Booger, Burnout, and Peggy Sue stand behind me, each breathing hard, each carrying hope and fear in tattered packs. My spear—full again with the shard fused back—feels like a promise I’m not sure I can keep.
“We move slow. Eyes sharp,” I say. My voice echoes against stone. The air smells of damp acid and fungus; it's suffocating and moist, sticky against my skin.
Burnout sags forward. “Man, I never thought being in a cave would make me miss daylight.”
Peggy Sue lights a lantern. Its glow reveals walls slick with viscous growth—fungal tendrils, sinewy vines clinging to rock, dripping ooze that glows faint green. They pulse like hearts.
They move… the walls seem to breathe. Heat radiates from fissures in the floor, pulsing warmth underfoot. My boots stick in slick patches. Smell of mildew mixed with burning sulfur. I taste grit in my mouth.
