Page 43 of Veinblood
“I can feel it,” Ellie gasps, her voice strained with pain and effort. “Something is pulling at me.”
“Hold on,” Nyassa shouts over the roar of magical forces clashing in front of us. “Don’t try to control it. Just let your power flow where it wants to go.”
The cellar walls turn translucent, then transparent, and then they shatter. The void between worlds writhes with chaotic energy, churning and surging like an incoming tide.
“It’s working.” Nyassa’s voice is barely audible over the noise. “Whatever happens, hold on to each other.”
Energy tears through the air, static making our hair stand on end as electrical charges race across our skin. The light becomes unbearable, forcing me to close my eyes or risk going blind. My grip on Ellie’s hand tightens.
Then reality fractures completely.
One moment, Ellie is clinging to me, the taste of blood is sharp on my tongue, and the next …
I’m being hurled through the chaos that exists beyond space, beyond time, beyond any concept of existence my mind can process fully. My consciousness tears apart and scatters, while my body is crushed, stretched, and reformed.
Just as quickly as it began, the chaos stops.
My knees slam into stone as I crash down hard, pain shooting through my body as I struggle to orient myself. My vision blurs, the world still spinning around me. Every muscle screams in protest. My head pounds like it’s been split open.
Where am I?
The question comes through a haze of agony. I try to push myself upright and nearly collapse again as my arms give out beneath me. Shadows coil around me, as disoriented as I am, their usual smooth movements jerky and unstable.
Light streams in from somewhere. But it’s too bright, making my eyes water. Each ray feels like a knife slicing into my skull. I force myself to keep my eyes open despite the pain and slowly my surroundings start to make sense.
I’m back in Thornspire Keep. The same room where we faced Sereven, where our combined power struck his crystal and threw us across worlds.
But the room is wrong. Devastatingly wrong.
Half the northern wall has collapsed. Rubble lies scattered across the floor. Blocks of stone that once formed the ceiling and support beams have been reduced to broken pieces. Some are larger than a man, others ground to dust. The gap where the wall should be opens onto empty sky, pale morning light streaming through and highlighting destruction so complete it steals my breath.
The pattern of the damage tells a story I can read like a map. The force that did this originated from a single point—the exact spot where Sereven stood when our power struck the crystal. From there, the destruction radiates outward in waves, each successive ring of damage less severe but just as devastating. The stone itself bears scorch marks, as though it’s been exposed to a heat beyond anything a normal fire could produce.
I look around the room, expecting to find Ellie picking herself up nearby. But the space is empty, except for rubble and debris.
“Ellie?” I call her name softly, then louder when I get no response. “Ellie?” My voice echoes off the stone and returns to me.
I reach for the connection that binds us together, and the bottom falls out of my stomach. The connection is gone. Where there should be a pull toward her, an awareness of her presence, there is only emptiness and silence.
The absence brings me to a complete stop, my throatconstricting. I try again, reaching deeper, grasping for any thread that might lead me to her. Nothing responds. It's as if the bond between us was cut clean through.
She could be anywhere in the keep, anywhere in Meridian, or she might not have arrived here at all. Without our connection, I have no way to sense her location, her condition, or even if she’s alive.
I won’t allow myself to dwell on that possibility. Not yet. Not until I’ve searched everywhere. Sheisalive and Iwillfind her. She has to be here somewhere.
But as I examine the room, other details become clear that suggest it isn’t just Ellie I’ve lost, it’s time.
The destruction is recent, but I haven’t returned to the same moment. The most obvious clue is that Sereven isn’t here, and there is no sign of any of his guard. Stone dust is thick in the air, and the rubble hasn’t settled completely. Loose stones shift when I step near them.
It’s obvious some time has passed, but how long? Hours? Days? Months?
However long it’s been, it gave Sereven a chance to escape … unless he’s dead or also thrown through the void to another realm. Where he stood lies only empty space. There is no body, and no blood.
Something catches my eye close to where he was. Blue shards scattered across the ground. I cross the floor and crouch beside them. Each piece is no larger than my thumb, with edges sharp enough to cut. They show no signs of the power that hadbeen pulsing off the crystal before. There is no blue glow. No sense of energy at all.
Did the explosion destroy the crystal completely, or did Sereven manage to escape with part of it intact?
Standing, I walk over to the gap where the wall used to be and call my familiar forth. Shadows lift from my skin to become the raven. Once it’s fully formed, it launches itself into the air, and flies through the gaps. Through its eyes I see the full scope of the destruction.
