Page 71 of The Fallen and the Kiss of Dusk (Crowns of Nyaxia #4)

ASAR

C urious, that in a lifetime of researching magical artifacts, the thing that no one told you was that they never stopped talking .

The chatter of the eye and the mask had become a constant hum. And yet, the further I fell into my work, the easier it became to let them guide me. After some time, my hand was moving of its own accord. I was no longer making conscious decisions with every stroke of ink or chalk or razor’s edge.

Once their presence was no longer unsettling, it became oddly euphoric. Natural. Each whisper pushed me further, unlocking doors I’d never even known existed.

{This way,} the eye would murmur, placing one stroke.

{Over here,} the mask would add, drawing my attention to another.

Time ceased to exist. When Mische went with Oraya, leaving me alone in the room, I could fall into it. Her presence tethered me to the land of mortals. Alone, there was no one but me, the voices, and my work.

I was working quickly now, not even hesitating to think. There was no need to think when I felt my next stroke so innately.

Distantly, I felt the strain in the world beneath this one. Like stitches stretching, preparing to snap.

This observation flitted by like leaves in the wind. Present, but insignificant.

I continued my work.

The pressure increased. I felt something crack. Somewhere, far away, a wail rang out.

{It is of no consequence,} the mask said dismissively.

Perhaps if I’d turned my attention to it, I could have done something. Perhaps I could have stopped the fracture before it grew.

But I didn’t.

I kept going.

{A little further,} the eye urged.

I barely noticed that behind me, Luce barked frantically.

That upstairs, people were screaming.

I kept working.

And finally—finally—Luce grabbed my wrist and yanked it from the wall.

My chalk fell to the floor. A sudden burst of rage at the distraction had me whirling to her, a rebuke already halfway up my throat.

“Why are you interrupting?—”

But then I froze.

Luce ran back and forth in front of me, whimpering and barking. Hurry, hurry, go, go ? —

And then, everything that had fallen beneath a frosted haze, as if I’d been looking into another distant world, crashed over me.

The screams. The pounding steps upstairs. The slight tremble to the ground under my feet. And the wound in the world beneath it, the one connected to the piece of me that belonged to the underworld itself.

{I told you, it is inconsequential,} the mask said.

No. No, it was not. This was a crack through the veil itself. Deeper than any other I’d ever witnessed.

Then the scream came.

It was the most vicious, horrific sound. It reminded me of the way Ophelia had screamed when I attempted to bring her back—that pure agony, amplified a million times over.

Luce let out a vicious snarl, all her hair going upright, shadows pouring from her lithe body.

Mische.

I bolted out of the room, Luce at my heels. In the hall, Raihn was stumbling from another office.

“What the hell was?—”

“Where are they?” I barked. “Where are they?”

The seriousness of our situation settled over Raihn’s face.

“They went upstairs—” he started.

Before he could finish, the floor split.

I grabbed his arm and yanked him back against the wall just in time. The crack slithered like a great serpent across the floor, shattering thousand-year-old mosaic. Darkness poured from it, and if one looked closely enough, they took on the shape of reaching hands.

Please, they begged. Help us. Help us ? —

Raihn spat a curse. A great crash rang out from above us, and my heart went frigid cold.

Raihn’s eyes locked with mine, an unspoken, terrible understanding slotting into place. He thrust a Nightborn sword into my grasp, and then we were running for the stairs.

My sword was sweaty in my hand. It was fine Nightborn craftsmanship.

But after I had wielded the axe that had killed a god and the mask that had crowned him, it seemed like nothing but a pathetic piece of metal.

Spiderweb cracks crawled over the walls, the stairs, the floor, as Raihn and I sprinted upstairs.

His wings, red-black, unfurled with a smooth leap, and he tore ahead of me, his blade drawn.

We reached the top of the stairs, and Raihn went flying backward, nearly toppling me over.

“Ix’s fucking—” he started, but hit the wall hard before he could finish the curse.

Fear settled over me.

True fear.

It had been a long time since I had been afraid of the creations of the underworld. Even at its most terrible, it was my territory—I knew its dangers the way I knew the darkest parts of my own soul. This was a horror beyond them all. A being that should not exist, not even in the bowels of hell.

A souleater, I thought at first—some new evolution of one, forced to the surface by the collapse of its home.

But no, it was more than that. Souleaters didn’t scream into my mind the way that this thing did, in a tangle of wordless pleas that drowned out the shouts and screams of the Nightborn warriors.

Souleaters did not reek of pain, because the wraiths they consumed simply ceased to be—an unfair end, but at least it was a painless one.

No, whatever beings this thing had consumed were still alive.

Hands and limbs reached from a sleek black body, ghostly silhouettes of countless dead screaming in unison for their release.

A strange gold shape clung to its head, flickering in and out of view with every lurching movement, and it took a moment for me to realize what it was:

A skull.

This thing had eaten a guardian.

A souleater, guardian, and countless wraiths, all in one.

It was horrifying. It was a distillation of everything that should not be.

It crashed through the glass wall of the Nightborn ballroom, roaring. Its face was a collection of smashed-together features— eyes too wide and too close together, mouth open and spewing blood.

Its body bled into the darkness around it, which made it difficult to say how big it was. But it rose up nearly to the ceiling, straddling the massive crack that had opened across the ballroom, dragging out into the gardens outside and the city beyond it.

Oraya was pushing herself up from the ground, dark red blood smearing the floor. And before her, protecting her friend even as she stared down that horrifying gaping maw, was Mische.

I swept into action.

Raihn and I moved at the same time. I dove for Mische, yanking her out of the way, while Raihn swept in beside Oraya.

The creature let out a chilling wail. Pl-pl-pleaaaaaa ? —

As it dove for us, I brought my sword down.

The beast squealed and jerked backward. Mische and I landed together in a heap. I pushed myself up over her, doing a quick sweep for injuries.

“That thing—I saw—I felt—” she stammered.

She couldn’t get the words out, but I knew what she meant. She felt it as I did. This wasn’t a fissure. This was collapse .

“Move,” I barked, and pushed her out of the way as the beast let out another wail and came down upon us.

The crack in the floor widened, more darkness pouring from it. One of the Nightborn soldiers tumbled into its depths, its wing pierced by a vicious slap of the creature’s barbed tail.

Raihn and Oraya, who had recovered despite a gaping wound in her side, now soared through the air, circling the beast, their weapons bared. Both were impressive—clearly god-touched. But no blessed weapon would do much against this thing.

Shadows gushed up from the opening in the floor, feeding the creature like a vampire sucking prey dry.

I grabbed Mische’s hand as I started to stand. Something wasn’t quite right with the touch. I frowned down at her—at the shadows that seemed to collect around her body?—

But Mische was already scrambling to her feet, shrugging me off.

“We have to close it,” she said.

She was right. As long as the crack remained open, the creature would draw upon it—and goddess knew what else would come through in the meantime.

But the gravity of this task momentarily stunned me.

This was bigger than what we’d done in the deadlands, and unlike the gates in Morthryn, we had no existing spell work to build from.

{Let it go,} the eye said, indifferent. {You will be gone before any of it matters, anyway.}

This thought filled me with defiant rage.

No. I wouldn’t.

I looked down at my hands. I didn’t have the mask or the eye, no. I didn’t even have ink or chalk or a razor blade. But I had something of some value, supposedly.

I drew my blade across my palm, opening a line of shimmering black-red.

Mische understood what I was doing right away. She grabbed the blade and did the same to her own hand, and I knew there was no point in trying to stop her.

Above, Raihn and Oraya dove and dipped through the air, dodging the beast’s attempts to grab at them. Seizing upon their distraction, Mische and I painted glyphs at the edges of the crack, my blood and hers smeared together.

How many? she asked.

Her voice was weak. My head was pounding. Another Nightborn guard fell, and another.

The truth was, I didn’t know. All I knew was, we hadn’t painted enough yet.

We hurried our way down the edges of the fissure, dodging reaching hands and grasping claws.

One glyph. Two, Four. Six. Ten. Twelve.

More? Mische asked.

It grew harder and harder to hear Mische’s voice in my mind over the desperate pleas of the dead. We were running out of time.

Two more, I said.

It was a gamble. If we hadn’t laid down enough, the entire thing would unravel when we tried to pull it closed, like the snap of an overstretched sewing thread.

But bodies rained down around us. The wails of the wraiths were growing unbearable.

Mische and I danced over more cracks, and more, and more, opening beneath our feet.

{It is not enough,} the eye hummed, bored.

It has to be enough, I snapped in response.