Page 63 of Crown of Storm and Silence
"Taken," I say through gritted teeth. "Along with the fairy."
Elçin's expression hardens into something coldly professional. "Obur," she states with grim certainty. "They've been hunting this region for weeks. I've been tracking their movements." Her storm-gray eyes fix on mine with uncomfortable intensity. "They know what she carries."
The implication sends ice through my veins. "How many?"
"At least three that I've confirmed. Ancient ones, powerful enough to breach festival wards." She turns toward the fairy dust trail, her warrior's instincts already analyzing the path. "The old ruins—defensible position, ritual significance. They'll want time to properly drain her."
"Then we don't give them time," I snarl, shadows exploding outward as rage consumes rational thought.
The music stutters to a halt as my presence transforms the cheerful celebration into something from a nightmare. Children begin crying, pressing against their mothers' skirts as primal instinct warns them that a predator walks among them.
Through the chaos, through the fear radiating from every mortal in the square, I feel it again—that desperate cry from my child. Not just fear now, but pain. Someone is hurting it, and the knowledge sends me spiraling toward complete madness.
"The wolf's mate has been claimed by hungrier teeth."
Mikail's voice cuts through my escalating fury as he materializes from shadows between festival stalls. His pale features carry something I've never seen before—genuine urgency.
I'm on him before conscious thought kicks in, shadows erupting outward as I pin him against the nearest wall. My hand wraps around his throat with enough force to crack vertebrae, frost spreading from my touch.
"Where is she?" The words emerge as barely human sound, carrying enough menace to make reality itself flinch. "What do you know about this?"
"The ancient hungers stir," he gasps, crimson eyes bulging as my grip tightens. "Not my kind, but cousins twice removed. They taste impossibility on the wind and seek to feast on what should not exist."
"Where?" I roar, shadows lashing out to crack stone walls and shatter windows.
"The old bones wake in their tower of screams," Mikail manages, his voice strained but carrying that infuriating cryptic cadence. "Three miles northwest, where ancient stones remember the taste of innocence. They hunt what defies creation itself—light wrapped in shadow, growing in mortal flesh."
The reality of it settles into my bones.Obur.The old ones, the ancient parasites who feast on power as much as blood. The kind who would see my pregnant wife carrying an impossible child as the ultimate delicacy.
I release Mikail so suddenly he crumples to the cobblestones. Around us, festival-goers flee in all directions, their celebration turned into an exodus by the sight of their healer's husband transforming into something that belongs in their darkest nightmares.
"Take me there," I command. "NOW."
We tear through the forest—myself, Emir, Mikail, and Elçin, who insisted on joining despite my initial objections. "She's my family," was all she said, her storm-gray eyes brooking no argument as she swung into her saddle. Though my fury demands speed, the destruction pouring from me slows our progress. Every tree that withers, every creature that dies, feeds the poison but costs precious seconds. The ground beneath my feet cracks and freezes, killing everything for yards in every direction, while my shadows spread like a plague through the woodland.
Elçin rides beside us, her blade already drawn, silver-bright in the unnatural twilight. She doesn't flinch from the devastation spreading in my wake, her focus entirely on the path ahead. A true warrior, I realize—she's seen darkness before.
The destruction we leave will be visible for miles, but I don't care who sees the monster I've become.
The poison in my veins feeds on my fury, growing stronger with each step. I can feel it rewriting my essence, transforming me into something that would make my father weep with pride.
Through it all, the connection to my child flickers in and out—sometimes blazing with its terror, sometimes going silent in ways that make my heart stop completely. It's calling for meacross whatever bond we share, begging their father to save them from horrors I can barely imagine.
Small animals flee or simply drop dead from the sheer wrongness radiating from my presence. Birds fall from trees, their tiny hearts stopping mid-flight. Even the insects go silent, sensing that death itself walks among them.
"The tower of sorrows reveals itself," Mikail says quietly as we crest a hill, pointing ahead through the devastated treeline.
The ruins emerge from darkness ahead—ancient stone walls clawing at the sky, a tower that has witnessed centuries of suffering. Gothic arches frame windows that gaze out with the empty stare of the damned, and the very air around the structure seems to thicken with accumulated malevolence.
But underneath the stench of old death and accumulated evil, I catch it—lavender and sunshine, now tainted with the copper tang of spilled blood and the salt of tears.
She's alive. Hurt, terrified, bleeding, but alive.
The scent tears through me, violent and merciless. Not just her blood, but her terror, her pain, her desperate attempts to protect the child growing within her. I can smell violation in the air, can taste the particular flavor of innocence being systematically destroyed by creatures who find pleasure in suffering.
My legs nearly buckle as the full reality crashes over me. While I was playing with shadows in underground chambers, creatures were stealing my wife from safety. While I focused on my own corruption, monsters were beginning their feast on everything I hold sacred.
A sound tears from my throat that transcends rage and achieves something approaching divine wrath. It's the death cry of whatever humanity remained in me, the roar of a beast finally admitting what it truly is.
