Page 142 of Magical Mayhem

And I was still standing.

If Malore thought I would bow, he hadn’t been listening.

I straightened, planting my feet wide, the storm tugging at my hair and cloak.

“You want Stonewick?” My voice cracked but carried. “You’ll have to go through me first.”

His laugh rolled through the courtyard, low and mocking, shaking the stones themselves.

“Through you? You are nothing but a Hedge Witch clinging to borrowed fire. Do you truly think you can stand against me?”

“I don’t think,” I said, my throat raw but steady. “I know.”

He lunged.

The world split.

His shadowed hand reached for me, claws longer than spears, slicing through air and storm. For a heartbeat, I froze, every instinct screaming to run.

But my boots held.

And then I raised my hands—not for fire, not for vines.

For earth.

The courtyard groaned.

The stones beneath me shuddered, cracks splitting like lightning across their surface. Soil surged upward, not soft garden dirt but the bones of the land itself. It answered me, roaring through my veins, rising to shield me.

The Wards were behind me.

A wall of jagged earth erupted from the ground, meeting Malore’s strike with a crash that shook the night. Sparks flew as claw met stone, the impact rattling my ribs. But the wall held.

I stared at it, my breath ripping from my chest. I hadn’t even known I could do that.

Malore’s eyes narrowed, light flaring. “So the land itself answers you. No matter. It will be yours to bury you.”

He struck again, faster, sharper, his claws raking across the earthen wall. Cracks split down its center, dust spraying my face. I threw my arms wide, pouring more of myself into it, feeling the stones pulse with my heartbeat.

The ground answered, the courtyard trembling as new spires thrust upward, jagged and sharp, stabbing into his shadowed form. He staggered back a step, hissing, smoke curling from the wounds.

Behind me, I heard the gasps of fighters, the shouts of witches and shifters rallying at the sight. My father bellowed something like a cheer, and Twobble’s laughter sliced through the storm.

But Malore wasn’t finished.

Malore stood on his hind legs and the storm itself bent to his command. Shadows boiled around him, swirling like a vortex, his voice rising above it all.

“You cannot hold me. You cannot end me. The path is mine to command.”

The storm answered his roar, the ground splitting in jagged lines toward me. My knees buckled, the earth trying to drag me under.

I forced my palms flat against the stones, shouting with every ounce of will I had left.

“Not yours. Never yours!”

The earth heaved. Stone rose in a circle around me, a ring of jagged pillars that locked into place. They pulsed with light, not mine alone but the heartbeat of Stonewick itself.

Malore lunged again, and I braced, my pulse racing with the rhythm of the land.