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FORTY-ONE

SERAPHINE

“ W ell,” Mirael said, her voice curling like smoke and ice, echoing with a dozen stolen souls. “Isn’t this touching?”

Seraphine rose slowly, hands gentle as she laid Cassian down onto the cracked obsidian floor, brushing the sweat-matted hair from his brow. His skin was pale, his breathing shallow. But he was alive. Her flame had saved him once. She wouldn’t let him slip away now.

She turned, her spine straightening, her fingers curling with the spark of Whitefire.

The Heartblade glinted in her hands. Still fresh from its rebirth. Still humming with the magic of two bloodlines finally bound.

Mirael stepped forward, pale feet gliding over the stone as if gravity didn’t apply. Her cloak of shadows rippled like smoke, her eyes empty hollows brimming with malicious light.

Seraphine stepped in front of Cassian’s body and let the flame flicker up her arm—faster this time. More familiar. Less pain. It welcomed her now. The fear was gone.

This wasn’t the girl who had run from her crown. This was the queen the Hollow feared.

“You take one more step,” she said, voice like stone cracking under pressure, “and I’ll show you what fire really means.”

Mirael tilted her head. “Bravado looks good on you. But he’s dying.”

“No, not anymore,” Seraphine said. “You just want him to.”

The creature paused. “He was always meant to break the seal. That’s why I let him live. You think it was your strength that brought him back?”

Seraphine smiled, slow and dangerous. “No. It was love. And that’s something you’ll never understand.”

Mirael’s features contorted—part fury, part something older. Something afraid. “You cannot stop this. You are one body. One blade. I have the Hollow. I am the Hollow.”

“And yet,” Seraphine said, raising her hand, “you’re standing there talking instead of winning.”

She moved.

Whitefire surged from her in a tidal wave, lighting up the entire sanctum with raw, divine heat. It slammed into Mirael, who shrieked—really shrieked this time. As the flame wrapped around her like chains, burning not flesh, but essence.

Mirael clawed through it, summoning jagged bolts of corrupted magic. They flew toward Seraphine like arrows, but the fire swirled to meet them—deflecting, absorbing, turning them to ash.

“Why him?” Seraphine shouted, stepping forward as the ground beneath her feet cracked and smoked. “Why chase him across dreams? Why not just take the blade and be done?”

Mirael stumbled backward. “Because he is the key. His blood. His power. You were never meant to wield it.”

Seraphine advanced again, her hands glowing brighter, the Heartblade rising behind her like it sensed her rage.

“I wasn’t meant for a lot of things,” she said, “but I’m here anyway.”

The temple trembled as their magic collided—corrupted Hollow fire and blinding Whitefire erupting in a furious storm that scorched the air and fractured the ground beneath their feet.

Each flare of Seraphine’s flame struck like a heartbeat of the world itself fighting back against centuries of rot.

Each lash of Mirael’s darkness shrieked through the space like the sound of history bleeding.

Above them, the Veil cracked.

Thin slits of raw magic opened like wounds in the sky, leaking brilliance and despair. Threads of time, memory, and fate laced overhead, chaotic and too ancient to name.

“You can’t contain me,” Mirael screamed, her voice suddenly more than one. Echoing with the thousands she’d consumed. Faces flickered through her—children, warriors, queens. Her body shimmered, not solid but a curtain of shadow, of regrets and rage, held together by spite alone.

Her form began to flicker. Parts of her turned transparent. Her limbs spasmed, losing shape as something—someone—tried to claw out of her.

“No,” Seraphine said, stepping forward through fire that didn’t burn her anymore. Her voice was low. Steady. Certain. “But I can end you.”

She raised the Heartblade. And it answered.

The blade pulsed, humming with purpose. Its fire wasn’t red. It wasn’t blue. It was every color of storm and flame and memory and war. It burned like what came after grief. What came after love and sacrifice and ruin. It was vengeance. It was salvation.

Mirael lunged. Her mouth a maw of black fangs, her shadow form unraveling with speed and fury, her claws inches from Seraphine’s throat.

Seraphine slashed. One, clean arc.

The blade carved through Mirael’s chest and time hiccuped.

Mirael screamed—not from pain, but from unraveling.

The magic inside her exploded outward, not in flame or shadow, but in light —a thousand fractured pieces of stolen souls breaking free in a flood.

Her limbs cracked open like broken glass sculptures, and from within her, white-hot tendrils of spirit and starlight poured into the air, screaming with the voices of the dead who had been trapped for too long.

“No—NO!” Mirael howled, falling backward, hands clawing at her face as her body crumbled like ash caught in the wind.

Her form then collapsed .

A howl tore through the Hollow, and every corrupted creature still fighting beyond the sanctum screamed in unison.

The Hollowborn jerked violently as though yanked by unseen strings.

Some clawed at their own flesh, others howled to the sky.

One by one, they dropped. Some bursting into motes of dust, others curling in on themselves and turning into ash.

The Veil didn’t just fracture. It shuddered.

Seraphine took the final step forward and drove the Heartblade into the center of the Hollow sanctum. Into the heart of the wound in the world.

The stone beneath her feet split open. A violent quake rolled through the temple, sending splinters of obsidian into the air. The blade sank until only its hilt remained above ground, glowing, humming. And then the world exhaled.

The Veil slammed shut—like a door sealed with blood and fire and fate.

Mirael’s scream was cut off mid-syllable. And the silence that followed wasn’t just absence.

It was peace .

Heavy. Trembling. Final.

The Hollowborn were gone.

The sky was cracked and smoldering, but the light that now filtered through was clean. The wind that gusted through the shattered archways was cold, but no longer laced with rot.

Seraphine stood there, chest heaving, fire still crawling across her skin, her bones screaming with the effort of what she’d done.

But she didn’t fall.

Because behind her, Cassian still breathed.

She had won.

Not because she had fire. Not because she had power. But because she had something worth saving .

Mirael? The woman who had devoured kingdoms, corrupted kings, twisted fate?

She was gone.

Not killed.

Erased .

Wiped from the world the way a nightmare disappears at dawn.

Not a whisper or a gust of corrupted wind.

Just Seraphine, kneeling beside Cassian again, her blade still humming, her hands trembling from where the last of the magic had scorched through her skin and soul.

Cassian’s lips parted.

A groan. A breath.

She collapsed beside him, head on his shoulder, the world still spinning but finally quiet.

The Hollow was sealed.

The Veil was mended.

But the war wasn’t done yet.

Not until she made sure he woke up. And when he did… they would finish this together.

Because fire and storm didn’t end with sacrifice. They began again. In love. In power. In truth.

Mirael would never touch him again.

Now, all that was left was her father…