Chapter 33: The Shattering
729 Words
The wall stood between two cliffs, a shimmering translucent veil that pulsed with an icy rhythmic light. It looked like a ripple in the fabric of reality. Elara stood before it, the wind whipping her hair across her face. Her chest felt hollow, a strange lingering sense of loss gnawing at her, though she couldn't name what she was missing.
She didn't reach for her power. She didn't summon the light. She walked up to the barrier and placed her palms against it. It felt like pressing her hands into liquid nitrogen.
She closed her eyes and began to think. She thought of Morwen, the woman who had guided her, dead in the dirt. She thought of Kael’s mother, a woman she’d only known through stories and the tragic legacy left behind. She thought of the boy in the rubble, a young terrified soul she hadn't been able to save. She thought of the emptiness inside her, that strange newly carved out space.
She let the dam break.
The first sob ripped through her, a jagged raw sound. She pressed her forehead against the shimmering surface. She wasn't just crying for herself; she was crying for the injustice, for the cruelty, for the thirty years Kael’s father had spent in this wretched cage.
I am so sorry, she thought, her shoulders shaking violently. I am so sorry for everything.
The barrier began to hiss. The light, usually so steady and cold, started to flicker, turning from a brilliant silver to a frantic erratic grey.
On the other side, Kael gasped. He was kneeling in the dark, his hands shackled, but he felt it, a sudden overwhelming surge of emotion rushing through the bond they shared. It wasn't pain. It was love. It was a deluge of raw unadulterated human empathy.
Kael looked up, his own eyes brimming. He understood. She was doing this for him.
His father, Aldric, sat slumped in the corner, his gaze vacant. But as the waves of Elara’s grief washed over the space, his eyes widened. The fog that had clouded his mind for three decades began to thin. He looked at his hands, then at Kael. The silence of the prison was broken by the sound of his own shaky labored breaths.
"Elara?" Kael whispered, his voice cracking. He started to cry, the long repressed sorrow of his life finally finding a release.
The barrier began to spiderweb. Tiny fissures of white light shot across the surface. It groaned, a sound like a glacier splintering.
Elara didn't stop. She cried until her throat burned, until her vision blurred into a sea of tears. She poured every ounce of her longing and her love into the barrier.
With a sound like a glass sky shattering, the barrier exploded.
Fragments of light rained down like snow, vanishing before they hit the ground. Elara stumbled forward, her knees giving out, but she didn't hit the dirt. Kael was there, his arms catching her. The shackles on his wrists had shattered along with the barrier, the iron falling away like dust.
Aldric slumped forward, his head hitting the ground, then he lifted it slowly. He looked up, his eyes no longer milky and vacant, but a warm piercing brown. He took a deep jagged breath, as if he were tasting the air for the first time in an age.
Kael held Elara tightly, both of them trembling in the sudden silence of the moor.
"You came back," Kael breathed into her hair.
Elara pulled back, laughing through her tears. "I told you I would."
Aldric stood up, his movements stiff and unpracticed. He looked at Kael, then at Elara. He tilted his head, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips. "She’s the one."
Kael nodded, his voice breaking. "She’s the one."
"Good," Aldric said, his voice raspy but steady. "You always did have better taste than me."
"Good," Aldric said, his voice raspy but steady. "You always did have better taste than me."
She laughed through her tears.
Then stopped.
Aldric was staring at something behind her.
Something that had drained every trace of color from his face.
"Aldric?" she whispered.
His hand tightened around hers.
"Tell me something..." His voice broke.
"If the man I killed ten years ago is standing behind you..."
He swallowed hard.
"...then who have I been all this time?”
- Writer
