His knees buckle.
He falls.
"NO!" The word is ripped from somewhere deep inside me, from a place of pure animal terror. My brother isdying..
CHAPTER 18
SHADOW FALLS
Kaan
The battle narrowsto a single point of focus—the blade driving through Zoran's armor, the shock blooming across his face, the way his sword slips from suddenly nerveless fingers.
Then Nesilhan screams.
The sound tears through the chaos like a physical force, raw and agonized and utterly broken. Across the thread between us—that connection forged in blood and shadow and something deeper than either—I feel her terror crash over me like a wave. It's not fear for herself. It's something far more primal, more devastating.
Her brother is dying.
My shadows erupt outward in response to her pain, a tsunami of darkness that swallows the guard who stabbed Zoran. The man doesn't even have time to scream before my power crushes him, armor and bone and flesh compacting into something unrecognizable.
"ZORAN!" She's running before I can stop her.
Magic be damned, she said. Exhaustion be damned.
She's going to get herself killed.
I move to intercept her path, shadows clearing a corridor through the remaining guards. A soldier lunges for her exposed side. My darkness simply manifests as a spike that punches through his chest cavity, lifting him off his feet before discarding him like refuse.
Another guard. Another death. My shadows are extensions of my rage now, operating on pure instinct, fueled by the terror bleeding through our connection.
Ten guards stand between Nesilhan and her brother. They're about to become corpses.
The first two go down to concentrated blasts of shadow that cave in their skulls. The third manages to raise his sword before tendrils of darkness wrap around his throat and squeeze until vertebrae crack. Four and five die together, impaled on spears of solid shadow that erupt from the blood-soaked ground.
I'm vaguely aware of Emir fighting somewhere to my right, of Elçin's battle-cry cutting through the chaos. Yasar's fire-shadow magic flares in my peripheral vision.
But none of it matters. Nothing matters except clearing the path to Zoran, except keeping Nesilhan alive long enough to reach him.
She's almost there. Five steps away. Three.
Blood. Gods, so much blood spreading beneath Zoran's body.
"NO!" Nesilhan reaches for her magic, but she's spent. We're all spent. There's nothing left to give.
That's when I feel it building—the explosive potential of magic pushed too far, about to snap back with catastrophic force.
I don't think. Don't plan. Don't calculate.
I just react.
My shadows detonate outward in a shockwave of pure force, a blast powerful enough to level everything within fifty feet. Andin the same heartbeat, I wrap darkness around Nesilhan, around Zoran, around each of our people, and pull.
Teleportation tears at reality itself. It costs more power than I have left to spend. But we're moving, shifting through space in that sickening lurch that makes mortal stomachs rebel.
When we materialize in the war room, I'm already falling to my knees beside Zoran.
The stillness is jarring after the chaos. My ears ring with phantom sounds—steel on steel, screams, the wet sounds of blades finding flesh.
