Page 281 of Caelum

“…for the…”

“…Fallen to…”

“…act as…”

“…God’s hand…”

“…and mete out…”

“…his holy punishment.”

The wind surged as our wish was granted. It appeared from out of nowhere. Beyond us, the plains had been still. The breeze would have been a welcome respite from the heat of the day, in fact, but there’d been no movement. None at all.

The second our wish fell upon theJannah’sears, however, that all changed.

The wind buffeted the crow, so even as it swooped away from the temple, soaring toward the city of Hidalgo itself, it brought it back toward us. Like a magnet.

The crow was tossed and turned in the wind’s buffeting strength, and as the bird returned to us, we heard them.

Footsteps.

Ghouls soared out of each of the openings in the temple. Whether they were secret or just known to them, we’d never have the answers to that, but as thousands of them appeared from out of nowhere, I felt my Sin Eater surge to the fore.

Our training kicked into gear then, making it so we assessed the threat and worked as one unit even though, until this point in our lives, we’d always been two.

We shuffled toward the center of the plateau. Although it was always our intent to hurt as many of the scourge as we physically could, that simply wasn’t possible with the numbers or with Eve to protect.

She had to survive this.

Hell, we all did.

Without her, our wishes couldn’t be granted.

Without us, there was no one to make the wish.

For the first time in a long while, fear truly hit me. It exacerbatedthe Sin Eater’s rage at being hemmed in, and as the Ghouls stormed toward us, running up the short staircase to reach us, the crow finally hit the airspace above Tula.

Like the soldiers knew it, the grating sounds appeared once more. This time, we were closer, and the stone creaking against stone was reminiscent of nails on a chalkboard. Enough for all of us to cringe.

I knew we were fighting the desire to leap into the fray, to head off the Ghouls and kill as many as we could, but that wasn’t our purpose here today.

We weren’t warriors.

We were aJannah’smates.

She needed us. As we needed her.

The soldiers moved, their great boots stomping as they began to shift into a circle. The Ghouls, spying this phenomenon, paused to take in the sight of ancient monoliths moving like they’d been born for this purpose.

Perhaps they had.

Into this maelstrom, Eve began to sing. Her Lorelei churned out a song that had the Ghouls freezing in place, all several thousand of them hovering in midair on their path to reach us. Startled out of his surprise, Eren joined in, humming along with her as the words she was singing were reminiscent of the language I’d heard her talk in back in London—back when she’d been slaying those Ghouls in a dark alley.

To her serenading song, stone arms shot out, each one gliding against the others as their rough hands clunked against the others’. The light in their veins seemed to pool in their palms until it shone so brightly, it had to be hotter than the sun itself.

From out of nowhere, there was a screeching sound. We dropped to our knees as a tail seemed to waft over us, almost hitting us and throwing us off the plateau—Reed was caught in the backdraft and he was tossed a few feet away.

As he scrambled back toward us, I stared up at the most bizarre sight I could imagine.

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