The sky fractured.
Silver fissures laced across the clouds, bleeding starlight and ash. The battlefield below—already scorched, broken, and bathed in magic—swayed as if it could no longer bear the weight of what had been summoned. Screams echoed through the twisted air, some of pain, others of reverence. But Aria heard none of them.
All she heard was Rowan's breath—faltering, brittle.
She stumbled over shattered stone and scorched grass, every muscle in her body trembling. Her fingers dripped blood, not all of it hers. Smoke clung to her hair. Behind her, a crater marked where she'd first called on the Shard of Midnight. It still pulsed where it lay in the earth like a heart torn from a god's chest.
But she only had eyes for him.
Rowan lay motionless, his body convulsing with silent spasms. Black veins writhed beneath his skin, climbing his neck and jaw like snakes made of ink. The god fragment within him—ancient, festering—was winning.
