“I can and will,” he answered without hesitation, and the certainty in his tone struck something deep within me that did not respond well to being told what was and was not permitted.
The air shifted again.
But this time it wasn’t around him…it was around me.
It felt like something within me was waking up. Something raw inside me. It wasn’t merely anger at his judgment, at his ruling. Nor was it frustration at the glowing cage that trapped Bo within its sharp green lines.
It was something deeper.
Something older. A resistance that did not recognize hierarchy or the right of one being trying to claim ownership over another. The word consequence seemed to echo strangely in my mind, as though it carried weight far beyond this room. Far beyond the marble floor and the watching eyes that surrounded us.
Bo remained upright within the circle, shoulders squared despite the light pressing faintly against him. The runes pulsed in rhythm, tightening and brightening each time he tested the boundary. As though Oblivion’s magic itself fed on defiance.
“No!”I stated firmly, my voice lower now but steadier, the heat beneath it no longer uncertain but resolute.
Oblivion’s hold shifted slightly at my waist, not painful but firm enough to remind me that I was physically outmatched.
“There is nothing you can do to stop this,” he warned me softly, before the glow intensified.
Bo exhaled sharply as the circle flared brighter, lines of green light rising higher around him, the air within the boundary warping under the pressure of the spell. A ripple of unease moved through the crowd, though none dared step forward. The throne loomed in front of us, a silent witness to the ritual unfolding at its base.
“It is time for him to return to where he belongs and face the punishment he deserves,” Oblivion stated with unyielding authority this time, telling me this wasn’t for my benefit but said now as a ruling.
“It’s okay, Girly, it…It was fun whilst it lasted,”Bo said as away of goodbye, his voice pained as if he never got to achieve his true purpose in coming here.
Which was when something in me snapped entirely as the anger inside me twisted. It was no longer sharp and focused. It was rising. Expanding. Like something in my chest had been struck and now vibrated with increasing force. My skin prickled beneath the gloves, heat gathering along my palms and crawling up my arms. The sensation was unfamiliar and yet not entirely foreign. Like a dream half remembered but never fully grasped.
“Eliza?”Bo questioned, as if he were the only one who could see it this time. His gaze was fixed on me now rather than Oblivion and there was a warning there, but also something else.
Recognition.
The pressure in the air thickened as words I didn’t understand simply flowed from my lips. As if they had climbed from somewhere below, ancient. Somewhere no longer of this Earth. A language older than English, older than the world I understood. They tasted strange against my tongue, shaped by a part of my mind that should not have known them, and yet, I did.
“ŠU-BAR NAM-TAR!” The sound left me in a bellowing, resounding growl that didn’t feel at all like my own voice. The syllables seemed to reverberate beyond my throat, beyond the air immediately around us, vibrating through the marble beneath my heels.
For a fraction of a second, nothing happened.
Then the runes faltered.
It was subtle at first, a flicker along the outer edge of the circle as though the light had blinked. Oblivion’s arm tightened instinctively around me, his attention snapping from Bo to me, as I felt the sharp intake of his breath against my hair.
The floor cracked.
A hairline fracture split the marble directly in front of us, racing outward in jagged lines that followed the path of the glowing symbols. The sound was not explosive but sharp and precise. Like glass snapping under sudden strain. The silver veins that had once merely shimmered now split open, fissures widening as the light within them surged.
The circle shuddered.
Bo staggered slightly as the bars of green light flickered violently, the vertical arcs destabilizing as though whatever sustained them had been severed at the root. The runes pulsed erratically, brightness surging and collapsing in uneven bursts that now sent shards of white-gold light scattering across the floor.
Gasps erupted around us, no longer controlled murmurs but genuine shock. I felt the tremor in the marble beneath my heels as the cracks splintered outward, splitting through the heart of the glowing pattern. The fracture reached the innermost ring of symbols and tore straight through it.
That was when the circle shattered completely. The light imploded inward before bursting outward in a sharp wave that knocked the nearest onlookers back a step. The runes extinguished in a cascade of fading green and gold sparks, leaving only fractured marble and a faint haze of residual heat where the cage had stood.
Bo didn’t hesitate.
The moment the last bar of light collapsed, he vanished. One second, he stood within the broken boundary, and the next, the space he occupied was empty. The air snapped back into place as though he had never been there at all.
The silence that followed was absolute.
