Page 52 of Goddess of Light

The castle is about to fall. The soldiers form a last ring of defense around the inner gate as my father lowers his hands, looking defeated. My stomach turns cold. We’ve done everything we could, but the enemy is too strong.

We have too many mortals and not enough Gods.

Then, a bright light appears in the sky above the castle, cutting through the swirling snow. It’s blinding, pure, and warm. At first, I think it’s a trick, another illusion put forth by the Magician to blind our enemies. But then, I feel heat radiating from it, a gentle warmth that pushes back the cold and the darkness. Soldiers stop fighting to stare upward, mouths agape as skeletons recoil, their glowing eyes dimming.

“Hanna,” I whisper, heart pounding. It must be her. It has to be her. The Sun Goddess’ blood flows in her veins. If she has returned, maybe we have a chance.

The light intensifies, casting long shadows of bones and broken weapons across the courtyard. Under its radiance, I see Father lift his head, disbelief and hope mingling across his face. Tapio and Tellervo gasp, and Vellamo’s eyes shine with something like relief as Torben lowers his staff, awestruck. The Magician tilts his hooded head, as if he knew this would happen but still marvels at the sight.

The enemy army halts, uncertain. The light grows brighter, and I can almost see a figure within it, wings of radiance and flames streaming from her hair. The snowstorm falters, flakes glowing gold before they melt into soft droplets. The darkness that clung to the castle recedes.

We needed a miracle, and we got one.

Hanna is here.

CHAPTER TWENTY

DEATH

The sky igniteswith a brilliance and beauty that defies this world. Moments before, the fields around Castle Syntri lay dim beneath storm-wracked clouds and swirling snow, the world reduced to howling winds, desperate screams, and the relentless clatter of the undead. Now, the darkness recedes, and a radiance too pure for twilight spills over the battlements, painting every broken stone with shimmering gold.

I stand atop a fractured parapet, the wind tugging at my cloak, ice crusting in my beard. Pain throbs in my shoulder from an earlier clash, and sweat freezes on my brow. I dare not look away from that sky, not now. I know that light. I know the shape emerging from it as intimately as I know my own breath.

It’s Hanna.

My wife.

The Queen of Tuonela.

But she doesn’t descend. Instead, she hovers high above, wreathed in halos of shifting color—pinks, oranges, ambers. Her silhouette is tall and regal, arms outstretched. I see her hair aflame with strange brilliance—chestnut and amber and blonde—and though I cannot make out her face, I imagine her eyesshining with sunlight. The cold wind softens slightly in the radius of her glow, melting the flakes into droplets. Yet, she stays distant, as if observing from a height.

A gasp echoes along the battlements, and I hear Lovia choke out her name. Soldiers pause mid-strike, undead falter mid-lunge, and even the Old Gods waver, their monstrous forms twitching uncertainly in the sudden glare. The darkness Louhi’s hordes brought with them quivers before Hanna’s arrival.

My heart pounds. Relief, joy, and a thousand unanswered questions surge through me. Weeks of fear and loss peel away at the edges of my mind as I stare into that luminous figure. Hanna is back. She returned.

Yet, this isn’t over. The battle has not ended.

We must still fight.

Thankfully, with her at our side.

Snarls and screeches rip me from my reverie. The enemy hasn’t vanished—far from it. Old Gods flail tentacles and chitinous limbs, shrieking to rally the undead ranks. Flakes of grey snow swirl on the far edge of the battlefield where Hanna’s light does not yet reach. Skeleton legions, rattling swords and spears, try to press their advance. They push back against the sudden warmth, steeling themselves with the ancient hatred that animates their bones.

I tighten my grip on my sword. We must seize this moment. “Hold the line!” I shout, voice cracking across the courtyard. “Don’t falter! The sun is with us!” It’s a phrase I never thought I’d use, but now, it feels right. Hanna is the sun, or at least touched by it. We must stand firm.

My allies respond with renewed courage. Torben lifts his staff into the sky, runes flaring brighter than before. Ilmarinen traces shapes in the air with his fingertips, creating pockets of protection here and there. Lovia leaps onto a ledge, her blade gleaming, rallying the soldiers around her. Tapio and Tellervodraw upon what remains of their power to summon roots, vines, and birds to harry the enemy flanks. Vellamo clenches her jaw and coaxes streams of water from melting snow, forming icy shards to hurl at encroaching horrors.

The Magician stands at a crooked tower’s edge, face obscured by his hood. He conjures illusions that glimmer with flecks of sunlight, tricking the enemy into stumbling into ambushes. Rasmus struggles to reload a crossbow with trembling fingers. Though he was a traitor, he now fights beside us, the fear of death etched into his face. The redhead might be good for something yet.

The Old Gods are various in form and substance, but all are colossal nightmares—some fusions of bone and chitin, barnacle-encrusted limbs and too many eyes, while others resemble giant deer with the body of a man with antlers that soar ten feet in the air. One wades through a collapsed section of wall, snapping at defenders with a beaked maw dripping black ooze. Another hovers on membranous wings above the courtyard, screeching and dropping twisted carcasses that explode into swarms of ravenous insects. I choke on the stench as I swing my sword, severing a skeletal warrior’s spine. The creature crumples at my feet before I hack apart the rest of him, disabling him for good.

Hanna remains above, silent and godly. She raises one hand, and sunbeams stab downward, piercing the gloom. Where the beams land, undead hiss and crumble into ash. A tentacled horror tries to shield its eyes, keening as parts of its flesh scorch and peel, but even this divine intervention doesn’t simply wipe the enemy away. The Old Gods are clever enough. One curls behind a toppled tower and vomits out a thick, inky cloud that dims the sunlight in a patch of the battlefield, allowing skeletons to rally within that shadow. Another creature with lobster-like claws and a carapace of petrified wood smashes into our leftflank, scattering wounded soldiers. Screams rise, and I flinch, desperate to help them.

I rush down broken steps, joining a knot of defenders wrestling with the snarling mass of horned skulls and scythe-like arms. The thing flails wildly, cutting down a soldier before I slam my sword into its side, feeling bone give way beneath the blade. The creature howls, and a shaft of light from Hanna lances it in the back, causing it to shrivel. I glance up, wanting to meet her gaze, to thank her, but she’s too far, her face lost in the glare.

On the eastern parapet, Lovia fights two horrors at once. One resembles a monstrous serpent wreathed in leech-like growths that snap at her ankles while the other stands like a hunched giant made of bone shards. She ducks under a spiked limb, counters with a clean slash, and then calls for archers. Arrows whiz by, followed by bullets, many helped by Torben’s magic. The serpent squeals as arrowheads puncture its hide, green ichor spraying across the stones.

Tapio staggers, panting. His attempt to grow entangling roots falters as an Old God’s scream shatters the delicate magic. Tellervo hurls a spear of spectral ivy that crackles with emerald energy, impaling a skeletal champion who’d been rallying troops. Vellamo summons a spinning vortex of meltwater that topples another cluster of undead. Imarinen’s wards deflect a volley of cursed arrows spat by an Old God that resembles a giant tick, its abdomen festooned with skulls. The tick-thing scuttles along a wall, toward Hanna’s light. When a sunbeam sears off two of its legs, it screeches and leaps down among us. Soldiers scatter, and I lunge forward, sword raised, shouting for a shield wall from Ilmarinen.

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