A sharp crack splits the air. The bridge fractures, the pieces collapsing inward until nothing remains but a few dying sparks.
The noise leaves behind a vacuum.
Stone groans. Torches gutter.
And still, in the background, I can hear the commands of soldiers, the pounding of boots.
But I shove it aside.
For a moment, all we hear are our own breaths and the echo of what we’ve just undone.
Seren staggers back, gripping Ronyn’s arm for balance. He pulls her against him without thinking, eyes scanning the ceiling as if expecting it to fall.
Jax leans against the far wall, her chakram loose in her hand, blood drying on her knuckles, tears drying on her cheeks. She exhales something that might be relief—or exhaustion too deep to name. Something she’s held in her marrow for a decade releases from her in a single moment.
Elyssara stays very still, her face ghost-pale in the light, her gaze fixed on her mother as if she’s never looked away.
And Teddy? He stands guard at the stairs, ever the Sword of Zerynthia.
Then Morrathys moves.
The god straightens slowly, and the silver in his eyes floods outward until his pupils vanish. The air trembles around him. Not from heat or wind, but frompresence.Even without my magic, I can feel it vibrating through my bones—a hum older than language.
Jax whispers a curse under her breath. Seren takes a half-step back.
No one speaks. No one dares.
Because right now? We are in the presence of a god.
Maldrak coughs, dragging in a ragged breath. Blood streaks his chin, but his grin returns, cracked and ugly.
“You think you’ve won?” he rasps. “This isn’t the end. Magic can’t be destroyed, it just finds somewhere else to exist.”
The words crawl beneath my skin like a parasite—a bluff, a truth, an attempt to save his own hide? I have no idea.
As if feeding on my uncertainty, Maldrak continues. “And you’ve freed the God of Death—you’ve dug your own grave, nephew.”
Morrathys turns toward him, slow, deliberate.
When he speaks, his voice is calm.
Too calm.
“Death is sacred, mortal. I do not eliminate without reason.Theyhave nothing to fear from me. But you?”
Silver filaments unspool from his hands, glittering in the dim light. They move like living metal—thin, perfect, unbreakable. The shadows beneath them rise in tandem, black smoke laced with silver veins.
Maldrak tries to step back, his eyes blowing wide in realization: there is no escaping his fate.
The coils wind around his wrists, his throat, his chest. They constrict, brightening until their edges blur. His scream is a high, fractured thing—half-terror, half-disbelief.
“Don’t—” Jax starts, voice trembling. But Morrathys doesn’t hear her. Or he does, and simply doesn’t care.
The air bends. The silver threads tighten, pulling Maldrak backward toward a tear opening in the air—a rift, thin as a blade and deep as eternity. The echo-plane: a realm of endless reflection, where sound never dies and time never ends.
“No—” Maldrak rasps. “This is not my fate. Nehvara— She said— You can’t kill me!”
Morrathys’s tone is quiet. “She lied,” he croons. “And, I’m not killing you. I’misolatingyou.”
