Page 76 of Labyrinthine
And it’s fueling the darkness locked in me.
Then I see him.
Darian.
Still inside the storm. Still standing.
His back is arched, his body taut with agony. His hands shake around the hilt of his sword, still buried in the Obcasus. His face tips to the sky. His mouth opens in a soundless roar as the shadows tear at him.
But he does not fall.
He endures.
He breaks the storm open with nothing but his will.
He roars—not in pain, but defiance—and the gale answers him. It flares, shrieks, trembles on the edge of unraveling. Then, piece by piece, it yields. The darkness recoils from his skin, shattering around his form like a mirror struck by lightning. Hedoesn’t destroy it with brute force. He refuses it. Commands it. Bends it until it breaks.
The Obcasus fractures.
Splits into a thousand shards of shadow and disappears, as if it had never been there. As if death itself bowed its head and retreated.
The crowd erupts.
Darian crumples.
He sinks to his knees, his sword falling beside him. The remaining tributes rush forward—some to help, some just to touch him. His chest rises and falls like he’s been dragged from the edge of a cliff. One tries to steady him, but Darian flinches like he’s been burned—like whatever just touched him was worse than the Obcasus.
I sway.
Mallen catches me. His arm bands across my back like steel.
Too steady. Too possessive.
“You saw it too,” I whisper, my voice trembling. “He mastered the Obcasus.”
“It’s the labyrinth, then,” Mallen replies.
He doesn’t sound disappointed that there will be a third trial. Or concerned. He’s not blinking. Not breathing. His gaze is locked on Darian like a man watching a funeral procession. And when he speaks, it’s not with fear or doubt—it’s with a calm that fractures at the edges. As if every word is threaded with rust. Or something long buried in him is clawing its way back to the surface.
“Let’s see how he fares against what waits inside.”
His fingers flex against my spine, not with comfort but control.
He’s unraveling. Not openly, but it’s there. In the grip that holds me too long, and the fingers that cling a little too tight.In the way his gaze lingers on Darian with a look that holds no respect.
I should pull away, but, right now, I need him.
I look down at the place where the Obcasus vanished.
The ground still pulses faintly. And I feel it.
Not just beneath my feet.
Inside me.
Cold. Familiar. Insatiable.
The Obcasus wasn’t just reacting to Darian. It was watching me. Itknewme.
