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Golden light pooled around his hand, boring into Ada's chest with relentless precision. Her back arched in agony, a scream tearing from her throat while Midas began pulling her light from her body. A luminous golden thread emerged from her chest, winding around his hand.

Via our binding, I felt it—felt the violation while he reached for her very essence. Our connection transformed her pain into mine, amplifying it until it became unbearable. White-hot agony lanced across my chest, someone having thrust a molten blade into my heart.

The pain triggered something primal within me. The shadows around me grew darker, denser, while I drew on the most forbidden shadow magic—the kind that required blood sacrifice. My blood.

“Enough games,” I snarled, and bit down hard on my tongue. Blood filled my mouth, metallic and hot. I spit it into my palm, where it hissed and smoked, merging with my shadow magic. “ENOUGH!”

I hurled the blood-infused shadow directly at Midas—not at his body, but at the golden thread connecting him to Ada. The shadow-bolt moved faster than thought, leaving a trail of absolute darkness in its wake.

The shadow-bolt struck true, slicing through the golden thread with a sound of screaming metal. The strand of light hung suspended for a heartbeat then snapped back to Ada with whiplash force. She gasped when her stolen essence returned, her light flaring brighter than ever.

Midas’s howl of rage shook the very air, the sound barely human—half scream, half metallic shriek. His eyes blazed with molten fury as he whirled toward me.

“YOU!” The word was more explosive than speech. “I WILL UNMAKE YOU!”

He raised both hands, and the earth beneath him liquefied into a pool of molten gold. It rose around him in spiraling tendrils, hardening into deadly spikes that launched toward me from every direction.

I met his attack with a wall of shadow, dense enough to stop most of the golden projectiles. But my power was flagging, the blood magic taking its toll. Three spikes punched through my defenses, finding gaps in my shadow armor.

The first impaled my shoulder, slicing through flesh with razor sharpness. The second slid between my ribs, scraping bone. The third punched through my lower abdomen, the cold metal contrasting bizarrely with the warm rush of blood that followed.

I staggered but remained standing, refusing to fall. With a grunt of pain, I gripped the spike in my shoulder and ripped it free, black blood spattering across the scorched earth. The wound sealed partially while shadows rushed to mend it, but too slowly—I was weakening too fast.

"Is that all?" I taunted through gritted teeth, and hurled the bloody spike back at Midas. It dissolved before reaching him, but the gesture made him snarl. "I've had worse from training exercises."

Midas's face contorted with fury. With a gesture, the ground beneath me erupted, golden chains shooting upward to ensnare my legs. I slashed at them with my shadow blade, severing most, but my reactions were slowing. One coiled around my ankle, burning through my boot to the flesh beneath.

"Your defiance is pointless," Midas hissed, his voice distorted by the gold consuming him from within. "The binding will be mine. Her light will be mine. And you—you will be a footnote in the story of my ascension."

He made a grasping motion, and a dozen more golden spikes materialized in the air around him, hanging suspended for one terrible moment then launching toward me in a barrage of molten death.

This time, my defenses failed entirely. My shadow armor shattered while spike after spike found its mark. Pain exploded through my body when gold pierced flesh, shredded muscle, cracked bone. A scream tore from my throat—not just in pain but in fury at my failure to protect Ada.

"HAKAN!" Ada's anguished cry cut through the din of battle.

I collapsed to my knees, blood pouring from too many wounds to count. The metallic scent of it filled my nostrils, thick enough to choke on. My hands fumbled uselessly at the spike protruding from my chest, fingers slick with crimson, strength rapidly fading.

Through dimming vision, I saw Midas approaching, his face contorted with triumph and fury. Flecks of molten gold dripped from the corners of his mouth while he spoke.

“Fool,” he spit, each word accompanied by golden sparks. “You could have ruled beside me. Instead, you die, and I take her anyway.”

With the last of my strength, I reached out through our binding, seeking Ada’s essence.

Found it, wounded but still vibrant, her light pulsing with determination and rage and love.

I gathered my remaining shadows—barely more than wisps of darkness—and sent them to her, wrapping them around her golden bonds.

Shadow met gold in a silent explosion of power. The chains shattered, fragments of molten metal spraying outward resembling shrapnel. Ada fell forward, freed from her constraints, light flaring around her in a protective corona bright enough to rival the sun.

Midas turned, too late, while Ada’s unleashed power hit him with the force of a supernova. Golden armor buckled and melted beneath the onslaught. His scream cut off abruptly as light invaded every part of him, burning away corruption, burning away life itself.

The gold magic he had controlled turned against him, responding to Ada’s light in ways he couldn’t have anticipated. The molten metal accelerated its transformation, hardening and expanding until it consumed him entirely.

Where Midas had stood, only a statue of solid gold remained, his face frozen in eternal shock.

I felt myself falling, the world tilting sideways. The ground rose to meet me, cold and unforgiving. Blood pooled beneath me, black in the strange half-light of the devastated clearing.

Then Ada was there, cradling my head, her hands pressing desperately over wounds too numerous to heal. Her face swam in and out of focus, tears cutting clean tracks through the blood and dirt on her cheeks.

"Don't you dare," she hissed, voice breaking. "Don't you dare die for me."

I tried to smile, tasting copper. "Not…for you," I managed. "For us."

Her light enveloped me, cool and soothing upon the burning agony. Where our magics met—her light, my shadows—our binding flared to blinding life, no longer a mere tether but a true magical conduit.

Our essences flowed into each other, not consuming but enhancing.

Memories cascaded between us—our first meeting, when she’d called me an arrogant shadow-spawn and I’d been too entranced by her light to take offense.

Our first kiss, stolen in the gardens of her father’s palace.

The night I proposed, offering her not just my heart but a vision of peace between our realms.

The agony of leaving her to protect her from my father’s schemes. The emptiness of years without memory of her.

And from her—grief that had hollowed her from within. Rage that sustained her when nothing else could. And something else, something she’d hidden even from herself: a desperate hope that one day I would return, that somehow we would find our way back to each other.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, the words barely a breath. “For everything.”

“Shut up and fight,” she commanded, her light pouring into me with renewed intensity. Her hands gripped my face, forcing me to stay present. “I didn’t hate you for five years just to watch you die in my arms.”

For a brief, transcendent moment, we were one being—neither light nor shadow, but something new, something whole. The barriers between us dissolved into a morning mist.

The connection ebbed while my consciousness began to fade. The world grew dim around the edges, sounds becoming muffled as if filtered through water.

The last thing I saw was Ada’s face, determined despite her tears, her light still pouring into me.

The last thing I felt was her lips pressed into mine, a kiss that tasted of blood and salt and desperate hope.

The last thing I heard was her voice, breaking but fierce: “Come back to me, Hakan. Damn you, come back to me.”

From somewhere distant, I thought I heard Sarp’s voice shouting orders, reinforcements arriving too late. But I couldn’t be sure if it was real or merely hope as darkness claimed me completely.

Then nothing but shadow, deeper than any I had ever known.