Page 71 of Claimed In Darkness

Now, she is starting to understand what.

She is too smart not to start putting the pieces together.

I can’t let her.

I grab the relic.

Not because I know what it will do. I’m clutching on straws here.

I don’t even know if it will break my father’s spell.

But because it is the only power I have left.

A crack of energy tears through the chamber, splitting the atmosphere, filling the vault with the scent of charred magic.

Naira shields herself instinctively, her arms coming up against the backlash.

I barely have a moment to realize what I’ve done before the world shifts?—

And the door behind us slams shut.

Locked. Sealed. Trapped.

My father’s voice hums in the silence.

"You were never going to win, boy."

As the magic swells around us, swallowing us whole, I realized?—

This was never my game.

It was his.

He just fucking called checkmate.

25

NAIRA

The moment he grabs the relic, the world turns to fire.

A blast of raw, unfiltered magic erupts from the artifact, slamming into the walls, searing the air, rattling my bones from the inside out.

I stumble back, shielding my face, my breath strangled against the force of it.

The vault groans, the very walls trembling under the strain of power never supposed to be touched.

And Zephiran?—

Zephiran is on his knees.

The relic is still clutched in his fingers, veins blackening beneath his skin, crawling up his arm, sinking into him like poison.

He’s not moving, and barely breathes.

A second stretches into eternity.

A slow, suffocating moment where I think?—

---