Page 193 of The Last Guardian

“Go fuck yourself, Zaid!” I interrupted. “Stop with your cryptic answers. Just tell me!”

Zaid took a step forward. I stepped back. He stiffened at my movement.

I couldn’t stand his touch. I could barely stand his gaze.

His eyes on mine, he took a deep breath. And may the stars preserve me, he had better tell me the truth.

“The Last Guardian is part human, part creature,” Zaid said softly, each breath itching in my throat as he continued. “The Sankyanoia.” Zaid took a step, and I took a step back in sync. He added in a murmur, “And you.”

I scoffed, looking at the beam of light. “What are you saying?”

His face lost all its color as he said at last, “You are the Last Guardian, together.”

I shook my head with a bitter laugh, but my answer was a whisper. “No.”

My eyes couldn’t let go of the light; it flared with each breath I took.

No. It couldn’t be.

“Stop lying to yourself, Alyana!” Zaid argued. I winced at the sound of my name on his lips. “You have had half of it inside of you since your birth. You feel it, don’t deny it. It couldn’t activate because you didn’t have the tools to learn without the Initiation. Without your Anchor. And you couldn’t wield it because you weren’t reunited with the second half of the power. Until now.”

The Rite of Initiation… It had never been for my memory loss. It was to prepare me.

I shook my head in disbelief. “No. It’s not possible!” I argued back.

“Yes, it is possible. You are the living proof,” Zaid said. “Kraktos gave the relic to you. Only you.”

My heart skipped a beat.

Zaid closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. “Only the other half of the Last Guardian could activate the power hidden inside the relic.”

I scoffed. “Are you telling me that for two months, everyone has been telling me half-truths? And that, somehow, I’m the only one to possess such power? How is that possible?”

“For years, our goal has been to find the one who could restore magic to Perygan, the one who could find the Last Guardian. We thought at first the Sankyanoia was like the others, a Guardian who would bond with a human. But five years ago, a trustworthy Oralys sent us a letter with new information regarding this quest. The Last Guardian is an entirely different species. It is part human and part creature. A bloodline was promised to the Sankyanoia…” Zaidkiel stopped, swallowing the thing he was about to say, and anger crept under my skin. “After that, the Oralys advised us to abandon the search. They wished to study this link between the human and Sankyanoia, translate the text perfectly, and determine with certainty where to find this human.”

Zaid paused for a moment, turning his gaze to the light of power. “A white raven arrived on the last day of spring. The translation was finished. And the goal for which we had worked, fought, shattered in an instant. The text concerning the Last Guardian… It was a prophecy from the Ten.”

“’The creature birthed of light and darkness will wake, and shall either save the realms or destroy them,’” I quoted what Kraktos had told me.

“Yes.” Zaid nodded. “But part of this prophecy was difficult to understand. It took the Oralys hundreds of years to grasp its true meaning. I Nur’thraa rethra,” Zaid quoted in the old tongue and translated, “’The Nur’thraa shall wake. And the balance may shatter in a single breath…’”

“What is that?”

“The name itself is old. Older than any written tongue. Older than Erath. Nur means light, in the old tongue. As for Thraa, no one agrees. Some say it means shadow, others death, or the darkness that drinks the sun. Because of the rest of the prophecy, the Oralys thought it was a balance.”

“And it’s not?”

“No. It’s not balance. It’s power. The kind of power that breaks the balance. Nur’thraa is supposedly a vessel of both radiance and void. Neither wholly divine, nor wholly mortal. Together, they form something that shouldn’t exist—light bound to its own darkness.”

Zaid’s shoulders loosened, and he added, “When the Oralys understood what it truly meant… it was far too dangerous. Finding this person… They advised us to kill the Nur’thraa before it was too late. They found a way to locate the human. We debated: after all these years, should we abandon our objective? We voted… And the Oralys placed the mark, the link to my tattoo. Knowing that no one would recognize my face, even as Commander of the Southern Legion, I was the perfect person for the job. I felt the mark on you as soon as I arrived at the memorial…”

On the fifth anniversary of my mother’s death…

“You think I am the Nur’t—whatever it is?” I asked in disbelief. “Are you crazy?”

The names Kraktos gave me…

Princess of Darkness. Daughter of the Sky. Queen of the Night. Child of the Heavens.