Shadows lashed out from me like whips, latching onto monsters before glaciers skewered them to the ground like macabre specimens.
I ripped apart another Tharnok, my shadows snapping its spine as ice crushed its skull beneath my palm.
And then a voice screamed my name.
Mymother’svoice.
It tore through the chaos, sharp and terrified and unmistakable.
Relief swelled inside of me for the briefest moment, before it was snuffed out like the final ember in a dying fire.
Her scream fractured into sobs, into agony, into the relentless cracking of frostfire. And I knew then, with brutal certainty, that it wasn’t her. Not truly.
It was another Wretch, come to haunt me with the ghost of the grief I was trying not to feel.
My legs gave out. I hit the ground hard, the world grinding to a halt as sound collapsed into a ringing void.
No. Not her. Not?—
The echo of her next scream was cut off, silenced by the thundering crack of mana and a furious roar.
Ice and snow exploded through the air just before Draven’s presence filled my senses completely.
The Wretch died before it could finish stealing another breath. His voice followed immediately, low and steady, cutting through the chaos like a blade through fog.
Look at me, Morta Mea,he said.Stay with me. I’ve got you.
I clung to the sound of him. To the steadiness of his voice. And then to the deep, thrumming hum beneath my palms as my hands pressed into the frozen ground…
The land was crying out.
It had been for a very long time. And I felt it then—clearly, undeniably. The way the earth echoed my grief, my fury, my despair. Or perhaps my grief was only a poor imitation of hers by comparison.
Mana continued to pulse beneath the snow in vast, aching currents, recoiling from the blood soaked into it, desperate to heal. To rebalance. To breathe again.
Clarity hit me all at once.The Heartstone.
My mana was no longer at war with itself, and Nevara… I looked to where she was battling with her endless shimmering power.
I couldn’t pull her from the gates. Too many would die the moment she stopped fighting for them.
But there were ley lines beneath the palace… just like the ones at the Frost Grave Pass. Draven hadn’t needed a conduit to reach them. He had taken Winter’s power directly from her source… something he could only do because of his connection to her.
I was bound to the land, too. Through fate, throughhim. I felt that now, more clearly than I ever had before. So why couldn’t I give back to her in the same way?
A massive surge of mana exploded to my left as Draven blocked another frostbeast from reaching me, ice rising like a mountain between us and the swarm.
We were running out of time.
The armies were stretched too thin, and the frostbeasts just kept coming. I dug my talons into the frozen earth, fingers trembling as the battle raged around me and monsters swarmed in from every side. I drew a breath that burned my lungs and gathered every ounce of control I had left.
Shadow and ice surged together. Not outward toward the monsters this time. Not toward more death and destruction.
But down.
Deep into the earth.
Draven had tainted the mana he stole with rage and retribution, but my offering was borne of a need to protect, and the land drank it in.
