Soldiers shouted. Swords scraped from scabbards. They charged toward him from all sides.
Then the archers released.
A dozen arrows cut through the air.
“No!” The scream tore from my throat.
Someone cried out below. A man’s voice. Pain.
Darius. Oh god, Darius.
Something cracked open inside me. Not my unstable magic—something deeper. Something ancient. Power surged through my veins like molten fire, burning through every nerve, every cell.
I didn’t think. I just reached out, my palm stretched toward the sky.
Stop. Please stop.
And everything... stopped.
The harpies hung in the sky like dark paintings, wings mid-beat. Arrows floated motionless in the air. The soldiers stood frozen mid-stride, swords raised, mouths open in silent battle cries.
Even the flames of the campfire had stilled—but it didn’t hurt the way my magic usually did.
It felt… right.
I didn’t do this. I couldn’t have done this. Someone else in the Elder Dimension must have done it.
But the power still hummed beneath my skin, warm and waiting, as if it had been there all along.
I glanced down at my wrist and went still.
The bracelet. My bracelet—the one I’d worn since I was three, the one that had never come off, never changed, never done anything—now held two golden strands instead of one. They wound around each other in a delicate spiral, catching the frozen firelight.
I touched it with shaking fingers. The metal was warm. Alive.
How? Why now, after all these years?
It had to be this place. The Elder Dimension. Something here had triggered the bracelet, the same way something here had frozen time. It couldn’t have been me.
It couldn’t have been me.
Chapter Ten
Darius
Excruciating pain ripped through my side.
I looked down. An arrow jutted from my ribs, blood soaking through my shirt. I thought I was faster. I was wrong.
But then I noticed the silence.
No shouts. No footsteps. No arrows whistling through the air.
I tried to turn. Agony flared through my torso, stealing my breath. My vision blurred at the edges. I gritted my teeth and forced my body to move, one agonizing inch at a time.
What I saw made me forget the pain.
A dozen arrows hung frozen in midair, inches from where I stood. The soldiers had stopped mid-charge, mouths open, swords raised—statues caught in time.
