But Esther… she is not finished.
A different kind of will takes over, ancient and absolute. Her hand, trembling with resolve, dips into the pool of her own bloodgathering on the ground. My fingers—her fingers—trace a rune in the dirt. The first stroke is a line of sacrifice. I feel a tug deep in my core, a giving away of life force that is both terrifying and exhilarating. Another wound on my arm, one I hadn’t even registered, splits open wider, feeding the spell. The pain is a secondary concern to the intricate, lethal mathematics of the magic taking shape.
The clearbloods are closer. Ten feet. Their light intensifies, a cleansing fire meant to scour me from the world.
Another rune. A symbol of binding, of connection. It links my life force to theirs. A third, a final, vicious character that means unraveling. Annihilation. The cold of true death creeps up my spine, a lover’s icy hand closing around my neck. The spell is complete. It is a suicide bomb powered by a soul.
The lead clearblood raises his hand, his mouth forming the first syllable of a killing curse.
Esther smiles. A bloody, triumphant, terrible smile. And I feel her let go.
The world implodes. The magic I’ve drawn in the earth ignites, not with light or fire, but with a profound and absolute negation. A wave of unmaking rushes out from me. I feel my own heart stop, my lungs collapse, my very bones turn to dust.
But I also feel their shock, their terror, as the spell latches onto them. I feel their bright light snuffed out like a candle in a vacuum. I feel their life force unraveling, torn from them and consumed by the void I have created. I experience five deaths at once, on top of my own. It is a symphony of endings, a final, perfect chord of mutual destruction.
And then… silence. Nothingness. The trial is over.
Except it isn’t.
The darkness doesn’t last. A warm, golden light begins to bloom at the edges of my perception. It’s not the harsh, sterile light of the clearbloods. This is different. It feels… familiar. Like the heat of a forge, the core of a sun. It’s the… dragon blood? Dayn’s essence… a stubborn, living fire that refuses to be extinguished, and it’s wrapping around what’s left of me.
I am no longer in a body. I am… a perspective. A point of awareness floating above the carnage. I look down and see the gray, withered husk that was Esther’s body, surrounded by the equally desiccated remains of her killers. I have become a spirit.
This isn’t how the Grave Recall is supposed to work. You experience the death, you learn from it, and you return. You don’t become the ghost.
Or am I somehow still tethered to Esther, to the memory of her spirit?
The golden light pulses, and my senses expand in a way that is both terrifying and sublime. I can see the battlefield in the world of the living—the trees, the bodies, the blood. But I can also see the spirit realm layered over it, a shimmering, ethereal landscape. From the fallen darkbloods, faint, pale-gray shapes of their souls are rising, confused and untethered, drifting like smoke in a still room. Many are screaming, their mouths open in silent horror as they realize what's happened.
Then I see them. Far across the battlefield, circling high above the worst of the slaughter, are things that are not… spirits. They are blacker than night, wisps of smoke that twist and writhe with a palpable hunger. They keen and hiss, a sound that I feel in my new, non-physical form as a strange, soul-deep vibration. They feed on the pain, on the agony of the dying, on the despair of the newly dead.
Ides.
They turn, their collective non-gaze seeming to fix on me, as if they sense me. As if they sense my power.
And as they turn, something inside me shifts. A new sensation rips through me. It is not pain, but a profound, hollow ache. A hunger that doesn’t feel like my own. A need so absolute iteclipses thought, eclipses memory. The world of ghosts and pale light winks out, and I am falling into a blackness that promises to fill me.
I am ripped back into my body with a scream that tears my throat raw. The black hunger vanishes, replaced by the hard, cold shock of the stone floor against my cheek. My lungs burn, heaving for air that doesn't taste of death. The chamber swims back into focus—the altar, the shadows, the terrified face of my sister.
“Esme!” Brynn’s voice is shrill with panic.
Hands are on me. One pair is cool, familiar, Brynn’s fingers digging into my shoulder. The other is a furnace, Dayn’s hand scorching my back, a grounding weight of pure power that both steadies and suffocates me. He hauls me to my knees with an effortless strength, his other arm circling my waist, holding me upright as my body trembles uncontrollably.
“She did it,” I hear Warden Blythe say, her voice devoid of relief, filled only with a grim, clinical satisfaction. She steps into my wavering field of vision, her face an unreadable mask. In her hand, a small silver knife glints in the violet light still pulsing from the ritual bowl.
“Wait,” Brynn chokes out. “She needs a moment. She needs?—”
Blythe already has my left hand, her grip like a vise. “Her blood is needed after every trial.” The silver blade flashes. A sharp, biting pain slices across my palm, and my own blood, dark and hot, wells up. The next thing I know, Blythe is pressing my palm flat against the ancient, rune-carved stone.
The moment my blood touches it, a low, grinding groan starts deep within the earth, a sound that I feel in my teeth, in my bones. The entire chamber seems to lurch, a violent tremor thatthrows Brynn off balance. Dust and small stones rain down from the vaulted ceiling. The tombstone beneath my hand begins to glow with a strange, white light—completely different from the violet light of the ritual.
The world shrinks to a pinhole, darkness creeping in from all sides. My hand's throbbing, the ground's violent shaking, even Dayn's feral rumble—everything recedes into distant echoes. Only one sight remains: my blood seeping into ancient stone, transforming before my eyes from crimson to something otherworldly—veins of midnight shadow intertwining with threads of liquid sunlight.
Then I surrender to the void.
19
DAYN
