The world shrank to the pounding of blood in his ears and the burning ache in his lungs. Kael ran as he had never run before, not away from bullies in an alley, but for his life. The tall, wild grass of the open fields whipped at his legs, each step a jarring impact on the uneven ground. The cold night air sawed in and out of his throat, sharp as a blade.
Beside him, Sera ran with an effortless, ground-eating grace that was utterly inhuman. She didn't pant or stumble. She was a ghost fleeing through the darkness, her silver hair a banner behind her. She constantly scanned their surroundings, her head on a swivel.
"Don't run in a straight line!" she commanded, her voice cutting through his panic without strain. "Zigzag! Use the dips in the terrain!"
A fraction of a second later, a beam of pure white light—like concentrated moonlight—lanced through the space where his head had been. It struck a lone, skeletal tree twenty yards away, which instantly flash-frosted, its branches snapping under the weight of sudden ice.
The Temple Diviner. They were already in range.
Kael threw himself to the right, then left, following Sera's lead in a chaotic, stumbling pattern. Another beam seared the air to his left, boiling the moisture in a patch of grass into a cloud of steam.
"They're herding us!" Sera called out. "Toward the river! They'll have archers there!"
Hope, that fragile thing, was dying. His legs were turning to lead. He wasn't a Path-bearer with enhanced stamina. He was just a boy, and a tired, terrified one at that. The weight of the katana on his back felt like it was pulling him down into the earth.
He risked a glance back. Torches bobbed in the distance, but the Diviner and Captain Vorlik were closer, mounted on horses now, closing the distance with terrifying speed. The Diviner's hands glowed like twin stars, gathering another bolt of freezing light.
"This way!" Sera veered sharply, heading for a copse of dense, gnarled trees that clung to the edge of a steep ravine. It was a desperate move. A dead end.
They crashed through the undergrowth, thorns tearing at their clothes. The ravine yawned before them, a black mouth of jagged rocks and the distant, furious roar of a rain-swollen river below. There was no way down.
Trapped.
The thunder of hooves skidded to a halt behind them. Captain Vorlik and the Diviner dismounted, their figures dark against the torchlight of the approaching reinforcements.
"Nowhere left to run, blank," Vorlik's voice boomed, filled with grim triumph. "Surrender the artifact and come quietly. The Temple may yet show you mercy."
The Diviner, a severe-faced woman with colorless eyes, raised her hands. The air grew bitingly cold. "The dissonance is strong here. The object on his back is the source. A vile, chaotic signature. It must be purified."
Kael stood with his back to the precipice, Sera at his side. He was shaking, from exhaustion, from fear, from the cold radiating from the Diviner. This was it. This was how his second life ended. In the dark, on the edge of a cliff, for a crime he didn't understand.
He felt Sara's hand brush against his. Her fingers were ice-cold. He could feel a faint, almost imperceptible tremor running through her. The seal. She was fighting against it, trying to access power that was locked away. A thin trickle of blood dripped from her nose.
*No.* The thought was clear and sudden. He had dragged her into this. He would not watch her break for him.
He stepped in front of her, putting himself between her and the Diviner's aimed hands. The action felt futile, but it was all he had left.
"Stay away from her," he said, his voice raw but steady.
The Diviner's lip curled in disdain. "The corruption speaks. Be silenced."
She unleashed the bolt of freezing light. It wasn't aimed to maim. It was aimed to kill.
Time did not slow. It shattered.
A scream tore from Kael's throat—not of fear, but of pure, defiant rage. This was not fair. He had done nothing! He would not die for nothing!
As the light filled his vision, about to consume him, the world twisted.
The cold pulse from the katana on his back didn't just vibrate; it *detonated*. A wave of absolute zero darkness erupted from the blade, still in its sheath. It didn't spread out; it concentrated in a disc before him, a void that swallowed the sound of the river, the torchlight, the very air.
The Diviner's bolt of pure, ordered celestial energy hit the disc of blackness and *unraveled*. It didn't explode; it was unmade, its light and cold devoured by the absolute nothingness.
The backlash was physical. The Diviner cried out, staggering back as if struck, the glow around her hands snuffing out violently. Captain Vorlik raised an arm to shield his face from the sudden, silent vacuum of energy.
For Kael, the cost was immediate and brutal. It felt like his soul had been wrenched through a keyhole. A searing cold, far worse than the Diviner's, shot up his arm from where he'd subconsciously reached back to grip the katana's hilt. The veins on his hand and forearm stood out black against his pale skin, as if frozen from the inside out. A blinding pain spiked through his skull, and his vision swam with phantom images—a beautiful, cruel face wreathed in shadow, laughing. *Lilith.*
He collapsed to his knees, gasping, his entire body trembling violently. The disc of darkness vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
The clearing was plunged into a stunned silence, broken only by the river's roar below.
Captain Vorlik lowered his arm, his face a mixture of shock and dawning, terrified understanding. "By the gods... It's not just an artifact. The boy... he's the source. He's a bearer. A *forbidden* one."
The Diviner stared at her hands, then at Kael with a look of pure, unadulterated horror. "The Mistress's Touch... It cannot be..."
In that moment of stunned shock, Sera moved.
She didn't attack. She grabbed the shuddering, nearly unconscious Kael by the back of his tunic. With a strength that belied her slender frame, she half-dragged, half-threw them both over the edge of the ravine.
They plummeted into the darkness.
The last thing Kael heard before the icy water claimed him was Captain Vorlik's roar of fury echoing from the cliff top above.
And the last thing he felt was Sera's arms wrapped tightly around him, holding on as if she would never let go.