Broken

The cost

The Vault didn’t stop shaking for an hour.

Books kept falling. Dust filled the air until we were coughing.

*MARKED. THE HALLS WILL COME.* kept burning on the last page of the bone book.

Kade couldn’t stand.

“Leave me,” he said. Voice wrecked. “Take Tayo and run.”

“No,” I said. I tore a strip from my shirt and tied it around his ribs. His blood was warm. Too much of it.

“You did this,” he whispered. “You rewrote the rules. There’s always a cost, Ada.”

He was right.

It started in my hands.

The hand I’d cut to write in blood. The veins turned black. Like ink spreading under my skin.

It crawled up to my wrist. To my elbow.

Cold. Numb.

“The book is claiming you,” Kade said. “Because you used its power without permission.”

Tayo was panicking. “We have to get out. Now.”

Kade nodded. “The exit. Through the shelves. It only opens once.”

We ran.

Me half-carrying Kade. Tayo with the bone book in his arms because it wouldn’t let go of me.

The tunnel behind us collapsed the second we cleared it.

Stone and shadow.

We came out in a graveyard. 4AM. Abuja was quiet.

And waiting for us were twenty Reapers.

Vey wasn’t there. But his second, a woman with no face, stood in front.

“Seer Ada Adebayo,” she said. “You are in violation. Surrender the book.”

I stepped forward. My black veins were at my shoulder now.

“If you want it, come take it.”

They came.

I didn’t have Kade’s gold light. I had something worse.

I had the pen.

I wrote in the air. The words caught fire.

_STOP._

The Reapers froze mid-step.

_BLEED._

They all dropped, clutching their chests. Not dead. Just down.

The cost hit me instantly.

I dropped to my knees. The black ink reached my neck.

My vision blurred.

Kade caught me. “Ada! Stay with me.”

“Is it... over?” I asked.

“No,” he said, pressing his forehead to mine. “It’s just starting. The Halls will send everything they have now. Because you hurt them.”

Tayo was crying. “Don’t die, Ada. Please don’t die.”

I managed a smile. “Not yet, baby.”

In the distance, sirens. Real ones.

And above us, the sky cracked.

Gold light. And shadow.

The Halls were opening a door.

The last thing I saw before I passed out was Kade’s face.

And the words he whispered:

“I’m not letting them take you. Not again.”