Page 49 of The First Scar
It had drawn its own sword.
The golem's first step shook dust from the ceiling.
I spun toward the parapet's lip, voice tearing out of me before pride could stop it. "I need a—"
Brannick's hand crested the stone.
He hauled himself over the edge, breast heaving, a Mark-tempered blade clutched between his teeth like some ridiculous storybook pirate. He spat it into his palm and slid it on the stone floor toward me, still gasping from the climb.
"Already on it." He managed a weak grin through the sweat and strain. "Next time you need to borrow a blade, little flame—" Another ragged breath. "—just say so."
Behind me, the golem took its second step. Closer. The stone floor trembled under my boots.
I snatched the blade up. I spared him a glance but no time for gratitude. No time for the complicated knot growing in my chest—
"Stay down," I told him.
He didn't argue. He hung suspended on the edge, and waited.
I turned to face the golem.
It had made it to the center of the room. Stone joints grinding with every step, sword raised, runes blazing red across its torso. Ten paces away. Eight. Six.
Get it done, Amaria.
I planted my feet. Steadied my breath. And grasped for both Marks again.
The Light rose first—I didn't wait for it to settle. I tore open the door to the Shadow before fear could seal it shut, dragging the dark up to meet the bright.
For a heartbeat they warred, repelling each other, and I felt the fusion slipping before it even began.
No. Together. Feed one into the other.
I didn't push. Ifolded. Took the flare of Light and wrapped the Shadow around it, threading dark through bright until they weren't two forces anymore. Just one. A single pulse of void that was neither and both.
Null.
I opened my eyes.
The golem's runes flickered and it went completely still. Amber to gray. Gray to nothing. Both sensors registering, both canceling each other out—the ward's logic misfiring, confused, unable to categorize what it was seeing.
Light? Shadow? Both? Neither?
The eyes went dark.
The Stone-Wight slumped back against the pedestal, dormant once more. A sleeping beast that had decided, in its mechanical way, that nothing worth waking for had entered its domain.
I exhaled. My legs shook. My marks throbbed in tandem—the forced fusion had left them raw—and a static burn lingered on my tongue.
Brannick just stared at me. "How did you know that would work?"
I didn't. Not really.
"Lucky guess," I said, and moved toward the pedestal before either of us could see how badly my hands were trembling.
‘Golem whisperer.' Just what every girl dreams of becoming.
The pedestal sat at the room's heart. Black stone, worn smooth. Embedded in its surface—a tablet no bigger than my palm. Even from here it murmured. A heartbeat trapped in stone.
