Page 187 of Stormvein

“Sacha,” Ellie gasps, her fingers tightening around mine. “I can’t stop it. It’s pulling everything out.”

Silver light erupts from her in waves, no longer flowing but surging outward. Her face contorts with effort as she strains to contain it, blood trickling from her nose. But the power responds to the crystal’s call instead of her will.

Sereven attempts to back away, but the combined energy of silver and shadow has already surrounded him, weaving a web too tight for him to escape. With each pulse from the crystal, the web constricts, binding him tighter.

“What have you done?” The demand carries none of his usual authority, just raw panic as the energy field intensifies around him.

His fingers loosen on the crystal, trying to release it, but it doesn’t drop. The stone remains pressed against his palm as though it’s been fused there. Blood drips from between his fingers, and the smell of burning flesh reaches me.

The doors burst open behind us, and guards rush in, drawn by the lights and shouting. But the second they cross the threshold, lightning strikes, destroying them where they stand, leaving nothing but black smears on the ground.

Sereven tries to push forward, and is forced back into the center of the swirling vortex of silver-threaded shadows, the crystal in his hand blazing brighter and brighter with each second that passes.

“You can’t hold me here forever.” There’s raw panic in his eyes now. Something I’ve never seen in all the years I’ve known him.

“We don’t need forever.” I force the words out from between gritted teeth. “Just long enough to get free of here.” But my control is slipping further away, and I have no idea on how I’m going to achieve our escape. “Ellie. You need to leave.”

Her fingers squeeze mine. “I can’t. I can’t let go. Something is wrong. I can’t … It’s not listening to me.”

The silver-shadow energy intensifies, weaving tighter around Sereven and the crystal. The stone’s blue glow becomes impossible to look at, shifting from sapphire to violet where it meets our combined power. The air grows heavy with the smell of lightning. Our breath shows in small white puffs in front of us. The floor beneath our feet turns white with frost.

The merged power has become a force of its own, no longer responding to our will or even the crystal’s pull. It spreads out from surrounding Sereven, reaching out for us and the crystal as well.

“No!” Sereven’s voice rises to a shout as he attempts to break free. His fingers flex around the crystal, but the silver-shadow tendrils weave around his fingers, pressing between them, threading through them. They sink into his flesh, binding him to the crystal even as he struggles to release it.

Naked fear fills his face when he lifts his head to search me out. For the first time in our long, bloody history, he looks at me without contempt or calculation, but with desperation.

“Sacha, you must stop this. You have no idea what will happen if?—”

He cries out, back arching as the crystal pulses against his palm. The light shifts from violet to black where the energies meet, then through the spectrum back to white. It sends shock waves through the chamber.

“You don’t understand what you’re doing.” Sereven’s voice is tight with strain as the crystal begins to vibrate in his grasp. Blood is flowing freely from his nose, ears, and the corners of his eyes. “The power contained within … if it’s released without proper channeling …”

My shadows are being pulled from me in torrents, leaving a hollow emptiness in their wake. I fight to break the connection, to cut off the flow, but our joined hands seem fused together, and I have no control over what is happening.

“Make it stop,” Ellie cries out, voice breaking as she meets my gaze. Tears cut silver tracks down her cheeks, freezing to crystal before they fall. “I can’t control it anymore.”

The crystal’s vibration reaches fever pitch, blue light pulsing, a high-pitched noise spilling from it. The sound hurts my ears, sets my teeth on edge. Sereven’s face contorts with effort as he tries to release his grip.

“Sacha!” In that moment there’s nothing of the High Commander in his voice. “Stop this before it’s too late.”

In that moment, he doesn’t sound like the man who betrayed me at Thornreave Pass, or the Authority Captain who locked me away, or the High Commander who oversaw my torture. He sounds like the person I grew up with.

For a heartbeat, I see him as he was. Standing in Ashenvale’s great hall, teaching me to hold a blade, explaining the political landscape with patience I rarely deserved.

Then he throws his head back.

“I should have ended you when I had the chance, little brother.”

I try to respond, to regain control, but the magic has taken on a life of its own—a consciousness born from the merger of our powers and whatever resides within the crystal. Tables, maps, goblets ... all rise into the air as the energy field intensifies, suspended in defiance of natural law. Papers, weapons andfurniture hover in eerie stillness before being flung violently against walls.

The officers he sent out have all fled now, abandoning their commander in the face of powers they cannot comprehend or fight. Self-preservation overriding years of conditioned loyalty. Only Sereven remains, trapped within our silver-shadow vortex, the crystal blazing between his fingers. His features distort behind the energy field, stretched and compressed as if reality itself is becoming unstable around him.

Ellie screams. The sound carries power beyond mere noise, resonating at frequencies that shatter glass and splinter wood.

Her fingers slip from mine, breaking the physical connection but not the energy bridge between us.

Blue light explodes outward in concentric waves, meeting the silver and shadow in a violent collision that shakes the entire keep.

And then everything turns white.

The End