TWELVE: THE BREAKING POINT
994 Words
Bright did not trust himself for this longer, if he can do it. he can make her stronger even more. But that does not make him concerned even more
Bright stepped aside.
“Stay within range,” he said. Not a suggestion.
Princess Ember didn’t answer, she just moved past him. Because that was his mistake, as if the storm came fast violently
One moment, the sky was gray, the next, it was gone.
Snow swallowed the world in seconds, tearing across the mountainside in screaming gusts.
“Back!” Bright shouted, his voice cutting through the rising howl. “Ember, now!”
It is too late, because the ground beneath her shifted.
A crack, sharp and sudden.
“Wait..”
The ground collapsed and Ember tumbled down. That force knocked the breath from her lungs, leaving her gasping in silence. A searing pain shot through her side, intense and immediate.
It felt wrong.
For a brief moment, she lay there, dazed, as the snow began to cover her.
“What was that?" she asked herself, forcing breath back into her heart.
She tried to stand, her leg buckled.
“No. no, come on,” she muttered, pushing again, harder this time.
But she couldn't, her leg refused to respond. And above her, was the storm howled louder, like it had found her.
“Bright!” she called, her voice breaking through clenched teeth.
Panic crept in. When the wind swallowed it was a hole. The kind that settles into your bones and tells you exactly how this ends.
“I could not die like this,” she muttered, she was shaking despite her effort to steady it. “Not here. Not like this.”
She dug her fingers into the snow, dragging herself forward, ignoring the tearing pain in her side.
“Move,” she ordered herself.
“Move!” she tried again.
Pain exploded. Her vision blurred at the edges, white bleeding into white.Her body trembled violently now, not just from cold.
And since the mountain fell, fear slipped through and cut her control.
“…Bright,” she whispered, softer this time. Not a call but it was closer to a plea.
Bright tracked her by her scent, faint, fading, and wrong. His heart raced violently against his ribs as he charged through the storm, shifting mid-stride. Bones cracked and reformed, claws digging into the ice as he propelled himself forward.
“Ember!” he roared into the wind.
No answer. His hear tightened.
“Ember!” but no one answered.
He pushed faster, ignoring the way the storm fought him, the way the cold bit deep.
A figure lay motionless in the snow, an unsettling stillness enveloping the scene. In that moment, something within him broke. He rushed to her side, instinctively shifting back and reaching for her shoulders with urgency.
“Hey.. hey!” His voice was sharp, urgent. “Stay with me.. Ember!”
Her head lolled slightly before her eyes fluttered open..
“You came..,” she whispered, the ghost of a smirk tugging at her lips despite everything.
Relief hit him like a blow. And it twisted instantly into anger.
“What the hell were you thinking?!” he snapped, gripping her tighter than he meant to. “From now on, you are not allowed to go out alone in a storm like this, do you have any idea...?”
“I wasn’t alone,” she breathed, wincing as she shifted.
His voice cut through hers.
“You almost lost your control.”
The words landed. Her eyes sharpened despite the exhaustion dragging them down.
“I didn’t lose control,” she said, each word forced through pain.
“You fell.”
“I adapted,” she shot back, breath hitching. “The ground gave out, what exactly was I supposed to do? Fly?”
“You were supposed to read the terrain,” he fired back. “Feel the shift before it happened. That’s the difference between surviving and..”
“..and what?” she snapped, her voice cracking now. “Being you?”
That stopped him for half a second.
“You almost died,” he said, quieter now, but no less intense.
Silence fell between them.
The storm roared around them, but it felt distant for a moment.
“I didn’t,” she said finally. Stubborn one even now.
Bright observed her intently, noting the way her hands shook yet remained tightly balled into fists. He could see the pain she was desperately trying to conceal, alongside the fierce defiance that flickered beneath the fear she refused to show.
“You can’t keep doing this,” he said, lower now. Not shouting anymore. “Pushing past your limits like they don’t exist.”
“And you can’t keep deciding what my limits are,” she shot back, though her voice weakened at the end.
His jaw tightened. “Your leg’s not responding.”
She froze. Just for a second.
“…It will,” she said, quieter.
“That wasn’t a guess,” he replied. “I can feel it. You’re hurt.”
“I’ve been hurt before.” Ember turned down her head.
Bright frown. "But should not like this.”
“Don’t,” she said suddenly, her voice dropping. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
Ember took a deep breath before she said, " Like I’m someone that needs to be carried.”
Bright grip shifted slightly. "You can’t walk.”
“I didn’t say I’d stay down.”
A flicker of frustration, and fear crossed his face.
"You’re impossible.”
“And you’re insufferable.”
Despite everything, something almost like a breath of humor passed between them.
Then it was gone. By the reality of her condition.
Bright exhaled slowly, tension bleeding into something quieter.
“Argue with me later,” he said.
Before she could respond, he slid an arm beneath her and lifted her.
- Writer
