Page 179 of The Blood Rites

All I know is pain and fire and darkness.

And how Nyxen’s hand never lets go of me, even as the world collapses.

Through Nyxen’s shadows I watch the fire.

But the river doesn’t crest.

It bursts.

Fire, stone, and air hot enough to scald bone all converge into a wall that blots out everything. Time vanishes, and for a heartbeat the world is pure white, the colour of absolute destruction.

My body remembers things it shouldn’t. I remember water: the first trial, the impossible wave that bore down and swept Theon away in a blink. The way my shield had not even been a shield—just a reflex, an accident, a last wish to save, to live. This is the same.

My heart knows it before my eyes catch up. The heat is so final, it erases thought. The very air begins to burn.

Kael moves before I even think his name. Shadow pours from his chest in a single, catastrophic pulse. It doesn’t try to take shape. It envelops me, and Nyxen’s hand is gone. A moment of sickly silence passes before Kael is beside me, his shrouded eyes looking only for me.

Nyxen is outside the shadows. I can see him just beyond the veil. This shadow is thin and flawed, fighting to exist in a world of fire—a world that hates it.

Kael braces both hands against the inside of the dome, sweat pouring from his face and neck, jaw clenched so tight the muscle twitches at his ear.

Outside, Nyxen is joined by Vaelis. They stand alone, backs straight, dutiful, as darkness bursts from their outstretched hands. There is no help for them. There is no help for anyone.

The molten wall hits their shadows first.

The impact is a noise, not a sound—a pressure that drives the air from my lungs, shakes every cell in my body. For a second, the world is compressed to a single point.

Their shadows hold, but they shriek.

The heat melts the air inside the dome, making it thick and red, a mist that tastes of blood and endings.

I claw at Kael’s arm with ruined fingers, desperate and shaking. “You have to help them,” I beg. “Don’t leave them. We can’t leave them.”

Kael does not look up. He only looks at me. His eyes are so dark I cannot believe they have ever had whites, but the tears still break through, running down his cheeks.

He pushes harder against the dome.

“I’ve already chosen,” he says. The voice is not his. It’s not anyone’s.

The heat outside intensifies, and the dome begins to collapse inward, the shadow losing its form at the edges. Nyxen stands directly outside, arms wide, head bowed as if listening to the fire.

Vaelis is kneeling now, using his Mana to reinforce Kael’s shield. His hands are black up to the elbow—shadow or burns, I can’t tell. He keeps them pressed to the dome, fingers locked in a spasm of defiance.

I know what’s about to happen before it does.

There is a sound like a final breath as Nyxen’s shadows dissolve, and the heat floods in.

Nyxen and Vaelis vanish.

They do not burn. They do not fade. They are erased in a heartbeat—bodies, shadows, everything. For a moment, the shield is full of them, their shapes burned into the darkness like fingerprints on glass. The next instant, they are gone.

Two streams of golden-red light spiral up from the exact place where they stood, twinned and racing for the Mother Shard’s crown. She drinks them both in, greedier than ever.

The death counter changes twice, without hesitation.

Thirteen.

Fourteen.