…nothing changes if nothing changes…
The ghosts lean in, their forms stretching taller, their faces flickering in and out of focus. The heat surges, a blistering wave that forces me to take a step back.
“You don’t get to cast stones, tell me this is my fault. I have done everything I can. Ialwaysdo! Some people are just unlucky.” My voice is ragged, but I don’t stop. “Some people are disappointments. Some people get stuck.”
…nothing changes if nothing changes…
Their judgment circles back, insistent, like I missed the words the first time. They land heavy, searing against my skin like hot iron, branding me with shame I already carry.
“I didn’t make the world this way,” I snap, my voice cracking. “I just live in it.”
One breaks from the circle, its form flickering violently as it glides closer. The face it wears is almost human before the flames take it again. Its voice is layered with all the others, the words resonating through my very being.
Fear…lies…feed the flames.
The fire writhes higher, twisting with the smoke until the two are indistinguishable, a serpent of gold and black coiling skyward.
I open my mouth to shout back, to swear I’m not afraid, not a liar, but the words wither before they leave my tongue, singed to nothing by the heat pressing in from all sides.
Lies!
The specter spits the word. Its body splinters into a shower of sparks that rain across my shoulders, stinging as they land.
The others fly toward the middle of the Tower in a single, furious rush, their forms unraveling into ribbons of flame that fold into the altar’s heart. The column of fire surges, roaring with the sound of a thousand breaths exhaled at once. Then it fractures, bursting apart in a storm of embers that spit from the altar and streak outward, arcing toward the sand walls that encircle the Tower. They wriggle through the air like something newly hatched, and when they land, they burrow into the grit with a hiss, disappearing beneath the surface.
The ground bucks beneath me, the low tremor swelling into a deep, rolling quake that rattles my teeth and thrums up into my bones. The crystal in my hand shatters. The rosemary crumbles into blackened ash. The sand walls shiver. Each grain glows as the buried embers take root. Heat pulses out, lashing my skin with waves of smoke. The breeze turns feral, kicking up grit and fire. The walls ripple like muscle, then lift from the ground. In a rush of wind and fire, the sand surges out into the open desert in a blazing storm.
My heart hammers in my throat as I stumble forward, bare feet skidding on loose sand. I sprint up the low slope the tempest left behind, lungs filling with smoke until every breath scrapes my lungs raw. Grit lashes my cheeks. The air tastes of ash, hot enough to scald my tongue.
Ahead, a monstrous, towering wall of fire-streakedsand devours the horizon as the storm barrels straight for the heart of the Kingdom of Wands.
This magick isn’t Towerfall’s. It’s mine. It’s been mine all along. My emotions gave it teeth. My lies gave it form. And I’ve just set it loose.
Twenty-Four
“I didn’t mean to…” The wind rips the words away before they’re fully formed, scattering them into the howl.
It doesn’t matter. It’s too late.
The storm is a beast, stitched from fire and sand and every scream I ever tried to bury. Its body writhes across the horizon, a twisting wall of flame-veined dust, alive and ravenous.
I run to catch it. To throw myself between its teeth before it rips through the heart of the kingdom. My chest heaves, each sand-laced breath scrapes the back of my throat as heat lashes my bare arms and legs. The ground bucks beneath me, dunes slithering like snakes, a tide of sand writhing forward, dragging everything toward the kingdom.
I run harder, faster, legs pumping, muscles burning. I’ve almost caught up with the storm when the first curling lash of fiery sand slams into the outer tents.Silk rips like paper. Wooden poles snap like kindling, cartwheeling end over end before vanishing into the maelstrom. Torches tear free, each wink extinguished as the wind devours them.
Figures stumble and scatter, silhouettes blinking in and out of view as the storm whirls them into its throat. I throw myself into it, and the world convulses. Sound goes wrong first. The roar stretches, pulled thin and taut as wire until it sings, sharp and brittle. Even the slap of my footsteps sounds distant, as if someone else is running.
Behind me the corridor seals, a wall of heat and dust closing tight, hemming me into the path I’ve carved. Shapes waver inside the haze, outlines that don’t quite belong to the storm.
An ex, one in a long line of relationships doomed from the start, steps forward from the grit, grinning, lips smeared with the wrong shade of lipstick, the stain bright across his teeth.
His form swirls and twists, collapsing in on itself before another takes its place.
My mother. Just her back, always her back, moving through a doorway away from me. The door closes behind her. The lock catches. She kept herself hidden from me, and I grew up learning love as a hallway of closed doors.
The storm is splicing betrayals into a mural. Every ounce of pain I’ve ever tucked away flares back to life in unbearable detail, the storm pressing the memories close.
Friends blur into view at the edge of the corridor, then begin to fade. The ache of being left alone spreads like a bruise under my skin. It’s always been this way.People orbit close for a season, then slip out of reach. Making friends has never been easy. With the exception of Gemma, keeping them has felt impossible.
