Page 200 of The Blood Rites

The ring tightens. One Overseer moves in front of the others, feet not quite touching the ground. Kael launches blasts of shadow at it, but they scatter like ash in the wind.

It lifts its hand and Kael drops to the sand.

An invisible force crushes him straight down, the wet sand giving beneath him before firming and holding him there. He tries to push up, but his arms can’t move. Blood leaks from his nose, then his ears, and the bones in his shoulders make a crunching noise I know too well.

I lunge forward and shield him, a dome of light expanding from my hands.

The force pushing Kael down shatters against the shield like waves on the shore. The light is white-gold, shot through with lines of angry red, vibrating so hard the rain inside the dome starts to steam. The Overseer stops, hand outstretched, palm flattening itself against the outer surface, and cocks its head at me.

I taste metal on my tongue. My heart has become noise, no longer an organ. I drop the shield for one breath, just long enough to drag Kael to his knees. He is breathing, but the veins at his temples stand out like black ropes. I press my hand to his chest, feeling the ridiculous speed of his heartbeat.

“Don’t move,” I tell him, voice shaking.

The Overseer attacks again, this time with a wave of pressure that cracks the air. I throw up another shield, but the force hits so hard I nearly bite through my own lip, and my arms go numb. But Kael is safe. For now.

He tries to get up, but I hold him down. “Don’t,” I hiss. “She wants you dead.”

He looks at me, shadow leaking from his eyes, and for a second, I see him clearly—not a prince, not a monster, not a weapon. Just a boy. Broken, bleeding, and out of options.

“Why?” he whispers.

“Because you’re the easier one to kill.”

He smiles, small and edged with something dark. “I knew you’d be the end of me.”

It almost makes me laugh.

The Overseer is still there, hand pressed to the shield. It’s not giving up, but it isn’t rushing either. It’s watching. Learning.

I step forward, putting myself between Kael and the Overseer. The light flickers around my body, unstable. My Mana isn’t limitless, and I can feel this eating through me faster than anything ever has.

The Overseer tilts its head further this time, almost comically. Childlike.

It speaks, but the voice is layered, fractured—its own monotone but with the Mother Shard’s voice bleeding through.

“You must stop this now, my Light.”

I drop my shield and stare into its glass face. I see my own reflection, twisted and overlaid with a thousand strangers. My mouth opens, but the words come from somewhere deeper than my own body.

“You cannot have him.”

Thunder cracks again, the sand at my feet vibrating with the force.

Every Overseer in the ring turns towards me all at once.

The storm in the sky is nothing compared to what is waking inside me.

And we are well past the point of turning back.

I don’t see the Overseer move.

One second it’s in front of me, head tilted in confusion. The next, its skeletal fingers are locked around my neck, cold and wet and hard as marble. My shield tries to react, but the hand slides through, and the pressure on my throat becomes unbearable.

My toes leave the ground as the Overseer hoists me into the air, squeezing just shy of crushing my windpipe. Its face hovers inches from mine, cycling between my face and Kael’s at a rate that makes me want to retch.

The Mother Shard’s power explodes in my skull, turning to a scream so loud I feel blood run from my ears and draw a warm line down my jaw. My vision hazes red, then white.

Kael is still behind me, on his knees, clawing at the sand to rise, but every time he moves, more blood seeps from his nostrils, soaking the black sand. His shadows try to reach for me, but they recoil from the Overseer’s hand, unable to make contact.