Pain explodes across my face. My head snaps back, and the world goes white for a second. The coppery taste of blood floods my mouth. My blade is already moving by instinct. It takes over, a clean arc that severs the beast’s arm at the elbow before it can swing again. It shrieks, a sound that grates on my teeth, and dissolves into dust that smells like my own sweat and fear.
“Nyssa!” Dreven’s roar is pure annihilation. A tidal wave of shadow slams into the space where the beast was, obliterating two more that are scuttling towards me.
I spit a mouthful of blood onto the cracked stone. “It’s me,” I gasp, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. But they can’t hear me over the din of battle. It’s gettingworse. More mini beasts are forming around us, more creatures that I have never seen before flood the chamber, surrounding us. There is no time to think, only fight.
I go into a thrall, my movements mechanical as I hack away. My arm moves. My feet follow. Parry, thrust, pivot. Another beast dissolves. The movements are automatic, a dance drilled into my muscles by a decade of death. But it’s not enough. For every one I cut down, another shambles forward. We are being pushed back; they are herding us, surrounding us.
My heartbeat pounds in my ears, a frantic, desperate rhythm.
Thump-thump.
A beast lunges.
Thump-thump.
Another one reforms from the dust. It’s a war drum, and I’m the one beating it.
“Stop!” I scream, even as I mechanically fight my way through the stream of beasts, but the word is swallowed by a crackle of chaos as Dastian vaporises another wave of spawn. They don’t get it. They’re gods; their solution to everything is overwhelming force.
But there’s only one way out of this.
It’s strange how quickly I come to terms with it. I always thought I’d fight until the bitter end, but there is no bitter end this time.
There is only time.
There is only the power of the First Slayers. The group of young women who were beholden to the gods and gave up everything to sever their tie and imprison them. They forced all of their power into one girl. One slayer.
A power that would be passed down generation by generation, family to family, blood to blood. My aunt diedand gave me this power when I was sixteen. Still just a girl whose parents couldn’t handle it.
If you take up the power of the slayer, we will leave, Nyssa. We won’t stand by and watch you die.
Like I had a choice. They didn’t get it. They never did.
“Nyssa!” Dastian throws out a warning as I stop fighting.
“Voren,” I say quietly.
I don’t need to raise my voice. He hears me this time.
There is power in my voice that wasn’t there before.
He turns to me, his gaze fixed on mine.
“It’s me,” I say.
“What is you?” he asks, and time seems to stand still around us. Or maybe that’s the wall of wraiths that are pressing in, surrounding us.
“I’m powering the beast. There is only one way to stop it.” I give him a sad smile.
His pale blue eyes narrow with fury, but he understands. Of course he does. He’s the God of Wraiths; he speaks the language of endings fluently.
“No,” Voren states, the word a crack of frost in the chaotic air. The wall of wraiths he summoned shimmers, faltering for a heartbeat.
The beast takes advantage, its roar shaking the foundations of the ruin.
“My power is the anchor,” I say, my voice flat, devoid of the emotion churning in my gut. “My life force. You can’t kill an idea, but you can kill the person having it.” It’s slayer maths. Simple. Brutal.
I take his hand and place it on my chest over my heart.
