Page 18

The War Breaks

N iko

The moment the final rune sealed our bond, I felt it.

The magik didn’t settle, it shook. Like a pulse too strong for the vessel that held it.

The sky over Runic split into three bands of color—green, violet, and gold.

The crowd below the cliffs falls silent, waiting with bated breath. Even the wind stopped.

And then, an unknown sound. Low, trembling, and out of place. A crack like thunder echoes from the mountain pass, followed by a shadow bleeding across the land like spilled ink.

“Shields up!” I shouted, blade in hand before my feet even moved. “Now!”

But I’m too late. We couldn’t get the runes around the palace up again, the ones Josef has ripped apart, before the ceremony started. And now, the final gate of Quietus has opened, and the war is upon us.

They came from the sky. Not soldiers, but wraiths. Winged, eyeless creatures forged from a blood oath and death magik. Nyx’s personal war-forged army. Bound to nothing and fed on fear.

They tear through the flimsy outer ward we set up in minutes and now they’re here. In Runic, in the citadel, in our home. And I’m fighting to keep my queen alive.

Cassandra’s magik crackles beside me, no longer wild but fierce. She throws a wave of force that rips two wraiths clean from the sky. Within minutes, her gown is torn, and the crown gone. There is nothing soft left in her. Now, she is only fire.

“Niko!” she shouts. “The north wing, they’re breaching the Conclave Hall!”

“I’ll hold the stairs!” I call back. “Go! Protect the seal!”

She nods once and runs. Gods help anyone in her way.

****

C assandra

The citadel burns behind me. Flames dance along the spires, and smoke curls into the fractured sky. I leap the final stairs to the upper terrace, my breath catching as I see it. The merging seal, the magikal crest formed from our union, is cracked and flickering.

Nyx is here. Not in body but in essence. She hovers above the seal like a shadow given form, her voice echoing like wind across a canyon.

“Did you really think a union could stop me? Silly little witch.”

I raise the shard, and it glows in my palm like lightning barely contained.

“We didn’t merge to stop you,” I snarl. “We merged to finish you.”

She lunges and the world explodes into battle.