Page 151 of Labyrinthine
No smile. No speech. Just flame.
And then the air comes undone.
Fire rains down in waves, not as bolts but as sheets—as if the heavens themselves are burning. I scream and drive my horse into a dead sprint, hooves striking sparks from the stone. The fire catches behind us, and then beside us, and then in front.
I summon my magic.
Instead of reaching for it—I demand it.
It answers. I don’t understand how.
Darkness coils beneath my skin, rippling outward in a blast of raw force. The flames recoil, and falter. Not extinguished, but slowed. Just enough.
The fire burns hotter.
The night draws closer.
The darkness pushes back.
The flames surge higher—blinding, choking, absolute. Heat closes in like a hand wrapping around my neck. For a moment, I can’t breathe. I can’t think. The fire takes shape around me, a wall, a cage, a maw. My horse stumbles, hooves striking sparks, her scream lost in the roar.
And then, the brightness breaks.
Not outside—inside.
The world does not go still, but my fear does. The heat peels back, the fire parting not by wind, but by a will not my own.
Light arcs across my vision, silver and terrible, and the air hums with power not born of flesh or spell.
Not mine.
Not his.
A power older than names moves through me.
The light before fire was born.
It does not shield—it claims.
And the voice beneath all voices calls. The gods do not speak. They resonate. Without words, without shape, without beginning. But I know them. I feel them—ancient, endless, stretching wide across the seams of the world.
This is not mercy.
This is memory, echoing in my blood. A summons older than time.
They are not kind.
But they remember me.
And they call me forward, as if I were always theirs.
I am not burned.
I am carried.
I tear through the inferno, wind roaring, ash blinding. My cloak ignites—I rip it loose and cast it aside. Pain sears my arms where sparks catch, but I don’t stop. I don’t fall.
The gates are close now. Twenty lengths. Ten.
