Every muscle screamed for her to act, but when she jumped forward, a force crashed into her body like a battering ram, sending her sprawling back. Behind them, Elara stumbled, supporting Kaelith, his weight sagging against her shoulder as blood dripped from his still-healing leg.
“What’s happening?” she demanded, looking to Rynna.
“I don’t know!” Rynna’s eyes were wide as the pit beat with dark energy. “I thought it needed the Great Phoenix.”
“AND NOW I HAVE IT!” a voice thundered in their minds. “FREEDOM AFTER SO LONG IMPRISONED.”
The ground split open with a deafening crack, like the earth itself was screaming. Then, limbs burst forth, massive, chitinous, and spider-like. But the legs weren’t just large, they werewrong, mottled with disease-colored patches and jointed in unnatural places, glistening like fresh-peeled skin.
Yet, they moved fast, lancing upward in a blur of violent motion.
One—straight into Fenn.
Then another.
They speared through him, one into his side, driving through flesh and bone with a wet, splintering crunch.
No!Her mind nearly blanked as blood sprayed in thick, arcing bursts, the sound of it pattering against the stone floor. His body jerked once, then went slack as the limbs hoisted him into the air like a broken marionette.
No!Rynna couldn’t breathe.
She stared, frozen, as his blood rained down, hot and vivid. Her mind reeled, refusing to accept what her eyes were showing her. Fenn—Fenn—was hanging above her, run through like some discarded doll.
Her legs moved without her permission. She staggered upright, throat tight and burning.
“No—” The word tore from her throat, raw and useless. This couldn’t be happening.
He was dying. Again.
“NO! He’s not even the Phoenix, you great leech of an idiot!” She pounded her fists on the barrier.
But the Wraith didn’t even flinch at her screams.
It bent lower, sinking deeper into Fenn’s body. And inside him, buried beneath torn flesh and broken bone, something stirred. A flicker. Small and fragile. A spark of fire, barely there, shaking in the dark.
Rynna felt it before she saw it. The echo of his Will—hisself—fighting to hold on, bolstered by the now familiar energy of the Great Phoenix. Wavering, the spark shuddered once, then was dragged out, drawn into the Wraith like air ripped from lungs.
And then it was gone.
Rynna staggered back a step as the world pitched sideways, too bright, too loud. Her breath hitched, stomach hollowing out with a pressure that left no room for…anything.
“No,” she rasped, voice barely audible, as if anything louder might shatter her entirely.
She doubled over, forehead pressed to the stone, her shoulders heaving.
“I’m sorry, my doves.” Hika’s soft, sorrowful voice chimed around them as if coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. “He carries my spark, though small. As do many who have come in contact with Bran over the years.”
Rynna barely heard, eyes locked on the man she loved, falling to the ground with a lifeless thud. She stared, unmoving, as blood spread beneath him in slow, widening rings. His chest, once so solid beneath her hand, was torn open, flesh ragged, ribs shattered like splintered bone-white glass.
He didn’t stir.
She didn’t blink.
The world narrowed to the shape of him lying there, impossibly still.
Dead. Dead. Dead.
“You knew?” Her vision tunneled as she turned on Bran, her nails biting into her palms. “You knew it would take him!?”
