Page 217 of Lana Pecherczyk
“Coward.”
“Self-serving cunt.”
The insults kept coming, peppering River like bullets until he collapsed onto his knees. He grabbed his ears to block the words, but they surrounded him. Whirledthroughhim just like the Well Worms had, looking into his soul, judging, weighing, spitting out.
“Tell me how you really feel,”Blake whispered.
The words he’d never said. The emotions he’d been too afraid to voice.
But now he was reminded of why he came here. He fought the oppressive weight and climbed to his feet.
“I love you,” he choked out.
Pain.
Step.
Pain.
He staggered forward, deeper into the badness.
“Should have said it when you needed to hear it.”
Step.
Step.
The hallucinations pressed closer, voices merging and growing vicious.“We trusted you.”
“We followed you.”
“We jumped.”
“Now we’re miserable.”
“Now you’re too late.”
The attacks suddenly felt … performed. Crafted. Too specific to be mere pain-induced trauma.
A spell.
Which meant a caster.
Which meant mana.
Which meant?—
River’s hand closed aroundPeacemaker’shilt. The weapon sang in his grip, power flowing through the metal, an impossible and undeniable force.
I am the river.
His chakram cleared its clip in one fluid motion, splitting into twin crescents. Steel arced blue and sang with accumulated power, cutting not through rusted pipe but through illusion.
Dark magic.
He felt it disintegrate, and then he was slicing reality itself. The suffocating walls shimmered, revealing stone and earth beneath false metal. The dragging mud dissolved into mist. Hismana flooded back, blazing through his veins. The pipe, the voices, the doubt. All gone.
Had never been there.
