Page 201 of The Blood Rites

I try to shield myself again, but my light sputters and flickers, rain and cold and panic tearing my focus apart.

The Overseer brings me close to its mask. “You must stop fighting me,” it says, fractured.

The voice is a dozen, a hundred, so overlaid they barely make sense. It starts to squeeze and black spots swim at the edge of my vision.

I flail, grabbing its arm, trying to find purchase where there is none. My palm slides over something sharp, and it slices my hand open, blood pouring hot and slick over my skin.

I stop trying to breathe and instead clamp both my hands onto the Overseer’s face, fingers scrabbling for any hold. The cracked edge bites into my palm again, igniting a wave of pain that opens something inside me—a power not like Mana, not even like the light I have learned to wield, but something older. Something that belongs to me the way a wound belongs to the flesh that carries it.

The light comes, not as a shield, not as a sword, but as a pulse—a detonation from my hands directly into the Overseer’s face.

A spiderweb of fractures spreads from the point of contact, and the Overseer screams.

Not a chorus, not a ghost, not even the echo of a god. But a single, human voice, full of agony. The sound is so loud I think my eardrums are rupturing.

The Overseer drops me instantly, its fingers clutching at its face as it falls backwards onto the sand.

I land on my knees, sucking wet air into my lungs, vision swimming in pain and adrenaline. The sand is freezing against my skin.

The Overseer’s mask leaks a pink-white fluid that evaporates the moment it hits the air. The Overseer shudders on the ground, hands covering its face, unable to correct the damage.

I can hurt them.

The realisation is so violent, I begin to laugh.

The Mother Shard’s response is immediate.

Every Overseer on the beach howls at once, their voices merging and breaking apart into something hideous.

“Stop this!”

“Do not—”

“You are my—”

“PLEASE—”

The word is so loud it rattles my teeth.

The army of Overseers stutters. Some split at the seams, opening and closing like torn parchment. Some wink in and out of existence, appearing in one place, then another, in staccato blinks. Some are stuck in a loop, repeating the same movement again and again.

The chanting is gone.

The only sound is the noise of a god in panic, yanking the strings of every vessel it owns.

They swarm in an instant. Every Overseer rushes forward, their movements no longer ritual or elegant. Their faces are set in a thousand variations of terror and violence and grief. The sound of their bodies is a stampede of shattering glass.

I throw up the biggest shield I have ever made, around Kael and me. The dome is golden-white, so bright that the rain trapped inside turns to diamonds as it scatters. More veins of red run through the shield, pulsing in time with my own heartbeat.

The first Overseers slam into the shield and are repelled, smashing back like birds into glass. More crawl over it, climbing on each other, pushing faces and entire bodies against the barrier. Some try to phase through, their faces stretching into the dome, mouths open in silent shrieks, before the light forces them out.

The sound of the rain on the dome is deafening. The air inside shudders as the pressure outside mounts. Kael is next to me, crouched, one hand on my back, the other pressed to his chest. His shadows are barely alive, flickering in and out like the last breath of a candle.

I am shaking so hard I can barely hold the shield.

The world outside is chaos—so many hands and faces, all screaming at me to stop.

But I won’t.