Page 110 of Shattered & Returned

I’d never wronged anyone. Yet they always came, thinking weakness was an invitation, believing the wolf had the right to slaughter the lamb. That was the world now. That was what it meant to be weak.

Rage burned through me, white-hot, fueling my power. My wrists were bound, but my fingers were free. Flexing, twisting, they began to weave.

I called on everything Nero had taught me, everything my body remembered without thought. The threads of magic were invisible to most, but to me, they shimmered like gossamer, drifting in the air, ready to be gathered. My fingers pulled at them, drawing them tight despite the awkward angle of my bound hands.

First, I wove heat, tiny sparks flickering between my fingertips like fireflies. The motions were delicate, deliberate, each movement layering energy into the pattern. It was lace made of flame. The threads twisted, merging, brightening, until they coiled into a slender ribbon of fire no thicker than a candle’s wick.

The first spark caught. Then it surged, a thin stream of flame eating through the spell, then the ropes, searing them away. My hands were free.

No time to savor it. I exhaled sharply, ripping off the blindfold and the gag. Darkness swallowed everything. The air reeked of moss, damp earth, and rot. I gagged, and my breath turned ragged. I fumbled for my inhaler, but it was gone.

I clutched my throat, wheezing as my lungs seared from the inside.Slow your breathing.The command cut through the panic. Gradually, air trickled in.

My hands shook as they scraped against rough stone walls. A thread of light flickered from my fingers, pure instinct and fear given form. In its glow, the truth sharpened: I was trapped at the bottom of a well.

I clawed at the slick walls, searching for a grip. Useless. The well yawned three stories above me, its mouth sealed by a heavy stone cap. Even uninjured, climbing would’ve been impossible. But with a shattered shoulder, a leg that screamed at every shift, and blood soaking my clothes, the odds turned cruel.

I couldn’t die here. Not like this. But the blood loss gnawed at my strength, making each weave of magic clumsier, harder.

Then pain exploded in my skull like a hammer driving into my brain, relentless.

A new idea struck me. Blood was power, more potent than any other magic. That was why blood magic was forbidden. I’d never woven with it before, but I was bleeding out. Why waste it? Forbidden or not, I’d use anything to survive.

My training was patchwork, but my magic flowed from instinct, from desperation, from intense emotions. I closed my eyes and focused on the blood seeping from my wounds. My fingers, slick with crimson, moved through the air, gathering the floating droplets into a swirling pool.

Blood didn’t behave like fire or wind. It was heavier, darker, humming with hunger and something primal. It was life force. Each drop carried my memories, my pain, my desperate will to survive. The threads I pulled from it were thick, almost syrupy, vibrating with a low, deep thrum that made my bones ache.

I wove them into spirals—tight, coiling, and layered. My hands moved as if remembering a ritual long buried. The pattern felt foreign yet inevitable, like a nightmare half-recalled. Theair thickened with the scent of iron and lightning. Metallic heat coated my tongue.

The air thinned, each breath shallower than the last. Soon, there’d be nothing left to breathe.

My limbs became leaden, but I kept weaving.

While agony infused every part of me and terror pounded with each heartbeat, I let fury charge every cell as I thought of the deaths of all the victims who looked like me. These murderers stacked redheads like firewood, nameless and forgotten. They thought I’d join the pile, just another body dumped in this rotting well.

I was going to disappoint them.

I wouldn’t be a cold case. I’d survive. And then I’d burn them alive, watch their flesh blacken and peel. Not with my hands—no, with fire I’d weave until their screams choked on ash.

Rage burned hotter. My fingers flew, weaving blood into power. Crimson light erupted, hurling the well’s lid aside as the magic lifted me, carrying me toward the open mouth above.

My mouth tasted of rusty metal and sawdust, but victory swept through my tight chest.

I expected my assassins to be waiting. Let them see my magic firsthand. Let them realize their intel was fatally incomplete. Nero had been right to order me to keep my power a secret. Now, I’d ensure these fuckers died before they could whisper a word of it.

“Fuck! She’s coming out!” Footsteps pounded toward the well.

“Impossible!” the woman cried in disbelief.

My feet touched earth.

The wilderness sprawled before me, a graveyard of jagged rock and gnarled trees, their skeletal branches clawing at the sky. Boulders jutted from the ground like broken teeth, veiledin a creeping mist that smelled of damp decay. Beyond them, mountains hunched against the bruised horizon.

And the well stood ringed by ancient standing stones, their carvings writhing when glimpsed from the corner of the eye.

Five figures, four hulking men and a woman with a braid like a hangman’s rope, stared at me, their Viking garb splattered with mud and old blood. I didn’t need a mirror to know what they saw: a girl in a shredded dress, skin painted crimson, grinning like a nightmare pulled from the well they’d thrown her into.

“Take the little bitch down,” the woman snarled.

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