Makarios.
I could feel the war camp like it was an extension of my own body. The paths between the tents. The river curling along its edge, thin and dark and glinting in the light of burning canvas. The line of horses tied near the outer ring, their panic thrumming against my skin.
And the lives.
So many lives.
Thousands of them, bright and hot and sharp. Obsidian soldiers whose mortality still beat in their chests, even if their souls had been given a slow death. Scath wolves whose magic Heliconia had twisted until they bowed to her as their master. Frostwights stitched from stolen pieces of the dead. A handful of Autumn fae pressed into service, hearts beating too fast.
And my own people—Withered, Midnight, Lesha.
Distantly, another explosion shook the valley. A blossom of fire flared in the center of the camp.
Slade and Thorne.
The sound of it rolled up the slope. Some of the soldiers turned back to look. Some ran toward the chaos. I reached for my fire to rip a path straight through them. But my magic moved first. It flooded my limbs, reckless and wild.
“Aurelia,” someone called.
It might have been Keres. It might have been the god who’d branded my throat.
Too late.
Fire tore out of me.
It wasn’t the controlled arc I’d been throwing. It wasn’t even the roaring wave I’d sent down the slope earlier. This was… everything. All at once. Furyfire and Makarios entwined, pouring through nerves and bones and out into the world like the cracking of a dam.
It flew down the hillside, an onyx tide edged in the white of consumed souls. It hit the nearest line of Frostwights and pulled their life from their bones even as it cooked their armor from the inside out. It slammed into the ranks of Obsidians behind them, ripping the magic from their veins and setting their bodies alight.
They screamed.
They fell.
The fire didn’t stop.
It rushed down into the valley, catching the first row of tents like dry kindling. Canvas bloomed into flame, ropes snapped, poles fell. The heat spiraled upward, slamming into the shield spells netted over the camp. They crackled, tried to hold, then shattered like glass.
The river steamed.
The world below became a writhing mass of shadows and fire.
“Aurelia!” Keres shouted again, closer now. A gloved hand seized my arm. “You need to pull back?—”
“I’m trying,” I gasped.
I was. I tried to pull the fire back into myself, to shut it off, to dam it somehow. But the Makarios gift had tasted the army. It had tasted the sheer volume of life and death and magic packed into that valley, and it had decided it wanted more.
The more it took, the stronger I felt.
The stronger I felt, the easier it was to take more. To use more.
It became a vicious circle—fire feeding off power feeding off fire.
Below, figures ran like shadows over a burning map. Some tried to form ranks, shouting orders that vanished in the roar. Others broke and fled. Frostwights leaped through the chaos, trying to reach higher ground, only to buckle as their animating force drained into the inferno.
The life pouring into me turned everything sharp.
I barely needed the torches or the dawn. I could see in the dark through the eyes of a hundred dying soldiers. I could feel their panic. Smell their fear. Hear their pleading, whether or not they spoke it aloud.
