The cold thread tightens. It’s a hook, a lifeline. I pour every ounce of my stubborn, furious will into it, fighting to be something more than smoke and memory. Rynna isn’t ready, and if I protect no one else in this shitshow, Iwillprotect her. I swore to her when she was thirteen years old, when our parents abandoned us both.
A promise is a promise. It’s the one piece of myself the Order never managed to grind into dust. I focus on it, on Rynna’s face the day they left, small and lost and furious. I won’t be another ghost in her history.
The cold thread jerks, a violent tug that resonates through my non-existent form. It’s Voren. He’s pulling.
“You are fighting your own nature,” the iron-haired spirit intones, her voice a deep, resonant bell of disapproval. “Your purpose has been fulfilled. Another has taken your place. Let her.”
“Let her die, you mean?” I snap, and the force of my anger makes the air around me shimmer. A few of the weaker spirits dissolve into mist. Progress.
The cold hook sinks deeper, no longer a gentle suggestion but a demand. It feels like frostbite and homecoming. I can feel him now, on the other side, a furious, determined presence refusing to let go.
The spirits raise their collective will against me, a crushing weight of duty and peace and the sweet, seductive promise of an end to pain.Rest.Your watch is over.
“I’m not on watch,” I scream into the void, pouring every last scrap of myself into Voren’s anchor. “I’m on the bloody warpath.”
The world of smoke and memory fractures, and the ice pulls me through.
It’s like being ripped into a million pieces and shattered across the universe.
The reassembly is agony. It’s like being born backwards and at high speed. My soul slams back into its mortal casing with all the finesse of a car crash. A single, shuddering gasp tears through me, my lungs screaming as they inflate, a firestorm of oxygen after nothing. My heart hammers against my ribs, a frantic, painful drumbeat that tells me I’m alive.
My eyes fly open. Voren’s face is inches from mine. Dreven is a pillar of incandescent rage at his shoulder, his silver eyes a storm that promises retribution. Dastian is on my other side, his usual manic smile replaced by a raw, tight-lipped expression of relief that looks utterly alien on him. A dome of crackling red-gold energy pulses around us.
“Well, fucking look at you,” I rasp, my voice a wreck. I shove at Voren’s chest, my limbs feeling like lead weights. “God of Wraiths. I knew trusting you was a good move.”
“I keep my promises,” he says, his voice strained.
But the relief is a fleeting thing, already crushed by the weight of what I learned in the void.
What is done cannot be undone. Rynna has been called, and I’m… who the fuck knows, but I guess we’ll find out. I don’t mention it to the gods. There is no need, and I don’t need them thinking I’m any less than I was before this dying incident. It’s irrelevant right now. We need to hurry up and find the crown so I can go home and explain to Rynna that I am, in fact, not dead and that she needs to step up her slaying game.
“All right, playtime’s over,” I say, my voice sounding like gravel in a cement mixer. I push myself into a sitting position, ignoring the way every cell in my body screams in protest. Being dead, it turns out, is hell on the joints.
Dreven’s shadow solidifies, and he’s suddenly kneeling in front of me, his hands framing my face. His grip is tight enough to bruise. “You will never do that again.” It’s not a request.
“No promises,” I manage, batting his hands away. “Did we win?”
“You died,” Dastian says, his voice uncharacteristically flat. The red-gold shield flickers around us and dissipates. “That’s generally considered losing.”
“Semantics,” I grumble, staggering to my feet with Dreven’s help. The world tilts, but I lock my knees. “The beast is gone. The crown is not. Let’s finish this before I have to pull another dramatic stunt.” My gaze flicks between them. They look ragged, furious, and entirely too relieved. It’s fine. Everything is fine. Let them think I had it all under control.
I close my eyes, trying to find the pull of the crown again, but there’s nothing. Just a hollow ache where it used to be. “It’s gone quiet.”
“Quiet isn’t good,” Dreven growls. “It means it’s waiting.”
“Or it got bored and fucked off,” I counter, rubbing my sternum where Voren’s hand left a phantom chill. My entire body feels like a badly tuned instrument, every nerve vibrating with a painful dissonance. But I don’t feel weaker, physically. Maybe a resurrected slayer is still a slayer.
“Crowns don’t get bored, Nyssa,” Voren says, his voice low and steady, though his pale eyes are scanning the ruins with a new intensity. “They either call or they are claimed. Something has changed.”
“Yeah, I died,” I point out. “That tends to change things. Maybe it thinks its chosen vessel is out of commission.” The thought of Rynna flashes through my mind again, a sharp, stabbing pain that has nothing to do with being resurrected. I shove it down. One crisis at a time.
“So, what now?” Dastian asks. “Do we just stand around until it gets chatty again?”
I shake my head, my gaze drawn to the yawning black doorway the beast had been guarding. “No. It is somewhere.” I start walking towards it, my legs feeling steadier with every step. Purpose is a great cure for post-death wobbles.
The air gets colder the closer I get to the doorway. It’s not Voren’s death-chill; it’s an older, emptier cold. The kind that settles in abandoned places. The gods follow me, keeping close enough to suffocate me. Their combined protective energy is so thick I could choke on it. I can feel their eyes on my back, cataloguing every twitch, every slight stumble. It’s like being escorted to my own execution by three very handsome, very pissed-off prison guards.
“You are not fully restored,” Dreven says from behind me, his voice a low growl that vibrates through the stone. “Your life force is frayed.”
