Page 62 of A Soul’s Awakening

Ren. My beloved demon had come to rescue me.

The silver chains binding him sputtered, destabilized by the flowery magic incapacitating Alistair. Ren didn’t hesitate. He seized the opening, borrowing what little was left of my magic as the chains dissolved to free him.

In a flash quicker than my eyes could track, he bolted toward me.

“Don’t!” I tried to warn him. Mandy thrust her hand forward, power flaring as she reached for his mind.

Vines slithered across the concrete, coiling around her legs and torso in a violent snare, thorns sinking deep as she screamed. Stella stepped out from behind a pressure tank, petals swirling around her like a storm, her magic sharp and merciless. Ivy was at her side with Jacob, looking nervous as the scene unfolded. I didn’t see Markus, Alex, or Jordan.

With Mandy tied up, Stella turned her attention to Alistair. For the briefest moment, something crossed her face: surprise, hurt, maybe even anger. Then her expression hardened. The coldness in her eyes felt personal, like she was looking at someone she knew far better than she wanted to.

“Payback’s a bitch,” she growled, her eyes shining with a disturbing certainty.

The testing bay erupted into chaos.

The guard previously restraining Ren lunged first. Dense, crushing magic compacted between his palms like a gravity well. He hurled it forward but missed Ren and struck the outer containment circle instead, chipping the carving ever so slightly. The array buckled.

“S-stop!” My voice broke uselessly against the roar of magic.

The spell wasn’t finished. Caspian’s half-formed body still glowed beside me, bone and muscle barely holding together, light weaving through translucent skin. The tether to his soul trembled, unstable but so close to locking. My magic latched onto it in jagged bursts, slipping, catching, slipping again. Each attempt sent a sharp ache through my chest, the connection fraying even as it tried to take hold.

Ren ran right through the first two circles, reaching the outer edge of mine.

“Theo, I’ve got you.”

It was too late. He’d crossed the boundary, disrupting the process. The outer circle destabilized instantly. Energy rebounded inward instead of flowing cleanly between the arrays. Everything began twisting out of alignment.

Pain exploded inside my chest. I screamed as the pressure inside my ribs reversed, magic collapsing inward instead of outward. The backlash tore through me like a vacuum through shattered glass. The array searched desperately for the stabilizing anchor it expected to find at its center. Something I didn’t have but Ren did: a soul.

I felt it reach for him. It wasn’t gentle, and it wasn’t asking.

The array latched onto the presence of my soul inside Ren like a starving thing, trying to drag it into place, to rip it free and force it into the center where mine should have been. My magic surged in response, colliding with it and resisting. Ren refused.

“What’s happening?” Ren dropped to his knees in front of me, catching me as I sagged forward. His hands shook as he embraced me like I was crumbling to dust within his grasp. “Don’t—don’t die on me, Theo. Please.”

The pull intensified. I felt the array clawing at him, trying to tear away my soul, trying to force him into the spell. But he pushed back. His will, stubborn and unyielding, wrapped tight around what was his to protect.

He wouldn’t give it up.

“You can’t take it!” He roared. Even if it meant the spell would fail. Even if it meant it would break me instead. He had promised to protect my soul, and he wouldn’t let it go.

Magic shifted inside me as it reached and strained toward Caspian, trying to complete the summoning array to bring him back alive while connecting to Ren and my soul.

“The … others …” I rasped out. Even at a time like this, I could only think about their safety.

Ren swallowed, jostling me in his arms as he dissolved the silver chains of magic under his touch. “They’re all fine. They’re working on breaking the wards so we can get you out of here.”

Across the bay, Stella and Ivy fought to hold the line. Mandy was still tangled in Stella’s thorny vines, bleeding and unconscious. Alistair stepped forward. He was calm, composed, and terrifyingly controlled. He studied the collapsing magic array with sharp calculation.

“Stabilize it,” he ordered, only then realizing that the rift warden was unconscious and the technician had long since fled the scene.

His gaze settled on Stella, and a vicious, cold smile stretched across her face.

“This is payback for everyone you've ever tortured.” Stella’s words hit the air like a blade, her magic jolting me hard enough that I almost lost my grip on the array.

The sigils surged in response, but they didn’t settle the way they were supposed to. They slipped out of alignment, tried to reform, and came back wrong. I shoved harder, forcing them back into place, forcing them to stay connected to Caspian’s soul.

“What the fuck is she doing? She’ll destroy this whole place!” Ren held me tighter, protecting me against rogue magic and flying debris. I had never seen Stella use such terrifying magic. Whatever she was doing wasn’t control. It was an execution, and Alistair was her target.