“Knowing you’ll face wrath is expected in war,” he drawls, dragging his gaze along the lengths of his god metal blades with unnerving calm.
Like they’re home in his hands.
“But now? Wrath wears my face.”
And they fucking know it.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
KAEL
Wrath tasteslike metal and death.
It crawls beneath my skin, threading silver through shadow, whispering of every life I’ve ever taken and every one I’m about to.
I may know the value of life, but it won’t stop me from taking more—the line between savior and executioner is always a matter of who holds the blade.
The power moves like it has a will of its own—alive, sentient, hungry.
The shadows aren’t mine anymore. They move before I command them, folding and unfurling in places that taste like threat. The silver light within them hums, a low, steady sound that isn’t sound at all—more like a pulse through the marrow of the world.
When I strike, it’s not with muscle. It’s with inevitability.
My blade sings through air, and it splits apart like fabric. I can see the threads of it—light, sound, time—unraveling in my wake.
Death magic and shadows lash and maim, barbing through soldiers’ armor like it’s nothing but a layer of parchment.
I see the fear in their eyes through the slits of their helmets, and I feed on it.
The Caelorians surge forward.
They think they’re charging a man.
They don’t realize they’re charging the thing Death made in his own image.
Endbringer.
The words echo through my skull like the truth.
They come at us in waves—shields raised, eyes wild, the clang of steel against stone loud enough to wake the dead.
The shadows surge like a living thing, spilling from my hands and slicing through the Caelorians before their blades even rise. The air hisses. The silver light burns through armor, splitting men and memory alike.
Ronyn is a blaze beside me, his arrows catching what little light remains as they sing through the air, finding their mark, his laughter sharp and manic. “Is this all they’ve got?” he bellows, as another soldier falls.
Seren darts through the chaos, her crossbow finding the necks of leaders directing their men—strategic, precise.
Teddy’s axe comes down hard and fast, splitting bone and sinew without thought. He fights in an arc around me, his duty as my protector in full force as he clears the way through the lines.
Jax harnesses my magic, coils of breathless shadows flying from her hands in piercing spears. The next heartbeat, Lightborne magic erupts from her palms in a blaze of grief and pain.
She shows no mercy, no hesitation. She lets her violence tell the story, instead.
Elyssara’s light floods the hall behind us, Starlight turning the air molten. Her power threads through the room in tunnels of Starlight, cleansing Kryntar Castle of the nation who wouldtake our home. Erase our lineage. Burn our history. End our story.
But I am not a story to forget.
I am the consequence.
