“No,” he murmurs defeatedly, more bloody tears spilling from his eyes.
“Killing her will kill us too. But our souls will live on. One day we’ll meet again, brother.”
A sharp inhale is his only resigned response as we stand and clasp our hands.
“Ready for our happily everafter, little umbra?” I ask Aimee.
“As ready as I’ll ever be, dragoste,” she responds with a sigh, grabbing the nape of my neck and bringing my lips down to hers in one last fiery kiss. As I taste her fierce sweetness, our shadows melt our bodies in a spiral of intertwined mist, carrying us to the last confrontation.
Blaise
As I watch Killian and Aimee fade away into shadows, a bitter taste coats my tongue, and I spill my guts on the charred soil beneath my fingertips. My stomach churns though empty, my limbs heavy and unresponsive. I’m locked in place, my thoughts raging inside me like a hurricane unleashed, begging me to spring into action, to stop this madness.
Yet my body is frozen, unwilling to move. Another one of Sangeries’ towers collapses, a cloud of ash and dust surging in its wake. The hot air singes my lungs as I struggle to breathe properly, searching the ruins for any sign of them.
A delicate hand clasps my shoulder, and I flinch on instinct.
“Blaise, talk to me, please,” Sariah whispers, her hand hovering an inch away from my skin.
“Not now. I will deal with you later.”
My clipped tone is too harsh even for my own ears, and I grab her retreating hand, holding it still between us, a beacon of comfort suspended in the chaos.
“It’s too much, moonlight. Too much.”
Her body slams into my back with force, arms engulfing me in a hug that both feels wrong and, oh, so right.
As the dust settles in the distance, two figures emerge from the flames; Aimee’s curls speckled with the falling ash. Silver shadows rise all around them, crackling with horrific power. It surges vast and towering, like a wave of destruction pulled from the abysmal depths of hell. Black and crimson rush to meet the argent blight in a detonation of power that threatens to topple over the very foundation of this realm.
Stones crack, the moon darkens to a muted gray, and even sound warps with the impact of their forces colliding.
No, not impact. A catastrophic detonation erupting outward, fracturing the ground in bottomless cracks that splinter the earth like shattered glass. The air distorts, screaming, as reality collapses inward under its own weight. I cover Sariah’s head with my arms, forcing her to close her eyes and avert her gaze. The violent surge of powers melts my combat uniform, leather fusing with flesh as pain erupts everywhere in my body.
And yet, I can’t tear my eyes away from the silhouettes of my friends, my family, valiantly standing their ground against the onslaught. Morweena’s torrent of power threatens to swallow the bleeding darkness whole, only to be ripped apart into a million pieces from within.
Everything caught between them vanishes into a soulless void. Expanding rings of nothingness swallow the castle in its entirety. The last vestiges of Sangeries disappear into a hollow vacuum of non-existence that pulses with ancient power.
Morweena’s screech reverberates through the night, rivulets of blood gushing from my ears and down my neck.
The sound of total annihilation followed by crushing absence.
A moment of utter silence before the blinding rupture.
Darkness folds into darkness, power fighting power, devouring each other in the ultimate struggle for dominance.
A whispered thought coils around my fraying sanity, a gentle hum of layered voices.
“You are our legacy now.”
Then comes the fulmination.
A sphere of thrumming light and shadows sweeping everything in its path, downpours of blood erupting from the cloudless skies.
Morweena’s body explodes in the shockwave, just a smudge of black goo remaining behind.
I rush to stand up, dragging Sariah with me, edging to the precipice of the scar left in the heart of Imiryion.
No sight of them.
