And in that moment, all the pieces of his terrible deception slam into place.
The words of binding. The ghostly apparition. His obsessive hunger. The need for a pure heart, a strong life force. He is not breaking a curse. He is paying a ransom. He is bringing his loverback from the dead by trading my soul for hers. The lie of a “gentle release” is a sickening mockery. This is not a sacrifice. It is a theft.
Panic, stark and absolute, explodes in my chest. A scream builds in my throat. I try to sit up, to struggle, to throw myself from this cursed altar.
I cannot move.
My body is pinned to the stone, held fast by invisible, unyielding bands of magical force. I am trapped, a prisoner in my own skin. The only thing I can move are my eyes. The scream dies in my throat, choked off by the magical pressure. My heart hammers against my ribs, a wild, terrified bird in a cage of bone. I am going to die here, not as a willing sacrifice to save the man I love, but as fuel for a madman’s obsession.
The ghost of Lyra becomes more solid, her sad eyes looking down not at me, but through me. Kasian’s chanting reaches a fevered, frantic crescendo. He raises his right hand, and in it, he holds a ritual knife carved from a single piece of gleaming, black crystal. It is a shard of solidified night, and its point is aimed directly at my heart.
This is it. The final, terrible moment. My life is about to be stolen, my soul used as currency, and Xylon will never even know why. He will wake up cured, and I will be gone, my spirit devoured by this ancient, hungry magic. The despair is a black, suffocating tide.
The tip of the crystal knife glints in the blinding light. Kasian’s face is a mask of triumphant madness. He is about to complete the ritual. He is about to bring the knife down.
In that last, silent, hopeless second before the end, a roar of pure, possessive, earth-shaking fury explodes into the cavern, a sound I know better than my own name. It is a sound that shatters the spell of the ritual, that shakes the very stones of thisancient place, and that rips through my despair with all the force of a lightning strike.
It is the sound of Xylon.
19
XYLON
My roar rips through the cavern, a primal sound of absolute fury and terror. The air crackles with it. I burst from the passage, my monstrous form a thunderous blur of grey-green muscle.
She is there. Laid out on the black altar. Her eyes are closed. Kasian stands over her, his pale, elegant hand raised, the crystal knife a shard of obsidian pointed at her heart. The ghostly form of his lost love shimmers above her, translucent and terrifying.
He is too close.
My mind collapses into a single, burning purpose: reach her. Stop him. Kill him.
I do not think. I simply move. My powerful legs launch me across the glowing pool of the Wildspont, the water boiling and hissing as my colossal weight displaces it. I am a living battering ram, a force of vengeance unleashed.
Kasian’s head snaps up, his ancient eyes widening with a flicker of surprise, a spark of something almost like…annoyance. He had not anticipated me. Good.
He is faster than anything I have ever seen. Before I can even reach the island, before my first monstrous stride lands on theobsidian rock, he is gone. One moment he is standing over her, the next he is a blur of midnight robes, reappearing on the far side of the island, chanting.
Bolts of dark energy, colder than the deepest void, erupt from his outstretched hands. They scream across the cavern, aimed not at my body, but at the glowing pools around the altar. When they strike the luminous water, it erupts in explosions of crackling shadow and blinding light. He tries to weaponize the Wildspont against me, to sever my connection to the island.
I ignore it. The spray of superheated water and raw magic lashes at my hide, but I do not slow. My course is set. She is my world. He will not take her from me.
I crash onto the black rock of the altar-island, my weight shaking the entire structure. The impact sends a wave of force through the cavern, making the crystal formations shudder. My claws permeate the obsidian, leaving deep gouges.
“Fool!” Kasian’s voice is a whip-crack of contempt. “You cannot stop this. Her soul is already?—”
His words are cut off by my roaring charge. I’m a whirlwind of fury, a storm of muscle and claw. He tries to evade me again, a shimmering blur of shadow magic. But my beast-honed senses anticipate his move. I shift my weight, a powerful lunge, not where he is, but where hewill be.
My massive, clawed hand slams into the air where he is about to materialize. He flickers, half-formed, and then my blow connects. Not with the full force of my charge, but with enough power to send him reeling. He cries out, a thin, surprised sound of pain. He crashes against one of the smaller waterfalls, his midnight robes tangling in the spray.
The interruption is enough. The ritual falters. The blinding white light of the Wildspont flickers, momentarily dimming. The ghostly image of a woman, solidifying above Dina, shimmers and wavers, becoming translucent once more.
Kasian recovers, his black eyes blazing with a cold fury. He launches himself at me, not with raw strength, but with a torrent of shadow magic. Tendrils of pure darkness wrap around my limbs, biting into my flesh like countless razor-sharp teeth. They try to bind me, to pull me down, to drain my strength. The cold, lifeless magic is an agony, a creeping paralysis that tries to invade my very core.
I roar, a sound of defiance and refusal. The beast’s rage is a burning tide that climbs my throat. My claws dig into the obsidian floor, the rock groaning under the pressure. I will tear them all apart for touching her. I will tear him apart for touchingmewith this vile, dead magic.
I ignore the pain. I ignore the draining cold. My strength is fueled by a single, unyielding truth: she is in danger.
I pull against the binding shadows, my muscles bulging, screaming in protest. The Vrakken magic, ancient and powerful, strains against my brute, monstrous strength. I feel something tear in my chest, a fresh bloom of agony, but I do not care. I will not stop.
