Chapter 46 – Teeth in the Sky
910 Words
The wind carried the taste of the River Tarn long after they’d left it behind—metal and rot, as if the teeth had followed them in spirit.
They were two days into the climb toward the High Pass when Lira stopped, one hand shielding her eyes.
“What is that?”
Aurelia followed her gaze.
At first, it seemed like clouds—thick, rolling, gray. But then the shapes resolved: jagged white arcs, hundreds of them, moving in formation. They gleamed too sharply for stone, too smoothly for ice.
Teeth.
Teeth in the sky.
Rael’s hand went to his sword. “Tell me I’m not seeing—”
“You’re seeing it,” Aurelia said.
The sky-beast descended.
---
It was not a creature in the normal sense. The “body” was nothing but air and stormlight, but the rows of teeth—spiraling inward like the maw of some endless thing—were real enough to glint in the sun. They rotated lazily, impossibly large, some the size of watchtowers.
The wind howled as the formation broke, pieces of the tooth-cloud dropping lower. Each arc fell with purpose, crashing into the mountain slopes below, embedding in rock before splintering into smaller shards.
“They’re seeding the ground,” Lira breathed. “Infection.”
Dusk snarled, fur bristling. Aurelia could feel it too—the magic. Old. Hungry.
---
“Move!” Rael shoved them toward a narrow cleft in the rock, but before they could reach it, one of the descending “teeth” struck nearby. The shockwave threw them from their feet. Snow and dust rained down in choking waves.
Aurelia coughed, blinking grit from her eyes. Through the haze, one of the smaller teeth rolled toward her like a tumbling blade. She raised her hand, silver magic flaring, and shattered it before it could reach her.
The shards twitched on the ground. Then… began crawling back toward each other.
“That’s not good,” she muttered.
---
Above, the central maw tilted toward them. For a heartbeat, Aurelia swore she heard breathing—slow, patient, inevitable.
And then came the voice.
> I can cut it.
Her stomach clenched.
“No,” she said aloud.
Rael looked at her sharply. “Aurelia—”
The spear’s whisper was smooth as oil.
> Your magic is light against a tide. But I am the tide-breaker.
The teeth in the sky rotated faster now, the air vibrating with their motion. Smaller arcs rained down, striking the slopes in a deadly rhythm. One smashed into the rock above them, and Aurelia barely dragged Lira clear before it shattered.
> One strike, and the maw closes forever. You know this.
---
She pressed her hands to her temples. “Not like this.”
The shadewrought appeared again in the corner of her vision—standing on the slope as if the wind didn’t touch it, spear in hand. It didn’t speak, only pointed upward.
“Don’t,” Aurelia hissed.
Rael’s voice cut through the storm. “Aurelia, we need a plan—now!”
The spear’s whisper curled around her thoughts.
> He will die here. The wolf will die here. You will die here. Unless you let me through.
---
The next shockwave hit before she could answer. The world went white, then black. When her vision cleared, she was alone.
Rael was half-buried in snow thirty paces away, struggling to free himself. Lira was nowhere in sight. Dusk yelped somewhere under the drift.
The maw above opened wider.
It would strike again—this time directly on her.
And she realized, with a sick twist in her gut, that she didn’t have time to dig them out.
Only time to save them.
---
She reached for her magic—and found it thin, stretched, fraying. The spear’s presence, by contrast, was sharp, solid, immediate.
> One strike.
Her hands trembled.
The shadewrought extended the weapon toward her, black metal gleaming against the snow. It wasn’t smiling. It was waiting.
> Say yes.
She closed her eyes.
And took the spear.
---
The cold of it was absolute—so much that it burned. Shadows crawled up her arms, threading into her veins. She felt her heartbeat slow, then sync with something deeper, older.
When she opened her eyes, the world was… still. The teeth in the sky had stopped moving, frozen mid-spin. The snowflakes hung suspended.
Only the spear moved.
It pulled her arm upward, aligning the tip with the central maw. Power surged—too much, too pure. It begged to be released.
> Strike.
---
She did.
The black light that left the spear was not fire, not lightning—it was the absence of both, a rip in the world. It speared the center of the maw, and every tooth in the sky screamed at once.
The formation shattered, arcs dissolving into ash. The wind stopped. The clouds broke.
And then time resumed.
Snow slammed into her face, and she staggered back. The spear’s weight vanished from her hands.
The shadewrought was gone.
---
Rael reached her first, hauling himself out of the drift, eyes wide. “What did you—”
She couldn’t answer. Her hands were still black to the elbows, veins spiderwebbing up toward her shoulders. The cold was inside her bones now.
Far away, the Seer shuddered with delight.
“She’s begun.”
The god laughed, and another chain broke.
- Writer
