Page 146 of The First Scar
AMARIA
My whole body went tight the moment we crested the ridge.
A vibration that burrowed into bone, humming against my teeth, pressing behind my eyes. Like the land itself was trying to warn me away.
The Veil Rupture Site.
I'd imagined it a hundred times. A wound. A tear. Something that could be stitched closed with enough grit and enough power.
This wasn't a wound. This was amaw.
My ears popped. Then again. The pressure kept building and releasing—the air couldn't hold itself together this close to the tear. The Veil's hum had changed.
The ground beneath my boots was scorched black, warped and buckled like the earth had tried to crawl away and failed. Nothing grew here. Nothing could. The air tasted electric—with a rot underneath that predated me by centuries.
And at the center of it all: the Rupture.
A vertical gash in the sky itself, splitting the air like a wound that refused to scar. It hurt to look at directly. The edges rippled, raw and unstable, bleeding shadow that pooled on the ground and rose into jagged spires. The Nullatheon. Dense enough to cast darkness, but convulsing with sick internal light. Breathing. Alive in a way that made my skin crawl.
Behind the Rupture, visible through the gash like a nightmare glimpsed through a broken rib—the Veil itself. The mist had hardened into a pressurized membrane. Towering. Pale. Starving.
It convulsed, folding in and out like a punctured lung. Light fractured at the edges, warping reality until the sight delivered a physical blow behind my eyes. The air tasted of dissolution.
Kaelen's column spilled into the basin. Nobody spoke. A rebel near the front dropped her pack, knelt, and started hammering a ward-stake into the cracked earth with the butt of her sword. The first strike missed. The hilt skittered in her palms before shecould try for a third, so the rebel beside her took the blade from her grip and finished it for her.
Tent poles went up at wrong angles. Someone buckled unloading a supply crate and Brannick caught the weight before it hit the ground, hauling the crate onto his shoulder like it was nothing. A glyph-ward sputtered to life at the perimeter—pale, thin. We might as well have been warding off the ocean with a chalk line.
I stood at the edge of it all, Serenya's hand in mine, and tried to breathe.
My Marks pulsed. They'd been pulling toward this place since we'd crested the ridge—straining like dogs on a leash, eager for something I wasn't sure I wanted to give them.
Kaelen called me the cure. Standing on the edge of that abyss, I felt a lot more like the sacrifice.
Kaelen stood atop a jagged rise of black rock, looking down at the rebels struggling to unload a heavy, glowing conduit from the wagon.
"Faster!" Kaelen yelled.
Two fae stumbled under the weight, their legs buckling from the march. Kaelen didn't move to help. He didn't even look at their faces.
"The alignment is shifting," he barked, pointing a gloved hand toward the epicenter. "Get that void-iron rod to the altar. I don't care if you have to drag it. We do not rest until the circuit is complete."
The rebels scrambled to obey, fear overriding their exhaustion. Kaelen watched them with cold, terrifying focus.
I'd drifted to the basin's edge. The scorched ground ended in a lip of rough stone, and beyond that—nothing useful. Just the long slope we'd dragged ourselves up, already disappearing into dusk. My boots landed on the last solid ground before theRupture's pull started tugging at my Marks, and I was gripping the strap of my satchel hard enough to leave welts.
Maxx was leaning against the boulder beside me. No sound. No warning. Just arms crossed, one ankle hooked over the other like he'd been waiting for me to notice. His usual smirk was in place, but his eyes were keen. Watching Kaelen.
"Funny thing about the Uncrowned," he said, voice low enough that only I could hear. "They start sounding an awful lot like kings once they get a taste of the throne."
My stomach flipped. He met my eye with a swift piercing look. "If you want out before the flames rise, Flameheart. Say the word."
He wasn't joking. The offer hung between us, heavy and real.
Serenya gasped. She dropped to her knees on the charred basalt, scry-notes spread across the ground in front of her, weighed down at the corners with chunks of rubble. Her ink pot had tipped. A black river crept across the stone toward her knee and she hadn't noticed. One hand was pressed flat against the parchment like she was trying to hold it still—or hold it down. The other was at her throat, fingers hooked into the collar of her priestess robe, pulling it away from her skin the way she did when she couldn't breathe.
"No," she whispered. "No, no, no—"
I crossed to her in two steps, my knees hitting the basalt beside hers. "What? What is it?"
