An incredible force stopped my sword.
He stood mere inches before me, his hand against the blade. A line of blood dripped from the cut it made on his palm.
“Such power, and in my presence, no less,” he said, but he wasn’t speaking to me at all. His eyes narrowed, the blood-red irises watching me with calculated intent. “I would not recommend staying here too long or you will never escape.”
He thrust me back by the blade, flinging his hand to shake the blood dripping from it. He turned and started for the rift.
“Wait!” I shouted, lurching forward mentally, but physically halting in the process.
He paused, turning to me with narrowed, gleaming eyes.
“You killed Annabelle too, didn’t you? Because she was close to my mom. Why?” I asked quietly. “Who are you?”
He watched me, his cloak billowing as the energy of the portal radiated near him.
Ezreal smiled. “The light will always burn out, but eternal is the night.”
His cloak whipped through the air, snapping loudly against the powerful current of the rift, before he faded away into the swirling black.
I stared into the twisting, churning mass of darkness, feeling the storm brewing within me. The fire was burning from within and all I wanted was to drag him into the abyss, even if it meant we never came out.
Something was shifting within me, my everi slashing through me violently like it was cutting through my skin.
I grasped my sword tightly and charged toward the rift.
But I never made it.
The force that struck me was powerful enough that I blacked out for a second. My sword clattered to the floor and my body was trapped.
“Anna!”
It was Ash.
He was bodily restraining me. Automatically, I searched for the red and green that should inevitably be nearby, my blurring vision desperate to find her.
“Roslyn!” I cried.
She came to me like an angel, her green hooded cloak barely containing her red curls.
“Anna,” she said, “You must calm down. We have to get you out of here.”
The tension in my muscles eased but Ash didn’t let me go.
Instead, he threw me over his shoulder. My sword morphed and flew around my wrist as the familiar bracelet my mom had gifted me.
“Wait!” I shouted, forcing Ash to set me down. “We can’t leave Melanie.”
Roslyn followed my light of sight, seeing her in the shadows.
Roslyn tipped a vial to her lips and Melanie began to stir. She helped her up, pulling her arm over her shoulder.
I glanced at the rift, the intensity of its swirling energy, and despair pooled in my stomach. With every bone in my body I wanted to run through it, to find Ezreal and beat everything I wanted to know out of him.
Instead, I shut down my emotions, swallowed the pain, and hardened myself to what I had to do. I couldn’t defeat him right now. That was clear. If the terrible pain in my chest was any indication, it was evident that I’d narrowly escaped death.
With every piece of me in tatters, I left the rift behind and entered The Realm.
Epilogue
