Page 107 of The Blood Rites

Lyssandra, still kneeling, opens her eyes and looks directly at me. Her eyes are swirling pools of water, her face utterly serene.

“Fight, son of the sea. Darkness comes,” she says, but the voice is not her own.

Maleiros swings his hand toward me, flame erupting like a whip.

I throw up my shield. It splinters, bright gold against the flames, and the world explodes in heat and light.

Marissa is gone. Lyssandra waits for death. The Fireborn stand before me with murder in their eyes, and whatever called through Lyssandra has left me with a command I don’t understand.

I’m scared. But I'm still here. I’ve run away my whole life. Not this time.

I will not let these monsters break me.

Let them try.

The Fireborn don’t talk now; they don’t need to. They hunt in concert, a practised rhythm: one attacks, two fall back, then the pattern rotates. There’s no wasted movement—only the sound of fire meeting my shield and the measured certainty of trained killers at work.

I stagger, breathing heat. Every breath scalds my lungs and leaves them raw, like my chest is lined with burning sand. The golden shield flickers, the veins in my arms spiderwebbing blue and red as I strain to hold each barrier in place, no matter how quickly they burn away.

Serraith goes high, launching a whip of fire that carves across my vision and scorches my cheek. Maleiros keeps low, sending a roiling ball of fire at my knees, forcing me to stretch my shield wide enough that the impact nearly takes my balance. Each attack chips away at my energy, at my confidence, at my belief that any of this matters.

Atheron watches, arms folded, smile flat and unimpressed. “I expected more from you,” he says, like this is a casual conversation. Like I’m not fighting for my life.

Lyssandra’s prayer is the only constant. Behind me, she is still kneeling, her hair stuck to her forehead with sweat but her voice never wavering. Every time I want to collapse and let the flames consume me, I hear her: a low, sweet drone. A lullaby as the world burns.

I move between her and the Fireborn, not by choice but by instinct. My shield splinters again and again, but I keep putting myself in their line of fire, absorbing every attack meant for her.

Atheron starts to pace. “I’ve witnessed hundreds of deaths,” he says. “Many at my own hands. But it is rare to see someone so willing to die for another. Rarer still for someone from another Dominion. Strange, really.”

I want to spit at him, to snarl that killing people isn’t normal. Enjoying it is worse. But my tongue doesn’t work and my mouth is too dry to form words.

The Mother Shard’s death counter stays stubbornly at five. Rask is still alive. Kael isn’t coming.

A spike of panic lances through me. Maybe Kael never cared. Maybe he saw how weak I am and decided I was not worth saving. Maybe revenge matters more to him than I do. The thoughts hurt worse than the burns.

The next hit comes from all three at once. A circle of fire closes in, sucking the air from my lungs. I conjure a dome of light around Lyssandra and me, but the heat is unbearable, like breathing shards of glass.

The shield bursts into golden dust, and Lyssandra’s song stops. She gasps, starving for air.

I drop to one knee, my hands burning on the scorching stone.

Atheron steps in, his face slick with sweat, and presses a burning palm to my forehead. “Time’s up,” he whispers.

I scream. Not from fear—just pain, raw and brutal. The world blurs.

Maleiros moves toward Lyssandra.

And something inside me snaps.

Fear, rage, loss, love—everything combusts in a single, blinding moment.

My Mana, all the light I have left, explodes.

There’s no thought. There’s just the shockwave.

Light pours out of me in a sphere, golden and white, expanding faster than breath. It slams into the Fireborn, hurling them back as if they weigh nothing. It rips Atheron’s hand from my face and sends him flying. The same shockwave tears Lyssandra off her knees, throwing her towards the edge of the island.

The air crackles, the stone shudders. Somewhere beneath me, the floating rock groans and shakes, the veins of blue pulsing.