A jagged arc of lightning struck Tievel, combining his dark magic with a blazing voltage that illuminated the sky in a sudden flash of blinding violet.
Thunder violently shook the earth as the fire-breathing dragon swooped down from the sky, focusing on the Palatium tower and engulfing the moss-covered stones in incandescentflames. The once proud banner bearing the years of the ‘victory’ smoked as it fell to the ground, exposing the lie it always symbolized.
Ael felt a stabbing pain tear through his side and spun around, diverting his gaze from the heavenly retribution above to see a Rozzer pulling a bloodstone blade from between his ribs. He looked at it in shock, adrenaline pumping through him and numbing the pain. His anger surged, and he wrapped the bits of magic left within him around the man’s throat, coiling and squeezing so tight the Rozzer’s head fell to the ground.
The tendrils of weakness clouded his vision. He was nearly out of magic and couldn’t go on, so he fell to his knees, wrapping hispalm over the hilt, and pulled the knife out. Blood quickly soaked into his shirt.
Kalon held out a hand to him. “Will you be okay?”
Ael looked from his own hand to Kalon’s, recognizing the gesture of help from the man he had sworn was his enemy.
His hesitant hand reached out to Kalon, dizziness clouding his vision, as Kalon helped him stand on shaky legs.
“Look!” Sara yelled from behind, pointing to the Palatium.
Tievel was high above, laughing manically as the dragon descended once more. He held the Dark Stone in the air, pointing it at Seda, and suddenly, all the guards and Jotnar shifted their focus from the fight below toward Seda in the sky.
A small group of Corvids began to circle the firelit tower, swarming like swallows, but they quickly disappeared.
“That’s probably Feich and those who chose to follow him,” Kalon said as he held firmly onto Ael.
Tievel, with wild hair and clothes burned across his body, pointed the stone at Seda once more, and Ael saw her falter, saw her body jerk. Dark, incoherent words from Tievel pulsed through the city, vibrating the ground beneath their feet and causing black oil to rise from cracks in the earth.
A ragged yell tore from Ael’s lips as he saw Seda begin to fall from the sky, her bright radiance burning in a crimson glow.
He could see her battle the dark magic, her silhouette flickering between reds and violets.
Kalon vanished, and Ael collapsed to the ground, desperately looking up as Seda fell from the heavens.
There was nothing he could do.
Kalon reappeared on the landing at the top of the Palatium, catching Seda’s vibrant red body within his arms.
Chapter 49
Kalon de Somnium
He once thought that the eclipse of darkness descended the heaviest when loss consumed the heart.
But he was wrong.
It doesn’t just descend. It consumes. It annihilates. It slowly eats from within without mercy, changing a person and burning through their very soul. It makes happiness transmute into velvet voids of despair, suffocating the joy you believed you had.
But love. Love transcends. It doesn’t just end when things change or loved ones pass; it continues tosmolder. When you finally open your eyes, that small spark’s metamorphosis finds its tinder and spreads like a forest fire, burning through the tops of trees and fighting to compete against the mighty sun’s wrath. That’s what Seda was to him before she sacrificed herself. That’s what she brought into his dark world over a thousand years ago.
But when she left, he allowed the ease of darkness to returnand consume him. For twenty years, he allowed his own evil urges to resurface once more, only granting himself the breath of fresh air—of hope—when he thought she might someday return.
That wasn’t what love was supposed to be. Love wasn’t selfish; it wasn’t only about allowing yourself to find that spark within when it benefited you.
Something sinister was stirring, something they believed had disappeared long ago. It was more than just this Monster King and this city. He could sense it deep inside him; he could feel it in the way the tattoo on his neck called him northward.
The sanctity of their world rested on all the guardians’ unity, bound as one in a harmony of good and evil, nature and divinity. The civilization and army he had created for her would soon become essential.
But not yet.
He had changed, and he saw that now. He was light with or without Seda’s embrace, with or without her love to wrap around his heart and ease the pain.
And in the here and now, he caught his guiding light in his arms before her body made contact with the crumbling bricks of the Palatium’s battlement, staring down at the crimson glow of the Dark Stones’ power radiating through her and highlighting his olive skin in a scarlet glow.
