“What happened up there, Kael?” My voice carried the accusation I couldn’t quite hide.
He looked at me then, eyes unreadable, as if to ask whether I truly wished to know.
“You will have to tell me at some point,” I said after a breath. “We’re going up there, and I will find out.”
He took a step closer, but before he could answer, something above us screamed and roared at once. The same metallic howl we’d heard in Vallûne.
Both our heads snapped toward the sound.
The ground shuddered. Rocks shifted like restless waves, pushed by something buried beneath. Black vines burst from the cracks,writhing together, twisting into the shape of another vine blight creature.
Kael moved instantly, blade drawn, steel meeting root with a sound halfway between a clash and a wet tear. The creature lunged, vines striking for his throat, but Kael caught one in his hand and sent a pulse of power through it. The jolt rippled through the whole mass, tearing it apart and scattering its remains across the stones.
But like before, in the tainted village, the vines gathered again. They slithered under the rocks, pooling, reforming into not one but two of those feral, man-shaped horrors.
I stood frozen, useless, while Kael fought. Storm clouds thickened overhead, drawn by his fury. Lightning cracked the sky and struck where his sword fell. I shut my eyes, hands over my ears, as the world split open with thunder.
When the flashes faded, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Kael’s touch, his first since last night.
“Are you alright?” His voice had softened, concern smoothing the edge that usually cut through every word.
I nodded, though my heart still thrashed. He had turned the creatures to ash in seconds. I’d done nothing?—
A sudden hiss. A vine shot from the ground, streaking toward him.
“Watch out!” I screamed, thrusting out my hand without thinking.
It happened all at once. Power flared through me, from the mark on my shoulder to the tips of my fingers. Lightning coursed through my veins, searing bright, and a bolt split the air. It struck the vine mid-lunge, shattering it into burning fragments.
Kael stared at me, eyes wide, lips parted in disbelief. I stared back at my hand, trembling, still crackling faintly with light.
Had I just done that?
Another impossible thing.
“Not only do you mirror my power,” Kael murmured, as if to himself, studying me like an unsolvable spell, “but you can wield it.”
I looked to the ash on the ground, to the vines that hissed and slithered back toward the summit. “Why are vine blights infesting these lands? What are they doing at the summit?”
Kael didn’t answer.
I stepped toward him, forcing him to meet my gaze. “Why, Kael, do I keep seeing you in echoes, at the keep, surrounded by storms?”
“These creatures are blightborn,” he said at last, his tone carrying the weight of a confession. “They sprout from deep-rooted evil. And yes, Evangelina, something happened up there. And it is best if I show you.”
He brushed past me, striding toward the trail, expecting me to follow. And I did, because I knew Kael wouldn’t tell me in words.
We climbed higher through sliding rock and crooked black vines. When I stumbled, he caught my hand and didn’t let go. His grip was firm, grounding, the only warm thing left in the mountain’s breath. We climbed the final stretch together until the path widened into a hollow among jagged stones shaped like broken teeth.
There, the summit leveled out. And carved from the mountain itself, Drachenfels Keep rose before us.
It was drowning in blackness.
A circular tower of stone, nine stories high, its metal gate corroded and half torn from its hinges. Through the gaping arch, vines coiled and writhed, choking the stones, swallowing the summit whole. It looked less like something overgrown than something vomited up from the mountain’s depths.
It was alive. The oozing tar pulsed through the mass, a slow heartbeat beneath the rock. The stench hit suddenly, sweet and foul, and I gagged, covering my mouth.
Kael didn’t flinch. He breathed it like air, as though the rot had become part of him, as though he’d lived with it for years.
