Page 158 of Veinblood
Stone surges up from the cavern’s floor without warning—jagged spears that force us to scatter. I roll left, shadows responding sluggishly as they fight against the crystal’s influence. Every time they touch a dead zone, I feel the drain like acid eating through my connection to the darkness.
Ellie moves right, lightning flying from her fingers insilver arcs. But when her power reaches the space surrounding Sereven, it too falters, the bright strikes stuttering and dimming.
Mira darts forward, trying to flank him while he’s focused on our magical assault. Her blade seeks the gaps in his defense, but wind catches her mid-strike and hurls her backward against the cavern wall. She hits it with a sickening crack and slides down, gasping.
“You see?” Sereven’s voice carries over the chaos as he forms ice spears in the air. “Thisis what true power should look like. Not your crude fumblings in the dark, or her uncontrolled lightning, but mastery ofeverything. This is how it used to be, before the bloodlines grew weak and diluted.”
A blast of freezing air sends me stumbling backward. Ice crystals forming on my clothes and skin. Before I can recover my balance, vines of shadow—twisted versions of my own—snake across the ground toward my feet. I jump over them, but more stone spikes force me to keep moving, never allowing me to find solid footing or mount a defense.
Everything becomes a nightmare of constant motion. Sereven doesn’t fight like a single opponent, he fights like an army. Fire and ice manifest at the same time, defying every law of magic I know. Wind tears at my clothes while stone spears seek my flesh. Shadow tendrils that mimic my own power lash out with killing intent.
I reach for Voidcraft, forcing an incantation through gritted teeth.
“Vauren tel korvash.”
But the crystal’s influence disrupts even that, the words dissolving into meaningless sound before they can take hold.
Varam charges from the side, his blade seeking Sereven’s ribs in a move I’ve seen him execute perfectly a thousand times before. For a second, it looks like he might succeed. Sereven is focused on his assault against me and Ellie, leaving him vulnerable to a non-magical threat.
Then Earthvein power sends a wall of stone shooting up between them. Varam’s blade strikes rock instead of flesh, and the impact jars the weapon from his hand. Before he can recover, a blast of Flamevein fire hits him in the chest. The flames consume him for a heartbeat that feels like an eternity.
The scream that follows will haunt me for however long I’m going to live. It’s the sound of a man being burned alive, raw and primal and utterly inhuman.
When the flames clear, Varam collapses to his knees, his clothes blackened and smoking. Sereven gives a flick of his wrist, casual as swatting a fly, and he’s thrown backward the same way Mira was. He hits the ground beside her on his back with arms and legs spread at unnatural angles. His eyes are closed, his chest doesn’t rise and fall. There is just a terrible, awful stillness.
My world narrows to that single, unbearable sight. Varam—my closest friend, the man who stood beside me through every battle, who never once questioned my right to lead—reduced to a broken form against unforgiving stone.
Shadows explode around me, responding to the grief and rage coursing through me. They tear across the cavern, seekingSereven with murderous intent. But when they reach him, the crystal devours them, and the feedback sends agony tearing through my skull.
“You bastard!” I launch myself forward, abandoning any strategy I had formed, any plan I might have conceived. There is only fury now, only the need to make him pay for what he’s taken from me.
Sereven meets my charge with a combination of fire, wind, and earth, all manifesting at the same time in ways that shouldn’t be possible. The attack sends me sprawling onto my back. I hit the ground hard, rolling to absorb the impact as best I can. When I come to a stop and look up, Sereven is standing over me, crystal shards blazing with a sickly blue light.
Blood drips down his face from beneath the crystal pieces, but he shows no sign that it’s weakening him. If anything, the carnage seems to energize him more.
“Do you remember when we were children?” His voice has taken on an almost conversational tone, as if we're sitting by a fire sharing memories instead of locked in mortal combat. “You always believed you could save everyone. Always thought your protection was enough to keep the people you cared about safe.”
I try to push myself upright, but my body doesn’t respond properly. The constant drain from the crystal's presence is making me weak, and turning my shadows thin and insubstantial. Even my connection to the void feels distant, filtered through layers of interference that grow thicker with each passing moment.
“I tried to teach you better.” He raises his hand. “Tried to show you that sentiment makes you weak. But you never learned. And now look where it’s brought you.”
Power erupts from his outstretched palm. Fire, and shadow, and ice, and stone, all directed at me with killing force. I try to roll aside, but my body doesn’t respond fast enough. The attack is too broad, too powerful, and covering too much ground for me to evade them all. My weakened shadows offer no protection against the onslaught.
This is it. This is how I die. Not in battle, but overwhelmed by power wielded by someone who was supposed to be my closest ally, my blood, my brother.
Then silver light explodes from across the cavern, as Ellie throws herself into the path of Sereven’s assault.
Her power meets his in a collision that shakes the foundations of Blackvault. Where lightning encounters his power, the air twists and bends. The sound is indescribable—like thunder made of breaking glass, like the earth itself is screaming in protest.
But even her intervention isn’t enough. The combined assault is too much for any single power to counter, and I watch in horror as the chaotic energies begin to overwhelm her defenses, pushing through her lightning strikes and getting closer to her body.
She’s going to die protecting me. Just like Varam. Just like everyone who has ever made the mistake of standing close enough for me to care about them.
The realization breaks something inside me. All the control I’ve kept over my emotions, all the strategic thinking that has kept me functional through years of war, and loss, and torture, and captivity. It all crumbles in the face of watching the person I love most about to sacrifice herself for my failure.
My shadows respond to the breakdown, becoming wild and uncontrolled. They pour out of me like blood from a severed artery, no longer following my commands, but feeding off the emotions I can no longer contain. When they encounter Sereven’s dead zones, they don’t dissipate, they turn violent, lashing out like whips.
Some reach the crystal shards themselves, twining around them and ripping them partially free. Sereven screams as they shift in his flesh. But it’s not enough. The crystal glows brighter, and burns through the shadows once again.
