Black blood splatters around me as I rip through the oncoming vampyrs, striking and slicing, freezing and shattering, cleaving their bodies apart. So many, so fast, it’s impossible to keep count.
My ears fill with unearthly screams as my ice rakes through the swarm, spreading outward and upward until the air fills with icy-blue snow that sparkles, glints, and shatters their flesh.
But I was careful. Casting my snow outward. None of it falls near Nara.
My trajectory takes me in an arc, now plummeting toward her as I aim to reach her before she enters the tunnel.
Just as I’m about to drop onto her back, golden light flashes across my vision, obscuring everything around me.
My breath catches. The last time this happened, I lost consciousness of where I was, of all threats around me. A fucking assassin succeeded in stabbing me.
There’s nothing I can do to stop it.
The explosion of molten gold hits me like fire, instantly jolting my mind from my body.
I’m crouching inside a tunnel made of rock, my chest filling with the dank scent of stone while the coppery tang of blood coats my tongue.
A strange, silvery light glows in the background, and the sound of furiously beating wings meets my ears, but I can’t see the creature making the sound.
The Oracle stands in front of me, the armor she’s wearing snatching the breath from my chest.
She’s dressed in Lethian silver.
So many magical threads that the silent melody pulsing from it is dizzying. Overpowering.
But her breathing comes short and sharp, terrified, pulling the magical threads tighter against her body as she thrashes against the hold of a dark figure.
Her attacker looms behind her, his features obscured, darkness echoing around his form like a malicious song.
Tears flow down the Oracle’s cheeks, spilling from her pale-blue eyes.
Eyes that slowly change color, her irises fading to polished gray. The strands of her bloodied hair bleach from dull black to glistening white, and her sun-touched skin turns porcelain.
Deathly pale.
It’s the same physical transformation that came over her the first time I met her, but that isn’t what draws a new snarl to my throat, my outburst as feral as an untamed wolf.
Her attacker’s dark head bends to the Oracle’s throat, his sharp fangs the only part of his body that is crystal clear in my vision.
Fucking vampyr.
He’s going to kill her.
I launch myself forward, preparing to rip him off her and shatter his bones.
My surroundings abruptly change again. But not back to where I was. Not back to Nara.
Now, I’m shivering in a field of snow, glittering flakes floating to the barren ground around mylegs.
My eyes widen at the gravestone resting in the powder ahead of me.
My sister’s gravestone.
The snarl in my throat becomes a threatening shout.
No.
I won’t return to this place?—
