Page 35 of Shattered Galaxies (Tears of the Siren #6)

Lorcan

My violin felt heavy in my hands, an extension of myself.

As I looked into the abyss of the dark ones, I lifted my violin and placed it under my chin.

My hands were shaking as I held the bow, but I could feel an equal amount of determination to counter my awe and fear.

I stared into the void—the threat I had been working toward destroying all of this time. Now was not the time to falter.

“We give you this final chance to stop your actions.”

The voice was detached and clinical. The dark ones materialized in front of me, trying to appear as human as possible.

But they weren’t humans. They were cosmic beings that wanted to take everything away from me.

My anger grew, thrumming in my chest as a wasp’s nest of noise buzzed in my ears, blocking out their attempts to soothe my magic.

“No.”

I didn’t waste words. Instead, I looked skyward once more—away from the humanoid figures—and drew my bow back, allowing tension to build within my frame. My siren, surrounded by the pulsating aura of the composition, took center stage—poised for battle.

The first notes of the song rang with power, reverberating across the cliff and sending a sonic ripple across the battlefield and into the void.

It rippled in warning as my magic bloomed into vibrations that spread throughout the realm.

I could feel the cosmos responding to my call, seeking me, trying to peer past the dark ones that blocked their sight.

Equal parts pleasure and pain exploded in my chest as I began to play, my siren shifting and moving around me as if weaving through the fabric of time and space, creating a shelter of magic as the dark ones recognized my presence.

The invocation—my magic—triggered a bellow of anger.

Of raw fury. It brought tears to my eyes as I swayed with the music I played, allowing my notes to grow more complex and with more depth than I’d ever wielded before.

The three world eaters growled in anger as my knees shook, but they didn’t interrupt me—they couldn’t stop the magic I was calling on. The destruction I would bring forth.

They were also blind to a twin energy that I could feel growing closer: Nova. My counterpart and the other part of the prophecy. In that moment, I recognized what she had as well—if we wanted to destroy them, truly, we would need to stand side by side and face them.

“Stop this!” Voices snarled in my head, moving around me in blurs of white as I continued to hold my gaze upward, my eyes leaking a mixture of tears and blood.

I refused to give into the urge to interact with their minions, though.

I didn’t need to, not when the composition I was playing was rattling them, shaking their very essence.

Even the dragons behind me, the ones that my bonded were fighting with intense vigor, were weakening under the pressure of my magic. It only sharpened my focus.

There was something more, though—something I could feel growing behind the dark ones. A familiar presence that reminded me of the Cosmos god, as if his silent support stood like a sentinel, not allowing the dark ones to retreat.

Without warning, a shot of dark magic, made of the void itself, hit me right in the chest. A gasp broke from my lips, and before I could stop her, my siren pushed out past me into the void of space, growing in size.

Her skin shimmered like my own, as if we were in star form, and I watched as she erected a shield between us and them, allowing me to play.

The pain still radiated through me, sending chills rolling over my skin, as the composition slowed, deepening into haunted and elongated notes.

Pain. Suffering. Agony. Terror. Words that were intertwined within the fabric of my life began to play out like videos in front of me.

It was as if the dark ones were punishing me, trying to torture me as the visions shifted into events that hadn’t happened yet.

The deaths of my bonded, my family—everyone I cared about.

I watched as they were slaughtered, obliterated by the world eaters.

It was almost enough to make me drop my violin with grief.

But I didn’t—I absolutely did not.

Instead, my eyes snapped open and I watched the dark ones ripple, magic exploding around me like fireworks. I could sense that Nova was with me now, but she wasn’t alone. No, there was an evil with her. Ra .

I was furious at his distraction, the way he wanted to hurt my friend.

I began to play deep and angry notes, the sound causing my siren to pulse with different colored lights that hit into the dark voids, their bellows of pain mixing with the roars of anger.

When Nova’s magic exploded around me, I realized that she was protecting me—protecting me from the white humanoids that kept trying to reach me.

I couldn’t hear what she said as she fended them off, but I couldn’t ignore their anger that she wouldn’t let me be—that she wouldn’t abandon me to them.

Joy and gratitude for our friendship sang through me as I multiplied the strength of my magic, pushing aside the false promises and twisted images the dark ones sent my way. They were nothing but liars—deceivers.

“Shit.” The word left my lips as Nova’s body disappeared over the edge of the cliff, shattering my focus.

I wavered as Nova threw herself back into battle before reaching me, my music becoming off-kilter and disjointed in my concern for her.

She was in full battle mode, her magic and the avatars that came from her power battling against the towering Egyptian god, but somehow she still had a moment to reassure me.

Her hand shot out to rest on my arm. “You’ve got this. Just focus. You can fucking do this. We need you to do this, Lorcan.”

The surety in her voice infused me with strength.

I planted myself more firmly, my music blasting from my violin with renewed power as the slow, long notes quickened in tempo.

I could see stars flying off my skin as I shifted back and forth from star form to human, and everything around me vibrated with unearthly power.

It felt like the universe itself was bending beneath me, a tool for my own use.

Suddenly, my magic turned erratic. Discordant notes broke through the symphony as the voids lashed out, trying to slam into my siren.

She rushed back to me as we forced ourselves to stand strong, the sky fracturing with unnatural light as if the universe behind the dark ones was fighting from that side as well.

My power was spiraling out of rhythm, overwhelmed by the kinetic energy bouncing off of my physical body and vibrating through my head.

A clash of joy and grief threw me into a chaotic spiral, only grounded by my feet on the earth and Nova’s magic connecting me to reality.

To the truth.

This moment had always been our destiny.

This moment, while our choice, had been engraved in the stars.

As the final crescendo of my composition built, I poured every ounce of my essence into gliding the bow across the strings, placing my fingers in the precise places that would draw out my power.

My violin glowed blue under my hands, burning to the touch, and the strings sizzled under the friction of the bow.

I could see the Cosmos god and his galaxies right on the other side of the dark ones, working toward the same end—the same destruction.

The universe wanted peace, wanted an end to this war.

Nova and I stood back to back, our connection through destiny molding and shaping the very waves of time.

The world around us shattered into fragments that collided and exploded upon impact, causing space to whip into a frenzy of magic-filled particles that existed to do our will.

To complete the task set forth since the notes of the universe were first crafted.

To save everyone.

Dazzling stars filled the air as Nova’s magic intertwined with mine in an arc of power, seafoam green waves mixing with an electric amethyst current. The stars shot out in spears of weaponized destruction, slamming into Ra as he surged toward Nova in a violent effort meant to end her.

Instead, he was obliterated, broken apart by the true and pure energy from our galaxy.

The stars answered our call, crashing into Ra in one perfect, devastating strike.

The sky dimmed, his body seizing as the flames that once made him untouchable vanished in an instant.

Cosmic light tore through him, ripping apart his very existence.

Molecules unraveled into glowing fragments, suspended like shattered glass against the void.

The stolen magic he’d held burst free, streaking back into the universe like streams of light returning home.

At the same time, my music notes transcended into glowing spheres that surrounded the two of us—as if celebrating his death before turning their attention to the dark ones. They screamed toward the threat as my violin released a broken note that tore a scream from Nova’s throat.

I gasped in shock as I was speared with a fragment of time itself, holding me—holding us—in place as the space around us warped, bending under the pressure of our actions.

In front of us, panels of fractured timelines and realities sped up and slowed down in a dizzying showcase.

Nova’s hand tightened on mine, preparing for the end.

My final note.

The world eaters loomed close enough to touch, their gaping voids pulling at us as we fought to stay upright against the drag.

My violin crashed to the ground, shattered, but the symphony continued as three electric-blue orbs pulsed at my fingertips, radiating with power.

Tears of joy left my eyes as the sound of the sea matched the waves of the universe.

I could feel the inspiration, the divine purpose of my creation, as I held my siren—split into the three parts of the composition—one last time.

A farewell of gratitude, shaped like tears, that lifted into the air before swirling off into the cosmos, much stronger than any words I could offer for everything she’d given me. Given to the universe.

I released her to her purpose, to her destiny…right into the center of the dark ones.

A frozen eternity lapsed as they crashed into the dark ones, Nova and I watching, waiting, hoping…

A single flash—a sliver of the blue orb’s power—obliterated them.

Electric light ripped through the void, their death screams tearing across the fabric of existence, resonating inside my skull like it was about to split open.

The pull dragged our bodies upward into the empty black, the air reeking of burning flesh as my skin blistered and peeled.

I felt like I was being flayed apart, shredded atom by atom by the same forces that stitched the stars together.

The universe itself sang with their destruction, and despite the agony…

I smiled.

Light seeped between the atoms of creation, tearing the dark ones apart and flooding the universe with impossible brilliance. Their bodies unraveled into nothing, scattered into the void like ashes.

And then we were falling—tumbling into the abyss of space, weightless and small beneath the crushing silence—uncertain if we had just saved our world or condemned it.