Liora's POV
The cell door explodes outward in a blast of pure white light.
I don't remember deciding to do it. One moment I'm curled in the corner, shaking and bleeding from where the guards threw me against the stone wall. The next moment, rage floods through me like liquid fire, and my hands are glowing so bright I can't look at them directly.
The iron door doesn't just unlock—it melts. Metal drips like candle wax, hissing when it hits the floor.
For three heartbeats, I just stare at what I've done.
Then alarm bells start screaming through the entire castle.
Move. MOVE.
I stumble into the corridor on bare feet, my prison dress torn and dirty. My whole body hurts. But I'm not staying here to die like some helpless animal waiting for slaughter.
Footsteps thunder toward me from both directions. Torchlight bounces off the dungeon walls.
"She's escaping! Block the exits!"
I run left because it's the only direction that doesn't have guards yet. The stone floor is freezing and wet. My feet leave bloody prints behind me, but I don't stop. Can't stop.
A guard jumps out from a side passage, sword raised. "Surrender, criminal!"
My hands flare with light before I can think about it. The blast hits his chest and throws him backward into the wall so hard his helmet dents. He crumples like a puppet with cut strings.
I stare at him, horrified. Did I just kill someone?
No—his chest is moving. He's breathing. Just unconscious.
More shouts echo behind me. So many boots pounding stone. They're hunting me like a fox chasing a rabbit, and I'm running out of castle to run through.
I burst through a servant's entrance into the lower kitchens. A cook screams and drops a tray of dishes. I dodge around her, heading for the delivery door I used a thousand times when I worked here. When I was invisible. When I was safe.
You were never safe, a bitter voice whispers in my head. Celeste always knew. She was just waiting for the perfect moment to destroy you.
The thought makes my light flare brighter, angrier. The walls around me start to glow where my power touches them.
I crash through the delivery door into the night air. Cold wind slaps my face. The castle grounds spread out before me—manicured gardens, perfectly trimmed hedges, marble fountains that cost more than most people earn in a lifetime.
Behind me, dogs start barking. Hunting hounds. Theron's personal pack, trained to track magic users.
My heart hammers so hard it hurts. The main gate is blocked by guards. The side gates are probably sealed too. But there's one direction nobody guards because nobody's stupid enough to go that way.
North. Toward the Shadow Wastes.
I run across the perfect grass, leaving footprints of blood and glowing light. My power is leaking out now, beyond my control. Flowers explode into bloom where I step, then immediately wither and die. The binding runes I carved into my skin to hide my magic are completely burned away.
I'm a beacon. A target. A walking announcement that says LIGHTBORN HERE.
Arrows whistle past my head. One grazes my shoulder, and I scream but don't stop running. The tree line is ahead—the edge of the royal forest where the normal woods end and the cursed lands begin.
"CLOSE THE NORTHERN PERIMETER!" someone bellows behind me. Theron's voice. He sounds furious and excited at the same time, like this is the best hunt he's had in years.
The trees swallow me up. Branches claw at my face and arms. Roots try to trip me. But the normal forest can't hold me long—within minutes, everything changes.
The air turns cold enough to burn my lungs. The trees twist into shapes that trees shouldn't make. The sky above the canopy looks wrong—too purple, too sick, like a bruise that never heals.
I've reached the Shadow Wastes.
The hunting dogs stop barking. Even they won't cross this border.
I keep running anyway, crashing through dead bushes and over ground that crunches like broken glass under my feet. My power is the only light in this awful darkness. Everything else seems to eat the light, swallow it up like a hungry mouth.
Behind me, someone shouts orders. Theron hasn't given up. He's organizing a hunting party brave enough—or stupid enough—to enter the Wastes.
My legs are shaking. My shoulder throbs where the arrow cut me. I'm leaving a trail of blood they can follow easily.
I need to go deeper. Further into the nightmare where even Theron's best hunters won't follow.
That's when I hear it.
A scream that isn't human. A sound that makes my bones vibrate and my teeth ache and my light flicker with fear. It's the sound of something dying, something suffering, something that should never exist in this world or any other.
Every survival instinct I have screams RUN AWAY.
But something else whispers in my mind. Something that sounds like my mother's voice from a memory almost too old to remember: "The brightest lights shine in the darkest places, little star. Never forget that."
I'm so tired of running. Tired of hiding. Tired of being afraid.
Maybe it's time to stop being the prey.
I turn toward the screaming and start walking deeper into the Shadow Wastes. My light grows brighter with each step, pushing back the darkness. The dead trees seem to lean away from me, afraid of what I'm becoming.
The screaming gets louder. Closer. It sounds like agony and rage mixed together, like someone's been suffering forever and finally found their voice.
I push through a wall of thorny vines into a clearing, and my light floods the space like dawn breaking.
That's when I see him.
Chains made of living darkness wrap around a man kneeling in the center of the clearing. The chains dig into his skin, pulsing with black magic that's eating him alive. His head hangs down, silver-black hair covering his face. But even dying, even wrapped in curses, something about him feels powerful. Ancient. Dangerous.
He shouldn't be beautiful, but he is. Like a fallen angel. Like a nightmare dressed in starlight and shadow.
His head snaps up, and golden eyes with vertical pupils lock onto mine.
For one endless moment, we just stare at each other.
Then his lips pull back in something between a snarl and a smile, showing teeth too sharp to be fully human.
"Well," he says, his voice like midnight given sound. "Either the gods have finally decided to save me..."
The chains pulse darker, tightening, and he screams again—that world-breaking sound that brought me here.
"...or they've sent me the cruelest joke imaginable."
Behind me, hunting horns echo through the Wastes. Theron's men are coming.
The dying man's golden eyes burn into mine, and I feel something impossible stirring in my chest. A pull. A recognition. Like I've been searching for him my entire life without knowing it.
"Choose quickly, little light," he gasps between screams. "Save me and doom yourself, or run and let me die."
My hands are already moving, light gathering in my palms brighter than ever before.
"I'm done running," I whisper.
And I reach for the chains.