Born of Blood and Ash

The screaming ceased when I crushed their throats. The sound of cracking bones radiated over the capital like thunder.

I stalked forward, bursts of eather appearing over the courtyard like dazzling, silvery fireworks. Blood dripped from my fingers, splashing off the soil. My chest throbbed with echoes of death. I didn’t falter as what remained of the Cimmerian fell to the ground in clumps and pieces.

Ancient instinct fueled me, and a great howling wind picked up. I pulled the essence from the very air itself, as well as the deepest parts of the ocean. All across the land, dots of silvery essence appeared. The realm contracted.

Kyn started backing up, lifting his hand to blow me a kiss. “Later.”

Shooting forward, I willed the eather toward him. Primal mist poured out of Kyn. The realm split open, and streaks of eather whipped out, slicing through the thick mist.

The essence slammed into nothing as Kyn shadowstepped back to Iliseeum.

I turned to Embris.

A thin, silvery line tore open behind the Primal, and he shadowstepped. He was fast, but my rage was unending—madness pouring from a bottomless well deep inside me.

I rushed forward, grabbing Embris’s arm just as Lasania fell away. Violent power tore through the empty air with a scream, collapsing the mist swirling around Embris’s legs.

I fell from the sky into a field of corn, landing on my knees. I didn’t feel the pain as I rose, though. Looking around, I saw the green, rolling hills of the kingdom of Terra.

Ahead, stalks of corn shuddered, and Embris staggered to his feet. He whipped around to face me. I prowled forward, and the energy ramped up, building as stalks of corn bent sideways.

Embris shouted, and the air opened behind him once more, this time revealing the stu

The ground cracked under my feet, golden wisps of essence rising from the fissures. Eather as brilliant as the summer sun streaked out, searing the ground. The eather stretched between us, closing the distance between Embris and me. Essence rose, wrapping itself around his legs.

The tear in the realm flickered and then sealed, silencing the draken calls.

Embris’s head jerked around, his eyes widening. “You can’t do this!” he roared, flesh thi

I lifted my hand, silencing him with a twist of my wrist, shattering his jaw. “You will die in this realm.”

My words set fire to the corn, and the hills lit with an orange glow. The sky above me cracked open just as my heart had done when I saw Ezra’s face. Eather rushed down my arm, crackling and spitting.

All around me, the realm screamed, and I thought I heard my name in the loudest of them.

The valley shuddered when I rose from the ground, gripping Embris’s boyish curls. I twisted his head back and then struck, sinking my fangs into his throat.

The Primal shouted, and his energy lashed out at me, stinging me through my shirt and breeches. But I didn’t care. I drank deeply, taking in his blood—the very essence of the realms. I didn’t care that I had never really spoken to this Primal. I drank until I felt him weakening, felt his breaths becoming labored, and his heart falter. Only then did I tear my fangs free.

Silvery eather lit Embris’s veins, but it quickly turned golden. Blood leaked from the Primal’s ears, nostrils, and mouth, then seeped from his pores.

“You will not pass into Arcadia.” My lips brushed his cheek, peeling layers of his skin back. I dragged him into the air and away from the trembling walls surrounding Masadonia, the capital of Terra. I took him as far from the city as possible—from the bells I now heard ringing within the city’s walls. “There will be no long rest for you. No peace. You deserve nothing. You will cease to exist.”

The flesh of Embris’s throat had begun to flake off, golden eather flooding the rest of his body. I forced him to his knees.

“I am the One who is born of Blood and Ash, the Light and the Fire, and the Brightest Moon, the true Primal of Life and the Queen of the Gods and Common Man. I will give you what you deserve,” I whispered, but all in the realm, from the west to the east, heard my words. My skin tightened as I lifted my right arm. “I condemn you to the final death.”

Lightning erupted from the sky, striking my right palm. A jagged bolt formed, as hot as the Pits of Endless Flames of the Abyss. Guided by instinct, I jerked his head back and slammed the lightning bolt through the underside of his jaw.

The end of the Primal of Wisdom, Loyalty, and Duty wasn’t instantaneous.

Embris’s flesh tore away, and what was left of his blood fell to the ground, boiling until it eventually evaporated and his muscles and tendons dried out. He experienced the disintegration of every fucking inch of his body, starting with his lower half. I left his head—his eyes—for last, making sure his very last second of existence was just as terrifying as Ezra’s and Marisol’s had likely been—as my mother’s, the servants’, the guards’, and all those who were now gone were.

I let go, and his head shattered into a cloud of shimmery dust that spread across the cornfield.

Embris was gone.

And it did nothing to assuage my rage or sorrow. It only grew.

I stepped back as particles of eather began pulsing and expanding where Embris once knelt, coming together to form a ball of softly glowing energy.

Something was happening.

Tiny hairs rose all over my body, and energy pressed down, forcing me to move back even farther.

The ball of energy drifted into the sky and climbed until it was among the stars, throbbing all the while.

Everything stopped.

My breath.

My heart.

The realms.

Eather seeped from the top and bottom of the orb, then from its left and right. What remained of Embris’s essence shuddered—

Then erupted in a blinding light, streaking to the north and south, then the west and east of the realms.

In the distance, half the Masadonia Rise came down. I could hear windows shattering as a scorching wind blew through Terra. For a brief second, I saw pink trees similar to those lining the Golden Bridge, as well as the moonlight-kissed thatched roofs of farmsteads and villages. I saw people ru

A flash of intense silver cut through the night sky, and the arrival of another Primal thudded in my chest. In the shadow of the still-rising, deadly tsunami, I saw Phanos’s silhouette. He thrust his essence-lit trident into the wave with a shout, calling forth a roar of powerful wind from all directions. Eather erupted from the trident, exploding into a silvery web that pushed the wave down.

The ground trembled where I stood once more, making me drag my gaze from Phanos. Where the villagers had fallen, shells of packed, hard ash now encased them. Hundreds of them were forever frozen, some sprawled on the ground in clusters. Families. Others were alone on their knees, their arms shielding their heads or raised as if they’d spent their last seconds praying to gods who would not answer.

Because we had brought this ruin upon them.

Fine fissures appeared where Embris had knelt and spread all the way into Masadonia. Small saplings wiggled free of the cracks all around me, growing, expanding, and rapidly becoming thick trunks with glossy, bleeding bark. Hundreds of trees. Thousands. Limbs sprouted like bony fingers, misshapen and bent. Buds sprouted from branches and unfurled.

From where the lower mountains of the Undying Hills once stood to the half-shattered Rise of Masadonia, a forest of dark crimson leaves and glistening bark rose forebodingly in the stark moonlight.

The once bountiful fields of Terra were no more. In their place was a forest birthed from soil drenched in Primal essence and mortal blood. A tomb.

The temperature dropped until I could see my breath, but it did nothing to cool my fury. Dark, choking rage rose like a seething storm, swallowing me. It was like a tempest of darkness roaring through my veins, consuming everything in its path, urging me to crush. Obliterate. It was in every heartbeat, like an echo of wrath with a name as I opened a tear in the realm.

Kolis.