Page 151 of Mantle

It was a good thing he’d acted fast because then wards shot up courtesy of Nyx, Mom, and Dad, a rainbow of colors forming a massive dome over the forest.

It was only moments later that the True Celestials arrived, flying above the dome, fifty of them.

One was nearly impossible for a non-Celestial being to take down.

“Fuck me,” Kai breathed.

A snarl sounded from Vorzyr, and then he was shifting into full dragon form, soaring up through the ward itself without actually harming it, and then his Primal Celestial Resonance shot out in white blinding light, spreading out and firing at five Celestials at once. They screamed as he tore into them with it, essentially stripping their power away bit by bit.

I watched Grandfather head for the other side, out of the way of Vorzyr’s ability, as he let out a battle cry and went for our enemies.

Kai turned to me. “You’ve got this. End this madness, Ari.”

With that, he levitated up toward Vorzyr.

I saw Nyx holding up the wards, strengthening them with Dad right beside him, while Mom headed up, her wings out in all their glory, as she went to back up Kai and Vorzyr.

Cassius unfurled his wings, too. “Begin,” he said, before soaring up into the sky at incredible speed, headed not into battle on this plane, but to another on the Celestial Plane.

“Ready, Kindred?” Ketheron asked me, looking at me with so much concern as he saw my hands shaking.

“It’s just adrenaline. I’m okay.” I stepped up to the headstone and called my power, as he did the same, silver and gold fueling through the Hidden Stone and driving down into the earth as we established the anchor on this side of things.

We just needed Cassius to do the same on his end.

In the meantime, Ketheron would send his power toward the Celestial Plane to destroy the link while infused with mine and the lack of tether I had to them which would allow me to challenge it, challenge them—the thing that was allowing this spell to be possible at all.

The Hidden Stone pulsed beneath our hands, threads of silver and gold engraving themselves into the forest floor, spreading in every direction like a map of everything that had ever been broken.

I closed my eyes.

Felt the threads.

Feltthem.

The tether between this world and theirs—spun not just from power, but fromcontrol.

No more.

My power flared white-hot, fed by rage, by love, by generations of silence ready to be shattered.

The Wrath of Hades glowed behind us, soon no longer to be an instrument of death to those like me.

Ketheron cried out, and I caught him with one hand while the other stayed on the stone.

Come on, Cassius.

32

~Cassius~

This plane was no home to me.

In truth, it had been more akin to a prison.

Especially lately.

As I’d been awakened to the injustice and the true brutality that they manipulated from view so well.

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