She approached slowly, cracks widening, and the entity whispered through her, “You shine, little moonborn. But my darkness is eternal.”
Poppy lifted her head. “No,” she said, voice shaking and bright with light. “Not tonight.”
The moon reached its zenith, and the valley lit up. A column of pure silver fell from the sky and slammed into the moonwell. The water erupted upward in a spiral, wrapping Poppy in a vortex of shimmering light. She felt her hair as it stood on end and noticed how her skin glowed while her veins filled with liquid starlight.
Her voice rose—not loud, but resonant, as she said, “By moon and water… By light and shadow… I call the binding.”
The beam surrounding her intensified, and the revenants nearest her disintegrated.
Lysandra screamed—both sides of her.
Caelan shielded his eyes, stepping back.
Mingxi limped toward her, blood streaking his fur, five tails blazing desperately.
“Poppy!” he shouted. “Hold on!”
She did. She held the moon. She held the water. She held the ritual. The valley trembled as the light locked into place, sealing Poppy and the moonwell in one perfect line of ancient power.
The entity in Lysandra lunged straight into the beam and hit the moonlight beam like a thunderclap. The instant Lysandra’s corrupted halfcrossed the threshold, the silver light roared upward, swallowing her scream. The cracks along her right side blazed white, the black veins writhing like boiling ink trapped under glass.
Poppy felt the impact like a knife driven straight into her chest. The ritual wavered. She clenched her teeth, fingers digging into the stone rim of the moonwell.
“Hold,” she breathed. “Hold!”
The entity’s voice ripped out of Lysandra’s throat in a shriek not meant for mortal ears. “Moonborn! You dare—!”
The beam exploded outward.
A shockwave of silver slammed across the valley. Revenants evaporated instantly, their bodies turning to dust mid-step. The forest bent away from the light like it was a hurricane wind.
Mingxi was thrown to the ground, skidding in the dirt. He scrambled up with a snarl and lunged toward Poppy, and she knew he was trying to reach her through the violent wind.
“Poppy! Poppy!”
He got close enough to shield her with his body, planting himself between her and the worst of the blast, five tails flaring around her like a barrier of silver flame.
Caelan held his ground through sheer force, water spinning around him in tight spirals as he leaned his weight into the storm.
Lysandra’s scream broke—changed—and became two sounds: her voice and the entity’s voice. Splitting and separating as the light forced them apart. The cracked porcelain side of her body bulged outward, the ink-black veins crawling like living tendrils trying to resist the pull.
Poppy cried out, voice trembling. “Release her!”
The moon’s beam intensified again, brighter than lightning, white as starlight. The water in the well shot upward in a spiraling column that wrapped around Lysandra like a shining cage.
The entity shrieked in fury. “No! I claimed her! She is mine!”
Its form tore itself out of Lysandra’s body like a shadow ripping free of skin. Lysandra collapsed forward, left side shaking, right side smoking where the darkness had been ripped away, but the entity—the true entity—was forcedinto the air, a writhing storm of black fractures, its shape formless and violent, trapped mid-exorcism in the beam of moonlight.
The force slammed outward again, knocking Caelan backward, buckling Mingxi’s legs, ripping the air from Poppy’s lungs. The entity spiraled helplessly upward in the beam and then downward again, yanked by the ritual’s second pull. Straight toward the stone altar beside the moonwell. Straight toward the ancient book lying open atop it—the Grimoire.
The entity realized too late. “No. No! Not there!”
The ritual dragged it like gravity pulling a falling star. It slammed into the Grimoire with a deafening crack.
Chapter 73
Symbols ignited across the Grimoire’s pages, long-dormant wards flaring to life, as the book glowed white hot. The beam pierced straight through it, burning through ink, through vellum, through the spine itself.
