Page 35 of The Cruel Dawn (Vallendor #2)

The world turns dull and gray, and all light becomes pinpricks in the gloom. Shadows stretch longer and deeper, and the air grows musty and stale. Eerie, dense silence surrounds us, like we’ve been covered by a thick layer of dust.

The horses neigh and buck—but they don’t leave us.

I jump to my feet, as if I haven’t just drained myself healing Philia. “Now what?” My mouth tastes of corroding metal.

It sounds like the foundations of the realm are rearranging themselves beneath us, stone by stone.

Separi gasps. “This place isn’t stable.”

“Isn’t it just…an earth-shake?” Philia asks, struggling to sit up.

“No,” Separi whispers.

The ruins of Fihel ring with growling. Red lightning flashes through the sky and a man—no, a being as tall as the marble arch, with white hair as long as a river, stalks toward us.

He wears a red loincloth, and smoke wafts from his nose.

Blood drips from his lips, sprinkling the ground like scarlet rain.

He wears black paint beneath his eyes. His long, pale arms end in blood-soaked hands.

“You aren’t real,” I say, my voice shaking. “I’m dreaming.”

The giant’s form shimmers like he’s caught between the immortal and mortal planes. The edges of his form flicker, but each step he takes is sure and solid, leaving craters in the earth.

If I’m dreaming, why is the world splitting open under my feet, and beneath Separi and Philia, too?

The giant raises his massive blade and drives it into the earth. The shock wave sends me flying backward, and I land hard on my left arm. My breath is knocked from my lungs, and I taste blood on my lips.

Philia clutches at her leg, which looks inflamed and discolored. The burnu’s disease is spreading through her veins like dirty water.

Shit. I wasn’t done healing her.

“This is not your place,” the pale giant says, his voice as full as woodsmoke and as heavy as the world.

Pressure builds inside my head, and I close my eyes before they explode.

“Look and see,” the giant demands.

“Who are you?” I whisper, peeking at him. “Answer me.”

“Look and see ,” he repeats.

I open my eyes and look up.

The Librum Esoterica is burning away my leather satchel. It shines on the bloody ground, but the book shrieks as if there’s something terrible caught inside it, piercing as metal twisted until it screams.

The sound vibrates deep in my chest and scrapes at my ribs.

The ground beneath the book warps and trembles as if the dirt itself recoils from its presence. Violet fire licks at the ground in ragged arcs. Where the flames touch, the ground melts, not into magma, but into a pulsing black hole.

The scream from the book grows louder, seemingly echoing from all directions at once. I press my hands over my ears, but the sound echoes through my bones.

That black hole in the dirt widens until the ground crumbles away.

I’m pulled toward it, my breath catching as the air around me thins. “Stop,” I whisper.

The shriek wavers for just a moment, but then it resumes, louder than before.

I squeeze my eyes shut. This isn’t real . Wake up, Kai . Wake the fuck up!

Cold, white fingers pry my eyes apart.

I slap at the hand on my face and glare up at the giant.

He tilts his head back and roars. Behind him, a mass of equally pale-skinned giants swing their curved swords at Fihel’s remaining houses and trees. All of it catches fire. The few humans who’d been hiding within those houses dash behind rocks and logs.

Are these giants the new gods of the golden tree?

Their chests are bare, their skin smooth and white as sandstone.

Their feet look like marble, cracked and glowing faintly from within.

With that unmarked skin, they aren’t Mera Destroyers, despite the precision of crescent-shaped blades, each swing leaving faint trails of flame in the air.

Their eyes are as black as that spreading hole.

These giants move in unison, silent as shadows.

The air around me grows frigid; my breath puffs from my mouth in a white cloud. Frost forms on the tips of my fingers.

One of the giants tilts his head toward me, a predator’s gaze locking onto prey. He bares his teeth at me, teeth flecked with armor, taffeta, splintered pine trees and giant cedars…

No, he isn’t a Mera Destroyer; he is a devourer . This Devourer swings his blade at me.

I duck, but the pommel of his sword smashes into my back, knocking me off my feet. I scream as I slam sideways into the thick trunk of a tree. My back burns as I fall to the ground, numb, unable to move. I taste my own blood, and I want to vomit.

“Go to him and surrender,” the Devourer demands.

I spit blood on the ground before him and growl, “I obey no one.”

“Then you will die.”

“I will not ,” I snap. “I’ve broken my chains.”

I weakly thrust my hands in front of me—but no power bursts from my fingertips. No flame, no wind, no lightning. The world turns gray around me, my arms weighing as much as the realm. I drop my hand as the world spins…and spins…

I collapse, face-first, into the dirt.

“Kai!” A woman’s voice.

I open my eyes to dirt and brightness…

A red cardinal flies so close to me that his wings brush my nose. I blink, shaking.

A hand appears. A gloved finger brushes my cheek.

Someone’s shouting.

Gray suede boots.

The ground beneath me quakes. I look up and see those marble-skinned giants stalking toward the horizon. Devouring .

“Kai,” the woman behind me shouts again. I lift my head, look back—

Elyn, in those gray suede boots, raises a sword of pure light. Her golden armor gleams against the darkened sky. Her eyes are as cold and sharp as her blade.

Jadon stands beside her, holding a giant broadsword—Chaos, with its silver blade and massive basket hilt. Beyond them, Elyn’s guards strike down the Devourers with their pikes. But the slain giants rise again, their deafening cries echoing across the ruins of Fihel.

I cough and shake my head in a futile attempt to clear it. I swipe away the blood dripping into my eyes.

Am I still dreaming? How is Jadon here?

The giant closest to me roars, bearing down on Separi, who runs from the battle, dragging Philia in her arms, with my bag containing the Librum Esoterica on her back.

“No!” I gasp, staggering toward them, Fury clutched tightly in my hand.

Elyn and Jadon give chase. The realm slows all around us.

Elyn hurls a lightning bolt at the giant, which hits his back and explodes in a shower of sparks. The giant falters but changes course, swinging a massive fist at Elyn.

She ducks, moving like the wind.

Jadon ducks in between the giant’s legs, slashing that enormous blade across tendons and bone in a spray of black-green blood. The Devourer howls in pain. He reaches for Jadon, but he is already gone, chasing the next giant.

This one Jadon left behind may be injured, but he isn’t dead.

Lightning crackles through my veins. I swing Fury, and a beam of radiant light strikes the Devourer in the chest. He stumbles, and his skin hisses and festers where the lightning bolt struck him. His fiery eyes lock onto mine.

Why isn’t he dying?

The giant raises his massive hand again, but before his blow lands, a flash of light shoots past me.

Elyn descends from the sky on blue-and-gold wings, sword blazing as it sinks into the Devourer’s neck.

Flames consume him from the chest outward as she severs the giant’s arm in one swing.

He collapses to his knees, his cries of agony shaking the ground.

More giants pound toward us, and I spot the red-eyed creature soaring over the battlefield. As it bathes us all in golden light from its open mouth, giants that we killed rise to their knees, resurrected.

“We must destroy the resurrector,” I shout to my comrades, pointing to the sky. “Destroy it and the rest will fall.”

Elyn soars toward the leather-winged creature, her silhouette a blur against the sky. The resurrector flaps its colossal wings, its glowing red eyes trained on Elyn even as its light grows brighter, even as the dead giants stagger to their feet, their wounds knitting together in flashes of gold.

“Kai!” Jadon shouts.

Another Devourer lunges for me. I bury my sword in the giant’s left leg.

Above us, the resurrector shrieks. Its massive head comes crashing down onto the bloody earth.

“Now!” Elyn shouts.

Jadon and I sprint toward the oncoming giant; I hurl a cyclone, and the giant topples. Jadon swings Chaos and cuts off the Devourer’s head. We don’t pause to celebrate. We keep fighting, and all around us, giants are slain.

One Devourer remains. He falls to his knees, his eyes flickering with hate.

Jadon, Elyn, and I stand before the giant.

The Raqiel guards stand behind him. While Jadon’s chest heaves with fatigue, Elyn stands tall and calm, her eyes and the dove hanging from her neck burning bright.

I pause with my sword above the giant’s head, Fury’s black blade gleaming with blacker blood.

No. This execution requires Justice.

I pull that clean, silvery-blue sword from my scabbard. Elyn gasps at the sight of her old weapon.

“Who do you belong to?” I demand of the fallen giant.

The Devourer coughs, and his blood speckles my breastplate. “Bring him.”

“Bring who ?” Elyn says, the Devourer’s face starting to burn and hiss in the light of her pendant.

The giant stares at Jadon. “Bring him .”

“Who do you belong to?” I ask again, my heartbeat thudding in my ears.

“He will leave if you bring him,” the Devourer says.

Both Elyn and I look over at Jadon, who says, “And if she refuses?”

The giant sneers. “Then he will snip your string, puppet. You will die, they all will die, and this wretched realm will come to its wretched end.”

“And what if I bring him?” I ask.

Jadon and Elyn both exclaim in shock.

I quiet them with a hand as I hold the Devourer’s gaze. “What if I bring him?”

“Then he will leave Vallendor to you,” the giant says.

But if Danar Rrivae leaves Vallendor with his otherworldly as well as those flying creatures that resurrect… “Which realm will he terrorize next?” Elyn whispers, reading my mind, her eyes cutting to Jadon.

I swing my sword across the giant’s neck.

…

My stomach twists on itself with hunger, but I don’t want to eat. The smell of Ridget’s pork chops makes me gag.

What’s wrong with me?

I sit beside the fire and stare into the flames, while Philia, Jadon, and Separi eat, laugh, and recount their exploits to each other as if they’re all the best of friends. Their joy feels distant, the weight of my thoughts impenetrable.

We’d left Fihel and found shelter in the forest again. Philia and Separi wove leaves and vines into canopies stretching between the trees.

Now, from a pit ringed by smooth stones, a fire casts long shadows across the ground. The trees look alive with glowing orbs hanging from their twisting branches—more of Separi’s handiwork. Beyond the camp, the Raqiel guards keep danger at bay.

As I watch the others laugh, I can hardly breathe with nerves. The bag containing the Librum Esoterica sparkles between my feet. My concern isn’t whatever awaits us in the wilderness. No, what I can’t understand is why Jadon is here with us, rather than locked up in a cell deep in the abbey.