Vengeance

Chapter 12

The sound of ragged, labored breathing drags my attention toward Ewen. He’s on his knees, sweat dripping in fat beads down his ashen face, each one cutting a path through the dirt smeared across his skin. His chest heaves violently, and the runes spiraling around his hands falter, their once-brilliant light sputtering like dying embers struggling against a storm. The glow pulses weakly, clinging to life—until it flickers out altogether.

His arms tremble as if the weight of the magic itself is breaking him apart from the inside. He sways once, twice, then slumps backward, collapsing into Lettie’s waiting arms.

“Master…” His voice is hoarse, fractured, the sound of a boy torn past his limits. “I… I cannot… continue.”

The runes gutter and die, scattering into nothing, leaving behind only silence and the faint smell of burnt air.

Ewen’s eyes, glazed with exhaustion and grief, search mine. Guilt carves deep lines across his youthful face as his lips part, trembling around the words he doesn’t want to say but must.

“I’m sorry, Master. I did… everything I could. But… your mother didn’t make it.”

The words land like a blade through my chest. Sharp. Irrevocable.

For a moment, my lungs refuse to work, and the world tilts violently, shattering around me. Pain seizes my ribs, a crushing, suffocating ache, as if something vital inside me has splintered beyond repair.

Somewhere, distantly, I hear a scream. High, raw, a sound too jagged to be anything but grief. It takes a heartbeat, maybe two, for me to realize the voice is mine.

Hands wrap around me—familiar, desperate—pulling me close, as if they can hold together the pieces of me already breaking. They whisper something, soft and pleading, words blurred into nothing by the roar in my head.

The world smears at the edges. Colors bleed into grey, sound into silence. Cold seeps into me, crawling beneath my skin, sinking into my bones like winter’s claws. My body feels both too heavy and too empty, hollowed out by loss.

And then—

You can still save her.

The voice coils through my skull, low and coaxing, smooth as velvet smoke. The syllables slide into me, settling deep, resonant, impossible to ignore.

Let me help you.

My lips shape the word before I can think, before I can stop myself. “Please…”

The world erupts.

Power tears outward from me, raw and unrestrained, lashing at the air like a wounded beast. Whoever had been holding me is thrown back, their cry swallowed by the violent surge that splits the ground beneath me. Stones tremble, dust lifts, the air crackles and burns.

A fog bursts into existence—thick, green, alive. It writhes and curls like serpents, spilling over my mother’s still body, coiling around her as though it has chosen her as its vessel. The air grows heavy, dense, buzzing with unseen energy. The fog smells of ozone and rain-soaked earth, the sharp tang of something older than language.

Electricity races through me, tearing along every vein and nerve, scorching and cold all at once. My back arches violently as a scream rips free of my throat—a sound not wholly mine, layered with something ancient, raw, other.

Call her soul back from the Nether, the voice whispers, but now it commands, urgent, insistent. Feel her. Remember her laugh, her scent, the warmth of her hands. Let memory anchor her to you. But hurry—before she crosses the Gate.

Memories crash into me, relentless. Her laughter in the kitchen, soft and golden like sunlight. Her lullaby, hushed and trembling, when fever burned me as a child. Her hands smoothing my hair after nightmares, warm and steady, a tether in the dark. Each one strikes with a painful brilliance, like beacons lit in a void.

Something inside me breaks wide open. The dam bursts.

Magic floods out of me, a torrent too wild to contain. My eyes snap open, and I see darkness crawling across my hands—black veins spreading like ink in water, seeping into my skin, coiling over my fingers in delicate, terrible patterns. It pulses, hungry, as though it isn’t just mine but something borrowed. Something claimed.

The green fog thickens, constricting, pulling tighter around my mother’s form. And then—her chest stirs. The faintest rise. Barely a breath, but enough.

Hope slams into me, fierce and blinding, like a second heartbeat inside my ribs.

Her soul has returned, the voice murmurs, softened now, satisfied. Bind it there. Hold her fast. Do not let her slip away.

I collapse to my knees, shaking so hard my bones rattle, and press trembling hands against her chest. My magic surges again, wild and unyielding, forcing its way into her body. The green mist spirals upward, climbing toward the sky, splitting the night. Lightning cracks in the distance, jagged and white, though no storm clouds churn above.

And I feel her.

Faint, fragile, but there. Hovering between. The tether stretches thin, but it holds.

“No,” I whisper, teeth clenched, pushing harder. “I will not let you go.”

Her chest rises again. This time, it falls.

Relief tears through me in a violent sob, but before I can hold on to it, my body gives way. My vision fractures. The world tilts sideways, spinning, and the last thing I feel is the cold earth against my cheek as the dark swallows me whole.