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CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

IRENE

A path had revealed itself, an opening carved into the rock, as if the mountain had finally deemed her worthy. A way out. And Irene had taken it. Irene staggered out of the mountain’s maw, Jace’s limp body crushing her arms.

The light slammed into her, searing through her vision as if peeling away layers of darkness before casting her into the howling wind.

It howled like a living thing, frenzied and starving, tearing at her hair, slicing at her skin. She lurched forward, gasping. The world stretched before her, a desolation of jagged stone and frozen air, barren as an altar stripped for sacrifice.

Beneath her feet, the abyss yawned wide. A chasm so deep it devoured the wind, its endless roar vibrating through her bones.

Jace groaned faintly in her arms. His face was pale. Irene’s trembling fingers brushed his cheek, “We’re almost there,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “We’ve almost won.” She smoothed his hair back, “Just hold on. Please.”

Her head jerked up, scanning the lifeless terrain, frantic. Something. Anything. A sign.

Where was the sapphire? Where were the voices?

They had led her here, wrapped themselves around her mind like chains, whispering, promising. But now, they were silent. Gone.

The absence of them was unbearable. The wind screamed.

“Why?” she screamed, her voice breaking apart against the roar. “Why won’t you help me? You brought me here! And now you leave me?”

Her words dissolved into a raw, guttural cry. She could feel the heavens watching her. Judging her.

She imagined the mountain itself and Nehalannia, mocking her. Their puppet, broken. No longer of use.

“I curse you!” she screamed, her voice slicing through the wind. “I curse you all! And you, Nehalannia! I hate you!”

Her knees buckled. She collapsed onto the frozen stone, Jace’s deadweight dragging her down. His breath was faint, shallow against her shoulder. Her hands trembled as she held him, her mind spiraling into the abyss.

A sharp, piercing thought sliced through the madness. His blood. They wanted blood.

That’s why they brought her here. That’s why they led her this far.

A choked laugh caught in her throat. Her hands moved before her mind could stop them.

She shook Jace. “Jace. Jace, wake up.” A faint groan. His eyelids flickered.

Irene leaned closer, her voice cracking under the weight of urgency. “Wake up. Don’t leave me now. I need you.” At last, his eyes fluttered open. Glassy. Unfocused. Searching for hers.

“Irene?” he whispered, barely audible. A shaky breath of relief escaped her, her lips trembling into a fragile, fleeting smile.

“Yes, it’s me.”

Jace lifted a trembling hand, brushing his fingers across her face. She propped him against the jagged rock.

Her hand slid to her belt, fingers curling around the knife. She pulled it free.

Jace’s expression shifted.

Confusion. Then fear.

His gaze locked onto the knife. Irene seized his hand, gripping it tightly, her wild eyes locking onto his.

“Just one drop,” she murmured. “And this will all be over.” Her head snapped up.

She tilted her face toward the sky, her voice rising into a raw, ragged scream?—

“Is this what you want? You want blood? Then TAKE IT!”

Her voice splintered. Echoed off the cliffs. Off the sky.

She dragged the blade across his palm. Blood welled up immediately—thick, crimson. Pooling in his palm.

She tilted his hand. The first drops fell. Dark red against the cold stone.

For a moment, nothing happened.

The blood dripped uselessly onto the cold stone. Irene panicked.

And then, the mountain breathed.

The crimson seeped into cracks she hadn’t noticed before, threading through the stone like molten veins awakening a slumbering giant. The lines stretched outward in impossible patterns, carving intricate paths into the rock. The earth beneath her feet felt alive, pulsing. Beating. Watching.

A shuddering breath left her lips. Slowly, a smile crept across her face.

"This is it," she whispered. "This is the way…” She staggered to her feet, her body shaking—exhaustion and exhilaration warring inside her. She was so close.

A sound broke the wind. Footsteps. Racing. Irene whirled around, heart hammering. Javier and Zahra. Their faces pale, their mouths moving, shaping words that never reached her ears.

She screamed over the storm, voice raw with triumph. “I found it! I found the sapphire!”

But they didn’t smile. Irene’s breath stilled.

Their eyes were wide, stricken with horror. Their hands, frantic, pointing past her.

Not at her. Behind her. But she didn't have time to look back and see what they pointed at her. A deep, guttural rumble, crawling through the stone, rattling her bones. The mountain shuddered—slow, deliberate, as if waking from centuries of slumber. The jagged rock behind her split apart, peeling open like a great wound, spilling shadows blacker than the void. The mountain screamed. A metallic resonance, like chains dragged across a grave. Then she saw it.

Not fully, but its light—glistening blue, blinding, bleeding—pulsed from beyond, vibrating like a living heartbeat. The sapphire. Its song rang through her mind, piercing, hypnotic, as if it had always been inside her, waiting for this moment.

Waiting for her. All the sacrifices, all the blood spilled, all the lives lost—they wouldn’t be in vain.

She was the one who would win. A broken, unhinged smile spread across her lips.

Irene stepped forward, her body swayed by the sapphire’s pull. But something stopped her.

The wind—violent, brutal—slashed at her skin, tearing at her clothes, whispering something jagged, something urgent.

To her left, movement. Javier and Zahra—still waving, still screaming silently. Their arms flailed against the wind, their bodies pushing forward but unable to reach her.

They were trying to warn her. Irene’s pulse stuttered.

She hesitated, frozen between the sapphire’s call and their frantic gestures.

Why didn’t they come closer? Why did they look so afraid?

A sharp twist of confusion slashed through her chest. Slowly, cautiously, she turned her head.

And she saw him. Dax.

He wasn’t dead. He had crawled out of the abyss. He had defied death itself."

A phantom of blood and vengeance, he stood just a few steps behind her, his body wrecked. His face—barely recognizable beneath the raw brutality of survival. His skin torn, his clothes in tatters, as if he had crawled through death itself and came back breathing.

He held no weapon. He didn’t need one. What he carried was far worse.

Jace. Somehow—while she was blinded by the sapphire, by the voices, by the storm—Dax had taken Jace. He held him now, gripping the prince’s limp form with trembling arms, suspending him over the abyss.

Jace’s body was shivering violently. The wind howled, vicious and merciless. It clawed at them both, threatening to drag them down into the black void below.

And then, for the first time, Irene felt fear. The heavens churned, black clouds spiraling like a storm gathering its wrath. Thunder cracked, shaking the mountain to its core—each boom a divine judgment. Lightning split the sky, illuminating Dax’s broken figure like a revenant risen from the grave. A man who shouldn’t be breathing stood before her, forged from defiance and vengeance.

Irene froze. The triumph that had burned so hot inside her was gone, turned to ash on her tongue. The abyss before her was mirrored by the one yawning inside her chest.

She stepped forward, hand trembling, reaching?—

"Don’t." Dax’s voice slashed through the wind, raw, cracked, sharp as the jagged rocks beneath them.

His grip on Jace tightened, his bruised fingers digging into the prince’s limp form. His body swayed, battered and barely standing, but the fire in his eyes never wavered.

"You chose him," Dax snarled, his voice trembling—with rage, with grief, with something deeper. Betrayal. "You chose him and her over me. So now it’s my turn to choose, Irene."

“Don’t do this,” she whispered.

Dax let out a ragged, hollow laugh, but there was no amusement in it.

"You were always blind," he choked out, tears streaking through the blood and grime on his face. "Blinded by your ghosts. By your hate." His chest heaved, the weight of his wounds dragging at him, but his voice cut through the storm like steel. "You never saw the truth."

His voice cracked, hoarse with fury. "You—” He shook his head, his gaze dark and haunted. “You only ever saw the world through what you felt.”

The words struck like an open blade. Irene’s lips parted, but no sound came.

The wind howled between them, tearing through her hair.

Dax’s mouth curled into something bitter, broken. "You fell for a lie, Irene… but not mine."

Blood dripped from his split lip, his bruised and battered body teetering dangerously close to the cliff’s edge. His eyes, burning with hatred and sorrow, locked on hers, each word a dagger to her heart. The sky mirrored his turmoil, heavy clouds swirling in an ominous dance above them.

“Please… Dax,” Irene’s voice wavered as she pleaded.

It felt foreign on her tongue. She had never begged before—not when she had seen her father slain by pirate swords, his blood soaking into the earth at her feet; not when she was chained and beaten in the darkness beneath the mountain. She had faced horrors that would break the strongest of souls, yet she had never begged.

Until now.

But Dax only shook his head. His expression wasn’t cruel. It was resigned.

As if the weight of the world had finally crushed him.

Irene lurched forward, but before she could move or even scream, his fingers unclenched. And Jace fell.