Page 207 of The Blood Rites

Ruin ignores him.

Something in him folds as Ruin looks past him, at me.

“Do you want to know your place?” they say.

I don’t, but I nod anyway.

Ruin steps closer. Their legs don’t move right, joints bending forward, backwards, then correcting. Their eyes—when they have eyes—are never the same colour or shape.

"My sister orders."

Ruin points toward the tower. "My brother creates."

The sea crashes harder against the shore as Ruin smiles. "And I... transform."

They snap their fingers, and the death counter above reappears. The number runs backwards and forwards, settling at two before ticking down to one, then zero.

“With them sleeping, my time has come.”

I glance at the tower. The figure within is cocooned in its own limbs, eyes closed, resting.

A horrible thought occurs to me.

What if the Blood Rites were never feeding the world?

What if they were feeding her?

Keeping something else asleep?

I look at Kael, and he is staring at Ruin, face drawn, but there’s something else there—recognition, maybe. The way one predator recognises another.

I can’t think. All I can do is watch as Ruin lifts their hand, fingers spreading.

It doesn’t hurt. But something in me tears free. It’s not pain. Almost the opposite. My chest goes cold, then lighter, like I’ve shrugged off a burden I didn’t know I was carrying.

I look down and see Kael and me standing on the sand, but we’re not touching the world anymore. The beach is a memory, the air thin and fragile, like gossamer overlaying the real world.

I want to scream, but no sound comes out.

Kael is with me, just behind, his face a mask of panic. Ruin’s face flickers through a thousand expressions. None of them look at us.

We’re not dead, but we’re not alive either. We’re somewhere between. The rain continues to fall, but it slides straight through our skin.

On the edge of hearing, I catch Ruin’s laughter, and the distant crash of waves.

This storm is not for us anymore.

I reach for Kael, and the rain passes through my hand. His fingers find mine anyway, and somehow, impossibly, they still fit.

We are witnesses. Here to watch what comes after.

The world blurs, colour and sound draining away until only outlines remain. The rain, the tower, the Mother Shard in her crystal coffin—everything gone except for Kael’s hand in mine.

He is here, with me, even if neither of us belong anywhere.

The first thing I see is not the sea or the sky, but an island.

It is the Water Dominion.