A Harmony of Ages, page 10
Rafe reached for his own magic, trying to read the flow of power. Pain lanced through his chest. His core was nearly empty, burned out from the bridge and a dozen impossible fights before that, but he forced a trickle of energy into his senses anyway, just enough to follow the thread.
Through the current, he caught it. The faintest trace of Vesper.
Rafe’s hand tightened against the crumbling wall. He pulled harder on his magic, ignoring the pain, trying to follow the thread back to its source. The connection flickered, wavered, then vanished entirely.
But it had been there. She was here.
He started walking again, faster now. The pull grew stronger with each step, dragging him forward. His exhaustion fell away, replaced by a hope he hadn’t dared to allow himself to feel.
He followed the draw deeper into the Spirefields. The surrounding buildings groaned, their foundations crumbling. A townhouse tilted further as he passed, its windows frozen in mid-shatter. Glass hovered across the street, glittering in the strange light that filtered through the warped sky.
The streets narrowed. Twisted. Rafe’s sense of direction failed him, but his feet found the path anyway. Past the twisted remains of what might have been a square, now collapsed into a crater. Through an alley that folded in on itself, the walls pressing close enough to touch on both sides. Toward the edge of the quarter where the First Families had built their estates.
Where his family had built their estate.
The realisation hit him before he saw the gates. Of course. Of course it would be here. At the place where seven mages had first caged the Echo two thousand years ago. Where Nightreach was born.
When the iron gates appeared through the gloom, Rafe stopped.
The seven-pointed star crest stared back at him from the metalwork. The gates stood open. The estate was revealed, so that meant the wards were gone… He’d walked through these gates once and felt the magic respond to him, pulling him forward, welcoming him home to a place he’d never known existed. The estate had opened for him like it had been waiting centuries for a Rowe to return.
Now there was nothing. Just cold iron and silence.
Rafe approached cautiously, his hand hovering near the dagger at his belt. Not that it would do much good against whatever waited inside.
Beyond the gates, the grounds stretched before him, wild and overgrown. The ancient blood magic woven into every stone, every blade of grass, had been stripped away. Ripped out by the roots and consumed by whatever was feeding on this place.
Anyone could walk in now…and anyone could be here.
Rafe moved toward the manor, his boots crushing dead leaves. The sound seemed too loud in the unnatural quiet. No birds. No insects. No wind. Just his footsteps and the ragged sound of his breathing.
His core burned hotter, responding to something he couldn’t see. The draw of power intensified, coming from beneath the estate…or perhaps through it or even around it. Whatever it was, it didn’t make any sense.
Rafe closed his eyes and reached for his magic again. Pain flared, but he pushed through it. Felt the currents of power flowing around the estate. Felt the wrongness at the heart of it all.
And understood.
An anchor. A liminal space had been created here.
Rafe had visited such a place before. When he’d gone to bargain with the Nightweaver—Tenebrae—for the shadow-touched crystal, desperate for anything that might help them fight D’Arco, to finish Selene’s ritual and find the Echo. The entity had taken him to a pocket between worlds, a space that existed in the cracks of reality. A place where normal rules didn’t apply.
Tenebrae had taken Rafe’s pendant as payment. The pendant that marked him as a Rowe, though he hadn’t known it at the time. He hadn’t understood what he was giving away or why the Arcana had wanted it so badly.
But Tenebrae had known. No doubt he’d recognised the bloodline. He’d been planning this for longer than Rafe wanted to think about.
He stared at the manor now, feeling the edges of that liminal space pressing against the world. Tenebrae was here with Vesper just beyond his reach, trapped in shadow between worlds where Rafe couldn’t follow. Where no one could follow unless they knew the way in.
The magic of the Spirefields was being fed into that prison. Slowly draining the quarter, pulling power from the foundations themselves, to maintain Tenebrae’s cage.
To keep Vesper trapped.
Rafe’s hands clenched into fists. Rage and helplessness warred inside him. He’d come so far, searched for so long, and she was right here.
But he couldn’t reach her.
He couldn’t stand against the Arcana holding her prisoner.
A sound behind him made Rafe turn.
Shadow mages emerged from the manor, from the gardens, from behind the ruined statuary that dotted the grounds. Eight of them, maybe more. They moved silently, spreading out across the overgrown lawn. They circled him like hunters who’d already cornered their prey.
Rafe’s core flared as he pulled what magic he had left. Pain shot through his chest, but he forced power into his hands anyway. His vision blurred at the edges, black spots dancing across his sight.
He couldn’t win this fight. His magic was nearly gone, his body exhausted beyond reason. Eight trained shadow mages against one burned out fool who could barely stand.
The smart move was to run. Retreat. Regroup with Praxis and come back with reinforcements.
But he wouldn’t run. Not when Vesper was here. Not when he’d already failed her once by not being strong enough, fast enough, clever enough to stop Tenebrae at the ritual site. To stop her merging with the fragments at Saint Aldwin’s. To help her when she was already fracturing under the pressure of the Echo. He should have been with her…always.
They’d never had time. That was what ate at him most. All those moments stolen by crisis and danger. The brief snatches of peace between battles. The conversations cut short by new threats. The future they’d talked about in whispers, like saying it too loud might jinx it.
A proper life together. A chance to just exist without the weight of the world crushing them.
And now she was gone, and he’d never told her half the things he should have said.
The first mage attacked without warning. Shadow magic lashed out, and Rafe threw himself sideways, rolling behind a collapsed section of wall. Stone exploded where he’d been standing, shards of rock peppering his back.
He came up firing, a concentrated burst of energy that caught the mage in the chest. The woman went down hard, her body crumpling into the overgrown grass.
Two more closed in from the left. Rafe used the terrain, scrambling over hedges gone wild and ducking behind crumbling statues. His ancestors had decorated these grounds with marble figures, forgotten gods and heroes frozen in stone. Now they served as cover while he fought for his life on land that should have been his birthright.
A blade whistled past his ear. Rafe retaliated with a blast of raw force, no finesse left in him, just desperation. The mage stumbled back, clutching his chest.
Every spell he cast drained him further. His core was a screaming void, empty and burning. He pulled power from places he shouldn’t, scraping at reserves that didn’t exist. His hands shook. Sweat ran down his face, mixing with blood from a cut he didn’t remember receiving.
A mage rushed him from behind. Rafe spun, too slow, and shadow magic caught him across the shoulder. The spell tore through cloth and skin, hot agony racing down his arm. He bit back a cry and channelled the pain into fury, his magic lashing out wild and uncontrolled.
The mage’s shield shattered. Rafe’s follow-up strike with his dagger caught him in the throat.
Three down. Five still standing.
Rafe’s legs shook. His vision swam. He backed toward the manor wall, trying to keep all the attackers in his line of sight. Blood dripped from his shoulder, warm and sticky against his skin.
A mage moved in from the right, confident now. Rafe could see it in the way she stalked forward, shadow magic coiling around her hands. She thought he was finished.
She wasn’t wrong.
Rafe gathered what little magic remained and threw it at her in a desperate burst. She dodged easily, laughing, and countered with a blast that sent him sprawling. His back hit the wall hard enough to drive the air from his lungs.
A mage rushed him. Rafe sidestepped, his body moving on instinct alone, and took a fist to the ribs. The air left his lungs in a rush. He dropped to one knee, gasping, and barely got a shield up before shadow magic crashed into him.
The ward held for a heartbeat. Two. Then shattered, and the backlash sent fresh agony through his burned core.
The world tilted. His magic guttered out entirely, gone like a light switched off.
This was it, then. Vesper was here, she was here, and he would die in the gardens of his family’s estate without ever reaching her.
At least he’d tried…
Then everything changed.
The air pressure dropped so suddenly Rafe’s ears popped. Magic flooded the grounds, in a massive surge that made his bones ache. The remaining shadow mages froze, their eyes going wide with something that looked like fear.
Then they turned and ran, abandoning the fight without a backward glance.
Rafe knelt alone in the ruined gardens, blood dripping from his wounds, watching them disappear through the gates and into the warped streets. His breath came in ragged gasps that tasted like blood. His shoulder throbbed where the shadow blade had caught him, each pulse sending fresh waves of pain through his arm.
The ground beneath his feet began to shake. A statue twenty feet away toppled, its marble head shattering on impact. Cracks spread through the manor’s facade, racing up the stone.
The tremors intensified. Rafe tried to stand and his legs gave out, dumping him back to his knees. The gardens heaved, earth splitting open in jagged lines. A section of the manor’s wall collapsed inward with a boom.
The Spirefields were coming apart.
Rafe had nothing left. No magic. No strength. His body was a collection of injuries held together by stubbornness and desperation, but stopping wasn’t an option. Giving up meant dying here, and he refused to die before knowing if Vesper was still alive in there.
He scraped together the last fragments of his power. He could feel his magic trying to regenerate, new power trickling into the burned out void where his reserves should be, but it was too slow. Too little.
Barely enough for a basic shield. Maybe.
Rafe’s hands shook as he wove the pattern. The spell came together wrong, unstable, more hope than actual protection. It would shatter at the first real impact.
But it was all he had.
The ground split open twenty feet away, a crack spreading toward the manor with terrifying speed. The earth screamed as it tore itself apart, the sound of bedrock fracturing under magical strain.
Outside the estate walls, buildings vanished. The sky above twisted, purple bleeding into black, reality warping under the pressure of two worlds trying to occupy the same space.
Rafe threw everything he had left into the protective ward. It snapped into place around him, barely visible. He knew it wouldn’t be enough. He was probably going to die in the next few seconds.
But at least he’d tried.
Rafe’s shield flickered as light consumed everything, and he had one moment to think of Vesper before the world shattered.
Chapter 12
A devastating wave of shadow magic crashed into Threnody, and she felt her defences crumble beneath the assault. Tenebrae had abandoned subtlety in favour of raw, devastating force.
No more words. No more manipulation.
The chains tightened around her consciousness, burning through the layers of protection she’d built over days of captivity. The liminal space pulsed with Tenebrae’s power, shadows writhing across the walls as his cats lost their form, joining the attack. Each wave of corrosive darkness ate away at her resistance.
Vesper screamed inside their shared mind, terror flooding through the connection between them. The Resonant’s panic added another layer of chaos to Threnody’s already fractured thoughts.
Threnody felt her resistance fracturing. Millennia of existence, of grief and isolation, had left her strong in some ways and brittle in others. The sudden awakening, the confusion of physical form, the weight of Vesper’s consciousness pressed against her own—all of it made her vulnerable in ways she hadn’t been when she was simply the Echo, formless and distant.
Tenebrae stood before her, his form solid obsidian, his silver eyes burning with patient certainty. Threnody recognised that look. She’d seen it before, in the corrupted Arcana who had come for her millennia ago.
He didn’t need her cooperation. He only needed her broken, her mind shattered open so he could reach inside and take what he wanted. Her power over memory and reality. Her ability to reshape existence itself. He would use her magic to unmake the world and rebuild it in whatever image he desired.
The assault intensified. Shadow magic tore through her thoughts, ripping at the fragments of memory she’d clung to since awakening. Threnody felt herself scattering, losing coherence, her soul fracturing under the relentless pressure. Days of captivity had worn her down. The constant assault never stopped, never weakened, only changed its approach. Sometimes brutal force, sometimes subtle manipulation, always relentless.
The chains burned hotter, tighter, restricting not just her physical form but her consciousness itself. Threnody felt the walls closing in, felt her soul compressing under the weight of Tenebrae’s magic. He was trying to make her something he could control.
No.
The thought came sharp and clear through the chaos.
Threnody stopped fighting the collapse and reached for Vesper instead, dragging her deeper into her consciousness. The Resonant resisted, but Threnody pulled harder. If they remained divided, Tenebrae won. If Vesper kept fighting her, they both died.
You need to see why it was the only choice, Threnody said.
I don’t want to see anything, Vesper shot back, her terror making the words sharp.
Threnody didn’t give her a choice. She opened the memory and shoved it between them.
Vesper saw through Threnody’s eyes, the true face of the Arcana still a mystery to her. She saw silver eyes and a world bleeding colour.
Seven corrupted Arcana surrounded her. Their divine essence had turned grey, shot through with black veins that pulsed like infected wounds. They didn’t speak. They attacked.
Their combined power slammed into Threnody’s mind, and Vesper gasped as she experienced the violation. Not physical pain but something worse. The sensation of hands reaching inside her skull, fingers peeling back layers of thought, consciousness being torn open and examined. They were trying to break her will, shatter her sense of self, remake her into something they could control.
Vesper felt Threnody’s horror as the corrupted Arcana dug deeper. They wanted her power over memory and reality. They would force her to reshape existence, and there would be nothing left of her to resist because they were unmaking who she was, rebuilding her as their weapon.
Threnody fought them. She threw up defences, rebuilt them when they shattered, poured everything into resisting, but there were seven of them and only one of her. Days passed in the memory, perhaps longer, and the assault never stopped. When one of the seven tired, another took their place, maintaining constant pressure against her consciousness.
Threnody showed Vesper what it felt like. The exhaustion of fighting without rest. The desperation of knowing she was losing. The horror of feeling her own thoughts beginning to fragment under the relentless assault. They were breaking her down piece by piece, and their patience never wavered.
The memory shifted.
The corruption spreading like a disease through the Arcana. Not just the seven who attacked her, but dozens more already touched by it. Hundreds who would follow. The pattern was clear, inevitable. It wasn’t a question of if the darkness would consume them all, but when.
And Threnody could feel it reaching for her.
The shadow creeping through her thoughts, the subtle whispers promising power, the way her own magic responded to the call. It felt good, that was the horror of it. The corruption whispered of strength, of dominion, of power without limits. She reached toward it like a plant toward light, inexplicably drawn to something that would destroy her. In days, maybe hours, she would become what they wanted or lose herself to the same corruption that had taken them. There was no escape. No negotiation. No other option.
She would become their weapon…or she could end it.
Vesper watched through Threnody’s memory as the decision formed. Clear and terrible and absolute.
Threnody stopped fighting their assault and turned her power inward instead, reaching for the essence of what made the Arcana real. Not their bodies or their magic, but their connection to reality itself. The collective memory of their existence, woven into the fabric of creation like threads through cloth.
She began to unwrite it.
The power built inside her, vast and unstoppable. She gathered every fragment of her power, every scrap of her ability to reshape memory and reality, and focused it on a single purpose. To sever their anchor to existence and unmake the truth of what they were.
Threnody reached into the collective memory of creation and found the threads that defined her people. She found the moment they came into being, the point where they were anchored to reality, and she began pulling them loose one by one.
The seven attacking her realised too late what she was doing. They tried to stop her, their assault turning from breaking to killing, but Threnody had already committed. Her power erupted outward, tearing through reality in every direction in a wave of utter devastation.
Vesper felt how Threnody did it. She didn’t simply explode the Arcana out of existence. She severed their anchor to reality, unmaking the divine threads that held them together, dissolving the foundations of everything they’d built. It was surgical and absolute, erasing not just their present but their connection to the fabric of creation.
