Page 131 of Swords of Soul and Shadow (Gate Chronicles #3)

“Put your yreasa out,” Navara whispered.

She murmured something, her hand going into her pouch of Vasa at her side.

She released the dust in the air, and as if by magic, a dazzling sword appeared in her hand.

The Zuprium blade was unblemished, and the gemstone in the pommel sparkled with pure, crystalline gold.

Navara gasped softly, as if startled by her own spell; but after a moment, she smiled sadly. “Raern.”

Hallie stared hard at it while dismissing her small flame with a thought and wave of her hand. As if it was nothing. Saldr would have been elated—or as close to it as the stoic Yalv could get. “What? How did you do that?”

“With enough practice and the right words of power, you could as well,” Navara said.

“Let us hope there is time for learning later. I fear you may have to use your power past what you are ready for. Assess the state of the Chronal Gate and repair it.” She looked to Ben.

“You will need to combine your powers to do so.” She glanced at Kase.

Her golden eyes glowed, but Hallie couldn’t tell if it was from the light or something more ethereal.

“You and I will do what we can to distract him.”

Hallie didn’t like what that implied, but they didn’t have a choice.

Then Navara put her own light out, and they were thrown into near-darkness, their only guide the flickering fire at the end of the cathedral past the broken arches and fallen beams.

“May the stars rise upon you,” Navara whispered to them.

It was Ben who whispered, “And may they not fall when morning breaks.”

Her heart was in her throat. She couldn’t swallow. But then Kase squeezed her hand. She looked up to his steady gaze, ready for whatever might lay around the corner.

She could do this.

With Kase’s hand in her own, Hallie strode forward, “Let’s go.”

Kase

LEAD FILLED KASE’S ENTIRE BODY as they wove through the ruins.

He was partly curious as to how there were ruins in the spirit realm.

Everyone in it was dead—barring himself, Skibs, Hallie, her parents, and apparently Navara.

So how were there ruins? If something was already dead, it couldn’t age.

Jack was the shining example of that being eternally eighteen.

That begged the question…what had happened in this place?

What horrors had visited a world meant for those who were already dead?

Kase might not have died, but each step they took made him feel as if he had.

He wasn’t sure if it was the burning smell still making his sinuses ache, even with whatever Navara had done to help, or the fact that Eravin probably waited ahead.

In the two times he’d faced the corrupted version of his friend, he hadn’t ended with the upper hand.

Only small mercies had allowed him to survive—Saldr arriving at the most opportune time, his father knocking him out of the way, and his mother using her locket to keep Eravin from finishing the job.

Shocks and bolts.

What was he doing? His hands were sweating—one around the hilt of the sword, the other around Hallie’s icy fingers.

He didn’t know if he could do this. He didn’t know if he could face him again.

And what if Loffler was there? An Essence wielder with the power to take out electricity might not be much use here, but what did Kase know?

Who knew what the old man could do that they hadn’t witnessed?

Between him and Eravin, did they even stand a chance? Did they even have a choice?

They reached the largest archway yet, the firelight brighter without anything to block it. Kase squeezed Hallie’s hand, trying desperately to keep himself grounded as he recognized the silhouette standing before a burning archway, another sprawled upon the floor.

Golden flames resembling the Yalven bonfire licked the furthest archway, ashamox billowing from the top and collecting above their heads.

“That’s not Stradat Loffler,” Hallie breathed. “That’s…”

“Eravin Gray,” Kase said in a voice that sounded entirely dead to his own ears.

His concerns about Loffler were quickly put to rest—because Loffler lay dead on the ground.

Navara breathed, “He’s taken the Essence power.”

Eravin paused his inspection of the burning archway, turning to observe them.

His features looked even more sunken in with those obsidian eyes, his too-pale skin stretched over jutting cheekbones.

His hands crackled with purple energy, Loffler unmoving at his feet.

A black, pulsing spider wound nested in Stradat Loffler’s chest.

I…I love…

Eravin was no longer the man Kase had known or the boy he’d grown up with. He was the monster who’d killed Harlan, who’d nearly killed Hallie and Kase himself. Who’d made the razing of Kyvena possible, whether he claimed to have wanted it or not.

He would pay.

Hallie’s grip tightened on his own. He glanced down at her white face and clenched jaw. He didn’t know what would happen, and he wasn’t sure they’d both survive, but he would still fight.

“He’s…” Hallie started, but it was too horrible for her to even voice.

Dark, sparkling power threaded with purple encompassed Eravin’s right fist.

“Jagamot.” Navara held her slim sword out before her with one hand and gripped a handful of Zuprium dust in the other.

Eravin took measured steps toward them. “You’re too late.”

It was the nudge Navara needed. She threw the Vasa into the air, yelling something in Yalven. A beam of light shot from that sword as she pointed it at Eravin, who dodged, deflecting it with his own power.

Hallie went to run, but Kase caught her by the wrist and pulled her back to him. He kissed her hard, desperation and the weight of what might happen crushing into her lips. “I love you.”

“I love you.”

And then she and Skibs took off to the side of the room, sprinting toward the burning archway.

He hefted his father’s sword up and sprinted toward Eravin, who’d dodged Navara’s second deadly beam. The far wall of the cathedral groaned with the impact.

He had no blasting idea how to use the sword and wished desperately for an electropistol or his hovership. Then he might’ve stood somewhat of a chance.

The flames painted Eravin’s face in red and gold, rendering his dark eyes into bottomless pits, far more terrifying than they had been in the Catacombs full of shadowed tunnels and lightless voids.

He shot that glittering darkness that had killed his father at the Yalven woman.

Navara parried it with the sword in her hand, the darkness absorbed by the beaming blade.

She winced, but didn’t hesitate before twirling on her feet, slicing the sword across Eravin’s middle, then slicing backhand when he sidestepped her first blow.

“Ah, a Chronal. Of course,” Eravin spat as he dodged once more, throwing out his hand. Purple energy shot from his hands. Navara threw dust into the air that roared into a wall of flame mirrored almost exactly to her body, like a self-shaping shield.

Kase could only gape dumbly at the power. Could Hallie do that? He glanced at where she and Skibs knelt before the burning Gate. He needed to keep Eravin distracted, and he was just standing there slack-jawed.

Eravin ripped a familiar dagger from the sheath at his waist and cut his palm. His face barely twisted in pain, though the cut was deep. Black, bulbous blood spurted from the wound. “ Varkl drak !”

It said something about who Kase was as a person, probably, that amidst all the terror and chaos around him, his first thought was, That helviter stole my King Arthur dagger.

Like he’d heard Kase’s thoughts, Eravin dropped the dagger and held up his bleeding hand. The ashamox above him surged toward his fingers, coiling around them and solidifying into a blade of smoke, veined in red and gold like a fiery slab of marble.

The blade flashed in an arc, glittering power shooting out with the swipe. Both Kase and Navara dropped to avoid the wave. It whizzed over Kase’s head, his curls rustling as if in the wind.

The smell of singed flesh burned his nose. Not his—at least, he hoped not.

He needed to do something, but what could he do against that ? He wasn’t special. All he had was a borrowed sword and a past riddled with grief. He was useless as anything but bait.

His sword, his father’s sword, might be able to do something if it truly was the Second Gate’s guardian.

That was what Hallie had been planning to do—kill herself by giving her power to it.

Could Kase get close enough to cut Eravin?

Would that be enough? Or would he have to stab him like his father had done Correa?

And would that only take the Essence power from him, or would it also destroy Jagamot?

What if Kase was wrong about all of it?

Kase swung around the back side, hoping to catch him off guard while distracted by the rather impressive Yalven woman who had lived the last forty-odd years of her life in a place where souls came after death.

He glanced at Hallie and Skibs again, their shadowy silhouettes ablaze against the Gate. They hadn’t moved. They had to fix it fast. He didn’t know how much longer Navara could hold Eravin off. Whenever that pouch of dust ran out, she was doomed.

Eravin laughed, shooting another purple-laced beam at Navara. “It doesn’t matter, Toro is dead.”

“He will never die!” Navara shouted, charging forward and throwing all her weight behind the next thrust of her sword, the tang now dancing with fire like that of the archway behind her. “Not while we have the other Essences.”

Eravin’s sword met hers in a flurry of black and gold sparks, metal singing a high note that echoed through the cave. Navara was skilled, but she was no match for the man several decades her junior. He shoved her back, casting out a bolt of purple energy laced with glittering black.

She dodged, but the beam grazed her arm. She screamed but rolled back to her feet, grabbing a fistful of dust and ground it into her wound.