Page 92 of Tower of Ash and Darkness (Tower of Ash #1)

LAILAH

W ith trembling hands, I grab Zander’s reins and swiftly haul myself onto his back.

“Lailah, what are you doing?” Jason’s voice trembles, fear woven into every word.

My breath quivers as I murmur the words—not just a plea, but a spell, laced in the old witch tongue, the kind that twists the wind and bends the will of beasts.

The language feels foreign and familiar all at once, curling over my tongue with power I barely understand.

“Onaktuni onaktunai.”

It surges from me like an instinct, a command wrapped in desperation, and Zander responds without hesitation—muscles undulating, hooves slamming the earth harder as he drives forward, faster, faster, as if the spell has lit something wild within him.

The wind howls, cutting against my skin, carrying the echo of my voice as I repeat the words over and over, a prayer steeped in desperation.

Each syllable feels like a thread tying me to something dark and ancient, pulling me beyond fear, beyond reason.

“ Ride true. Ride strong, ” I whisper.

Zander pushes harder, his hooves striking the earth with a rhythm that feels like the heartbeat of the wild. The world around us blurs as if the very air holds its breath.

The path ahead stretches endlessly, each moment dragging on like an eternity. The sun filters weakly through the trees, its light fractured by the shifting shadows, painting the forest in hues of despair. The air hangs heavy, thick with the scent of sodden soil and the acrid tang of adrenaline.

The only thing binding me to reality is Zander’s relentless rhythm beneath me and the fragile hope that somehow, we’ll reach them in time. As we draw closer, my heart clenches, stuttering painfully in my ribs.

The scene before me unfolds like a vision from a nightmare.

Callum kneels motionless, an arrow buried deep in his chest, its shaft black as night.

The crimson pooling beneath him seeps into the earth, staining it like spilled ink across a sacred page.

The world feels wrong, distorted, as if time itself is recoiling from the horror.

Each step toward him feels heavy, like wading through quicksand that drags me deeper into unrelenting horror.

I dismount in a daze, Zander’s reins slipping from my fingers. The ground meets my boots in eerie silence, and I move toward Callum, my breath catching with every heartbeat that does not come from him.

His gaze meets mine—dull, fading, but still clinging to life—as I drop to my knees beside him. My eyes blur, tears beginning to prick as my face twists in disbelief. I stare down at him—the blood, the arrow, the awful stillness—and something inside me begins to crack.

When I look up, the world feels darker, merciless.

Casper looms over Vanessa, his hand clamped around her throat with merciless strength. Her head is tilted back, exposing her neck, bruises already blooming beneath the pressure of his fingers.

And yet—she’s smiling.

That sick, twisted smile that doesn’t just churn my stomach, but cuts straight through me. It’s grotesque, almost otherworldly, as though she’s drinking in the chaos with delight .

My vision warps, the edges of the world dissolving into shadow.

Rage and despair coil inside me like serpents, writhing tighter, fusing into something monstrous—something ready to tear me apart from the inside out.

Then it happens. My magic rips free, feral and unhinged, a violent eruption of darkness that sears through my veins and screams from my fingertips.

It tears into the sky like a curse unleashed.

A veil of black, opaque and unnatural, swallows the heavens whole, casting the world into a starless void. The earth convulses beneath the surge, groaning under the weight of my wrath. The air grows dense and strangling—even the wind dares not stir, as if the world itself is too afraid to breathe.

Everything stops.

Eyes turn skyward, as the world shifts, eerie and foreboding, like a scale tipped toward the unknown. I sense them, their eyes frozen in a mix of awe and dread, as if waiting for the world to crack open.

And then I feel it—like a whisper slithering through the chaos—my magic feels it. A faint heartbeat.

Callum .

The rhythm is barely there, fragile as a dying flame, slipping further with every breath I waste. It claws at me, yanks my soul away from the rage, from Vanessa, from everything but him.

I look down.

The black shaft of the arrow juts from his chest like a cruel marker of death, and for a moment, I can’t tell if the darkness around us is my doing or a veil preparing to claim him.

But it doesn’t matter—all I can see, all I care about in this moment, is him .

My hands move without thought, trembling with a savage desperation, the void inside me roaring to life—hungry, panicked, ready to do anything to keep him here.

Anything. The blood-soaked earth seeps into the fabric of my pants, clinging to me like guilt that won’t wash clean.

There’s so much blood—too much—and for a breathless moment, all I can do is stare, frozen, as it spreads beneath him, the ground drinking in what little life he has left.

Then his eyes flutter open. Dull. Distant. But they find mine .

“Don’t cry, Your Grace,” he whispers.

I shake my head, but the tears I’ve fought so ruthlessly to contain betray me, falling in hot, relentless streaks carving down my face like molten grief.

His body begins to feel too still, too fragile beneath my hands, like death has already begun to whisper against his skin.

Every second I watch him slip further from me, something inside me splinters.

I can’t let this happen .

My hands close around the arrow embedded in his chest. My fingers curl tight, slick with blood, and I brace myself.

In one breath, I rip it free.

The sound is sickening—flesh tearing, bone shifting, a wet crack that sears itself into my skull.

I nearly choke on it, bile rising, but I don’t stop.

I won’t stop. Blood spills from the wound, hot and endless, and I press my shaking hands against it, desperate to stop it.

My magic tears out of me, unrestrained, flooding into him like fire and ice, wrapping around his shattered torso, seeking, clawing, repairing.

Darkness bleeds through his skin, seeping into torn flesh, forcing it to knit together.

The wound slowly begins to close. Tissue reforms. Hope cracks through the horror like dawn breaking over ruin.

But then—his chest rises… then falls.

Then… nothing.

No.

My eyes narrow in disbelief as I cradle his face in my blood-slicked hands.

“Callum…”

My voice is hoarse and trembling, barely more than breath, a desperate reach across the chasm already opening between us. My hands clutch his shoulders, fingers digging in as I shake him—once, twice, then again, harder each time as I unravel.

“Wake up!”

The words rip from my throat, raw and useless.

I keep shaking him, as if my touch alone could pull him back, as if sheer will could anchor his soul to mine.

I beg—silently, wildly—for any god still listening to give him back.

Nothing stirs. Nothing answers. In the silence, something inside me splits so violently I cannot breathe.

And then… I scream.

It is not a sound meant for this world—it is not merely a cry but a rupture, a soul-shattering eruption of agony that spills into magic, detonating outward in a wave of destruction.

The earth groans beneath me as it expands.

Trees are ripped from their roots. Stone fractures and crumbles.

The very air recoils from the weight of my grief, the fury and devastation wrapped within it.

Shadows rise, thick and alive, coalescing into a barrier that slams down around us like a living wall, impenetrable and pulsing with something darker than wrath—something born of love undone. We are sealed inside a dome of shadow, the silence inside so loud it feels like it’s screaming with me.

I lower myself over him, my hair falling around our faces like a heavy curtain, my hands pressed firmly against his chest as I release everything I have left.

Every ounce of magic, every shred of power, every hope that has not yet been extinguished—pour into him in a violent, ceaseless stream.

Darkness floods from me, racing through the air, not gentle, not beautiful, but wild and furious and choking.

Black veins begin to crawl up my arms, twisting under my skin like vines as they snake up my neck and toward my face, spreading with an icy chill across my ribs and throat until I can barely feel my own body.

The magic claws through me, draining everything I am, and still I press harder, still I give more.

“Lailah!”

It’s Gwyn, pounding against the barrier I’ve created, her voice cracking as she shouts through the veil of magic.

“Stop. You’re going to kill yourself! He’s too far gone. The arrow hit his heart. You can’t save him.”

“No,” I choke out, my voice trembling as more tears spill down my cheeks. “Don’t say that. I can fix this. I have to fix this.”

“Lailah, listen to her,” Alias says, his voice uncharacteristically soft, almost broken. “You’re draining yourself. He wouldn’t want this. You can’t?— ”

“I can! ”

I scream, my hands pressing harder against Callum’s chest, the magic surging darker, more erratic. My sobs shake my entire body as I fight to keep him here.

“I can save him!”

“Lailah, please,” Gwyn pleads, her voice cracking. “You’ve done everything you can. You’re going to hurt yourself. Callum wouldn’t want this. Let him?—”

“No!”

I won’t stop. I can’t.

“I can still feel him.”