Page 199 of The Blood Rites

The silence feels deliberate.

The Overseers form a loose, uneven ring around us, then another, and another, as far as my vision goes. Their faces are distorted—no, not faces. Masks. Glassy and fractured, but alive and constantly shifting. One turns and its features flicker, cycling through a dozen iterations—Marissa’s soft freckles, then Atheron’s hateful sneer, then Callen’s pale eyes, then my own face, all overlaid in a blur. Some seem stuck between faces, wearing the expressions of strangers dead for generations.

Their bodies are worse: every movement is a glitch, a jump, a correction. Fingers bend and snap back. Limbs twitch and lag, out of sync. Their robes drag on the sand and leave no mark. They are malfunctioning ghosts, and there are far too many of them.

The chanting begins, and I want to bite through my own tongue just to stop the sound.

Until the count is true.

The cycle must resolve.

Completion.

Each Overseer says a different line, with a different cadence, and the effect is a stuttering spiral of noise. A ritual prayer on an infinite loop.

Kael’s hand is still in mine. I squeeze it harder than I should, and he flinches, but he doesn’t let go. He looks at me, face lit red by the death counter.

“What now?” I ask.

His jaw is set, his eyes pure black, but his voice is steady and cool. “We fight.”

My mouth goes dry, tongue stuck to the roof. I try to swallow but all I taste is salt and the memory of blood.

I nod.

Kael doesn’t wait any longer. He pulls his hand from mine and steps forward, letting his shadows eat him alive.

It’s different from before. There’s no beauty, no finesse. It’s the same rage as the fire trial, but born from a different need. The darkness comes in brutal sheets, pouring out from his shoulders, blurring the outline of his body into an animal shape. He lunges at the first Overseer that comes within reach. His shadows extend into a scythe, and he slashes clean through its midsection, expecting to cut it in half.

Instead, the scythe passes through like smoke, the Overseer’s torso distorting, bulging, then correcting itself.

The Overseer doesn’t even react, and Kael stumbles back, his mouth a line of white.

“They’re immune,” he says, not to me but to the world. “It’s useless.”

Another Overseer steps forward, and Kael attacks again, this time going for the head. He throws the shadow like a spear, straight and perfect. It impales the Overseer’s glass mask, the darkness distorting around the point of impact, crackling like trapped lightning. For a flashing instant, the mask flickers with the faces it has worn, then resets. The glass is undamaged, and the Overseer resumes its chant as if nothing happened.

Kael’s shadows ripple in confusion, then begin to recede, retreating up his arms and back into his chest.

He falls back to my side. “I can’t touch them,” he says, voice tight.

I look at him, then at the ring of Overseers, then up at the crystal tower. The death counter burns, unwavering.

Something snaps inside my head, like a cord finally breaking, and I scream at the sky, the words tearing my throat raw. “You can’t have us!”

My voice echoes into the world.

“I won’t kill him!” I shout. “I won’t!”

Thunder answers me. Real thunder, so close it’s not a sound but a knife to the eardrums. The beach shakes, the sea behind us frothing and surging, sending waves crashing wildly on the shore.

Rain comes, thin at first, then in stabbing needles. Water streams down our arms, pooling at our feet. Lightning forks overhead, and with each strike, the Overseers seem to multiply.

The air is alive with static, with hunger. A voice, so close it could be inside my own head, answers:

“It will all be over soon.”

It’s not a threat. It is a promise.