Ged’s team might still be there. Along with everything else, he risked killing his own allies. But they hadn’t planned to leave the immediate vicinity of the Gate. They stood a chance, andYsirawould survive regardless.
As for everyone else within those walls . . .
“You wouldn’t,” Akkani whispered. “There are thousands of citizens there, searching for refuge after the coupyouhelped facilitate. There arechildren. You’ve thrown away your own life for this, but can you throw away theirs? Is this truly where you’d place your faith?”
There was real panic in her voice. But when Jacen tried to move, his body refused to obey. He tripped, knees scraping painfully against the rough stone floor. He nearly dropped the trigger.
“You’ve no idea how much it pained me to hurt you,” Akkani said. “But I will do it again if that’s what it takes to keep this world safe from you.”
Jacen squeezed his eyes shut, every muscle in his body clenched tight. Her mind slammed into his, a hammer against a nail driving him deep inside himself. He threw up walls, cocooning himself like a kirikil in the midday sun.
Did he have the faith required to use the trigger? Did he believe that Naxal—thatNeri—would be enough to make such a sacrifice worthwhile?
Jacen sensed Neri’s presence behind Akkani, watching, helpless.
He would not risk destroying his allies, let alone Seth.
Here and now, only Jacen could stop this. All it would cost was his soul.
He thought of Elyas, and of Nines, and all the others like them. His own cohort, of which so few had survived to adulthood. The acolytes who’d helped them escape Zivora. Every stolen name on that ledger in the archives, all those innocents who had not yet been ground down to nothing, who thus might be far more capable than Jacen of healing this world and building a better future.
For what didJacenknow of healing? He had been forged into an exemplary instrument, raised to sacrifice and destroy. Akkani was right. She had shaped him for this, and he knew what he had to do.
No matter what this victory cost, it would be just one more thing to mourn atop a mountain of corpses. Any sacrifice, anything at all, was such a small thing—such apettything to refuse to give, in the face of what was already lost.
Jacen looked up, even as a sob broke from his chest. He met her eyes. And Akkaniflinched.
He pushed back against the vicious onslaught of her presence, pushed back the terror. He dredged up every ounce of willpower he possessed, every scrap of his ability, resolve hardened to a diamond’s edge. He hurled it against her. He stood.
In reliving this moment, later, he would think it must have been longer. But he had seconds to decide. Akkani rallied against him. Any longer and she’d have overpowered him again. He jammed his thumb into the center of the cube, and a segment gave way.
Several seconds passed in excruciating silence. And then?—
They all felt it. With monstrous force, the psychic aftershock shuddered through the canyon. Only massive, sudden devastation would be felt like this so far from Zivora.
It worked.
Neri cried out as though wounded. Akkani sagged against the crates, her face bone-white. And Nines screamed into Jacen’s mind,WHAT DID YOU DO?
Take over with Seth,he ordered her.No time. JACEN WHAT DID YOU DO
He shut her out. There was nofuckingtime.
Once Akkani had gotten hold of herself, she did not fight—she ran. As Neri stared in shock, Jacen ran after her. He staggered up a hewn stone stair, out onto the roof beneath the spires.
The platform at the tower’s apex was polished obsidian, smooth and mirror-bright. In it, Jacen saw his own blurred reflection and the corona of the eclipse. Wind whipped across the expanse, creating strange music as it wove between the spires. The air was so thin this high up, the world seemed to tilt and swing on its axis when he looked down across the canyon. Vertigo assailed him. But he forced himself tolooknonetheless.
In the distance, from the sleeping beast that was Zivora, smoke rose.
At first, Jacen saw only a trickle, belying whatever destruction had already occurred. It made him doubt his senses, with a surge of terrible hope. But then there came a silent burst of dust from the Cathedral’s northmost tower.
That tower held the kitchens. A few stories above sat the aviary, where Jacen had spent so many hours as a boy, feeding the pigeons. His old dormitory lay below it, underground—perhaps already nothing but rubble. Had the acolytes within had time to realize what was happening? With nowhere to run, the sheer terror they must have felt—their final moments, the summation of their entire short lives?—
It brought Jacen to his knees.
With aboomthat echoed across the Scar, the tower collapsed. The trickle of smoke became a torrent, then a cloud, engulfing the Citadel. A rumble, from deep within the earth itself, grew into a thunderous roar. Such was the force that shook the city, it seemed the world might break open and swallow it whole.
Even when he could no longer see, Jacen remained rooted in place. He bore witness until the smoke began to clear and the waves of psychic anguish grew so powerful, he could almost hear the screams.
