I closed my eyes, shutting out the terrifying aurora, and visualized the golden thread connecting me to Kaelen. It was taut, vibrating like a plucked cello string, sucking the warmth from his core to fuel the void where Flynn had been.
I shoved.
I didn't use words or spells; the Keepers' rigid incantations had no place in this chaotic survival. I used the raw, terrified force of my will. I pictured the phoenix fire Elias had gifted me, the transformative heat that lived in my marrow, a dormant spark waiting for breath. I fanned it into a blaze and pushed it down the bond, forcing it back into Kaelen's freezing chest.
Take it,I screamed silently, my mind battering against the wall of his catatonia.Take it back.
The reaction was violent.
Kaelen arched off the floor with a strangled gasp, his back bowing like a drawn bow. Steam hissed from his skin where my hands touched him, the frost sublimating instantly into a thick, white fog that smelled of sulfur and ancient, heated metal.
The guttural chanting stopped abruptly, cut off by a sharp, painfully human intake of breath.
His eyes snapped open. The milky vacancy was gone, replaced by molten gold that burned with sudden, terrifying clarity. He gripped my wrists, his fingers bruising, his skin rapidly heating from marble-cold to fever-hot as his internal furnace reignited.
"You," he wheezed, his voice sounding like gravel grinding in a churn. "You reckless, impossible creature."
"I thought I killed you," I whispered, my forehead dropping to his shoulder. I was shaking, the adrenaline crash hitting me all at once, making my limbs feel like water. "I tried to pull Flynn, and you just... you froze. I drained you."
"You tried to dismantle the universe to fetch a wolf," he rasped, coughing as he sat up. He leaned heavily against me,one hand firmly planted on my waist to anchor us both, his touch searingly hot. He looked up at the aurora-filled hole in the ceiling, his expression hardening into something ancient and fearful. "And you rang the dinner bell while doing it."
"The Tongue of Creation," Theron said, stepping closer, his shadow long and warped against the glowing walls. He looked fragile against the backdrop of cosmic fire. "You were speaking it, Prince."
"I was echoing it," Kaelen corrected, climbing to his feet and pulling me up with him. He stumbled, leaning heavily against my shoulder, and I felt the tremor in his massive frame, not from weakness, but from the aftershocks of immense power. "I heard them, Aria. Through the rift. They aren't just watching anymore. The seals are not just broken; they are being ignored."
The golden tethers connecting us to the Gate hummed, low and threatening, a bass note that vibrated in my teeth. The Gate itself swirled with agitated colors: storm-grey for the bear, flickering turquoise for the phoenix, and a restless, pacing amber for the wolf. They were close, pressing against the membrane, sensing the danger to their pack, but Kaelen yanked me back, putting distance between us and the vortex.
"What did you hear?" I asked, looking from him to the strange, bleeding sky above us.
Kaelen wiped a trace of frost from his lip, his eyes dark with a memory of a prison deeper than this one. "I heard doors opening. None of which were ours." He paused, his gaze shifting to something far away, past the stone walls. "Something's still not right. I'm not right. I can still hear them."
Above us, the aurora rippled violently. The silence of the mountain, the deep, sacred silence of the Citadel, was shattered by a sound that wasn't thunder. It was the screech of metal on metal, magnified a thousand times, echoing from the clouds. Itwas the sound of a sword being drawn from a scabbard the size of a mountain range.
A spear of pure, blinding white light punched through the aurora. It slammed into the courtyard outside the Sanctorum with a force that knocked the wind from my lungs. The impacts shook the floor beneath our feet, sending cracks racing through the stone like spiderwebs.
Theron scrambled back, clutching the book I'd only just noticed he was holding, Pandora’s journal. "They're breaching the Citadel." The look of absolute terror on his face was enough to make my blood run cold. Theron believed in history, in facts. He did not believe in the impossible, yet it was raining down on us.
Kaelen gripped my chin, forcing me to look at him. The heat of his skin was scorching now, his dragon fire railing against the chill that had tried to claim him. It still wasn't as hot as he had been in the vision, but when his fingers brushed my jaw, it was enough to burn.
"We have to leave," he commanded, the imperious general surfacing through the trauma, his voice leaving no room for argument. "Right now. If we are here when they land, there won't be a prison left to break. There will be nothing but ash."
"But the others—" I looked back at the Gate, the swirling promise of my other princes. I could feel Flynn's impatience, Thane's worry, Elias's sorrow. They were right there.
"You are the Gate, Aria. If they catch you, they catch us all. Run now, or the game is over before it begins."
I hesitated, torn between the desperate need to finish what I started and the terrified logic in his eyes.
Then the second spear of light hit.
This time it struck the Sanctorum's exterior wall, blowing the heavy, rune-reinforced doors inward in a shower of molten stoneand twisted iron. The blast wave threw Master Theron across the room like a ragdoll.
On instinct, I yanked out of Kaelen's grip and ran toward the old man who had saved me on more than one occasion, ignoring Kaelen’s shout.
I slid to a halt beside him amidst the debris, my knees scraping against stone that radiated heat like a cooling forge. The air tasted of pulverized rock and ozone, the sharp, electric scent of a storm that had no business existing here. Master Theron was struggling to push himself up, his grey robes dusted with the powdered remains of the wall. A trickle of blood carved a dark, wet path through the grime on his forehead.
"Theron!" I grasped his shoulder, my hands slick with sweat and grime, trying to haul him upright. "We have to go. Kaelen says?—"
He shoved the leather-bound book into my chest with a strength that shocked me. His hands were trembling, not with the frailty of age, but with a terrifying, vibrating urgency. His thick spectacles were gone, lost in the blast, and his watery blue eyes were wide, fixed not on me, but on a terrible future I couldn't yet perceive.
