Malachar stood before the entrance to the Convergence chamber like vengeance given form. The mage whom I’d battled decades ago, the one whose face I’d marked with corruption when he’d gotten too close, wasbarely recognizable. What I’d done to him had changed him. Scars of black corruption ran across his face in intricate patterns, beautiful and terrible, like molten flesh. But instead of destroying him, they’d made him stronger. His robes crackled with power that made the air around him shimmer and distort.
“Kaelren,” he said, and his voice was different too—layered with harmonics that shouldn’t exist. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
My team fanned out, but I held up a hand. “This one’s mine.”
“Oh, I was hoping you’d say that.” Malachar’s smile was all teeth and madness. “Do you remember our last encounter? When you gave me these beautiful scars?” He traced the corruption patterns on his face almost lovingly. “I should thank you. The pain was exquisite. The transformation even more so. I spent years studying what you did to me, learning to harness the corruption you left behind. And now…” He spread his arms, power flaring around him in waves that made reality ripple. “Now I’m ready to repay the favor.”
“Get past him,” I told my team. “Get to Elle.”
“Kaelren—” Sarnyx started.
“Now!”
They moved, trying to circle around Malachar, but he was ready. Barriers of twisted magic erupted from the floor, cutting off access to the doors. The corruption in the walls responded to his call, forming additional obstacles that writhed and reached.
“No one passes,” Malachar said. “Not until I’m done with him.”
Fine. I’d end this quickly.
I charged, corruption flaring around me like armor. Malachar met me with magic that burned cold, spells that pulled at my essence in ways that hurt beyond physical pain. Where his power touched my corruption, they fought for dominance, creating explosions of electricity that cracked the floor and made the walls bleed.
“You’re stronger than before,” he noted, deflecting my corrupted blade with shields that screamed when touched. “Good. I was worried this would be disappointing.”
He lashed out with whips of corrupted energy, and I recognized them—he’d learned to weaponize what I’d done to him, turning my own power back against me. The whips found marks, cutting through my defenses, leaving trails of agony that burned like ice and fire at once.
But I pushed through. I had to. Elle’s pain echoed through our bond, each pulse a reminder of what was at stake.
We fought through the corridor, trading blows that would have killed lesser beings. Malachar’s magic grew more desperate, more powerful, pulling tricks from centuries of study and practice. He aged me with a gesture, my body suddenly carrying decades of exhaustion. I countered with pure corruption, dissolving his spell and the floor beneath us.
He trapped me in bindings of light that burned where they touched. I shattered them with rage made manifest, my corruption exploding outward in a wave that made him stumble back.
“You can’t win,” he panted, blood running from his nose where the strain of his magic was taking its toll. “I’ve studied you, learned from you, become you in ways you can’t imagine. Every move you make, I’m ready for.”
Maybe that was true. But he’d made one critical mistake.
He was still trying to control the corruption. Still trying to master it, harness it, make it serve him.
I’d stopped fighting it a long time ago.
Malachar raised his hands for what would probably be his killing blow, power gathering around him in a storm of corrupted magic that made the air itself scream. The walls collapsed, the floor buckled, reality bent under the weight of what he was about to unleash.
Then, through our bond, I felt it.
Elle’s pain peaked. Not just the physical agony of the apparatus, but something deeper. Something that hit me like a knife through the heart—the pain of losing herself, of dissolving into something that wasn’t Elle anymore. She was being torn apart, reformed, unmade, and remade into a tool for Auradelle’s vision.
And in that moment, feeling her suffer, feeling her breaking—
I stoppedbeing Kaelren.
The corruption I’d been fighting, that I’d been trying to contain and control and keep at bay, I let it all go. Every wall I’d built, every restraint I’d maintained, every desperate attempt to stay human despite the darkness eating me from within—gone.
I threw my head back and screamed her name.
“ELLE!”
The sound that came out wasn’t human. It was rage and love and absolute refusal given voice, a howl that transcended language and became something primal. The corruption exploded from me in a wave of pure annihilation.
Malachar’s spell shattered before it could form. His shields dissolved like paper in acid. His carefully maintained control over the corruption he’d taken from me reversed, the power recognizing its true master and abandoning him completely.
