Page 151 of The First Scar
The sky overhead split, weeping light and shadow, bleeding timelines into each other. I saw flashes—futures, pasts, possibilities—layered on top of each other like pages in a book being riffled.
Half the rebels froze, staring upward at a vision of the Veil mended, whole, radiant.
The other half saw ruin. A widening void. The end of everything.
The ground lurched. Fissures split the basalt, pulsing with sick light, then dissolving into shimmering nothing. Reality itself was fraying—coming apart at the seams—and I was the thread being pulled.
I fought the ropes. Fought the power pouring out of me. Tried to pull it back, to stop the flood—
Nothing. I had nothing left. The fusion was out of my control, ripped from my grasp and fed into the Codex like fuel into a fire.
By choice or by chain.
And my power—the thing I'd spent my whole life fearing, hiding, learning to control—was tearing the world apart.
And I couldn’t stop it.
The ground bucked beneath my feet.
"Brannick!"
His name ripped out of me—raw, desperate. I found him through the frenzy. He stood at the edge of my circle, weapon in hand, face pale.
"Untie me! Godsdamn it, look at what he's doing!" I thrashed against the ropes, frantic to break the connection. "He isn't stitching the wound! He's tearing it wider!”
He didn't move.
His eyes—the ones that had watched me learn to trust again—flickered between my face and Kaelen's altar. Between me and the male who'd promised him a better world.
"Brannick,please—"
"I'm sorry." His voice cracked. Barely audible over the Veil's wail. "Little flame, I—"
He took a step back.
Not toward me. Away.
His weapon lowered. Like he'd decided this wasn't his fight anymore. Like he'd made his choice and it wasn't me.
"Brannick—"
He turned his face away.
Something inside me shattered. Not from my power. Not from my Marks. From the sound of his boots walking away.
The ropes bit into my wrists. The void-iron hummed against my spine. My power roared out of me, relentless, and the male I'd trusted stood with his back to me while the world came undone.
I screamed his name one more time.
He didn't turn around.
Soldiers swarmed the obsidian spires, swords catching the light of the Rupture. The Hounds ran between them, lean and nightmarish, blurring through the battle, howling, hunting. A well-oiled machine of slaughter. The King must have been so proud.
We were surrounded.
A rebel fell ten feet from me—a young male, barely old enough to hold a sword. The Hound that took him didn't slow down. Just tore through his throat and kept moving, muzzle dark and dripping.
Steel crashed against the edge of the platform. An Enforcer had broken through, blade swinging for a rebel guarding the altar. The rebel parried once—twice—then went down with a wet sound I'd hear in my nightmares.
