“Haven’t they been already?” I asked, shaking my head.
The ground bucked beneath us, not enough to throw us off our feet, but enough to make my stomach lurch. Roots tore free from the soil at the edge of the circle, coiling upward like living things they were.
Above us, the sky split wide with movement.
Shapes slid through the clouds—vast, luminous, half-seen forms that bent the night around them. Ancient spirits, older than language, their outlines shimmering like heat and moonlight and memory all at once. They didn’t descend. Theypassed through, circling the clearing in great, sweeping arcs, drawn by the unmaking of something that had no right to persist this long.
I felt them brush against my thoughts.
Not voices. Impressions.
Shifters.
Roots growing through stone. Rivers choosing new paths. Fires burning themselves out and leaving space for green things to return.
The Wilds went feral with it.
Leaves tore loose from branches and spun wildly through the clearing. Fireflies scattered, their lights streaking like sparksflung from a forge. The mushrooms leaned inward, caps tilting, glow pulsing erratically as the circle strained to hold shape against the sheer force of release.
Pain surged again, sharper, more chaotic.
Not just physical now.
Memories—mine, not mine—collided in my mind. The first time I’d stepped into Stonewick. The moment Malore’s presence had pressed against my life like a thumb on a bruise. Keegan standing between me and danger more times than I could count. Gideon’s laughter echoing hollowly in places where hope should have lived. My father’s steady hands when everything else had fallen apart.
And beneath it all, the Hunger’s last, desperate thrashing.
It reached forthoughtnow, no longer content to cling to magic alone. It whispered doubts, regrets, half-formed fears, tried to convince me that this was too much, that we were too small, that unmaking it would unmakeusas well.
I screamed—not in terror, but in refusal.
The sound tore out of me and into the clearing, raw and defiant, and something answered.
The spirits overhead dipped lower, their forms briefly sharpening, light cascading down like falling stars. The ground split open at the center of the circle, revealing a depth that glowed with steady, ancient power. The Ancient Rites flared fully at last, no longer symbols etched into soil but living lines of light that wrapped around us, binding without constricting.
Keegan hollered out beside me.
I turned just in time to see him arch back, breath ripped from his lungs as the last of the curse tore free. It didn’t leavequietly. Shadows poured out of him in a rush, smokelike and furious, coiling upward before the spirits tore them apart with a single, sweeping pass. His knees buckled, and I lunged for him, catching his weight as the ground shook again.
“Keegan,” I gasped, terror clawing up my throat.
His body went slack for a heartbeat that felt like an eternity before he inhaled a huge, ragged breath, like a man surfacing after being held underwater too long. His chest heaved, eyes flying open, and whatever had lived behind them for so long, whatever had hunted him from the inside, wasgone.
The relief hit me so hard I sobbed, and around us, everything finally began to break.
The circle shattered outward in a burst of light, collapsing the carefully held structure, releasing all at once. The Wilds squealed as magic ricocheted through trees and sky and stone with no more hunger to devour it.
Ancient spirits wheeled wildly overhead, their paths intersecting, unraveling, dispersing back into whatever vastness they had emerged from. The sky roared, clouds tearing themselves apart, stars blazing too bright for nighttime, and winked out as darkness rushed back in.
Gideon went down hard.
I caught a glimpse of him through the chaos, thrown clear of the center, landing in a heap near the edge of the clearing. His body didn’t move. For a terrifying second, I thought—
No.
He groaned, rolling slightly, one arm dragging against the earth as if even gravity felt unfamiliar now. The shadows thathad once clung to him lay in tatters, dissolving into nothing before they could find purchase again.
My father stood unmoving, while the world tore itself apart.
