Page 78 of The Book of Legends
Then he moves.
I don’t even see it happen—just a blur and the sound of metal slicing through air. His blade severs the creature’s throat in one clean sweep. It crumples with a shriek, dissolving into black mist.
More are coming.
Dozens. Maybe more.
The air fills with a high-pitched wail, something between a scream and a song. It vibrates in my bones.
Kainen steps in front of me, his body a shield of steel and heat. Power radiates from him in pulses of darkness and light. His voice is calm, controlled. “Stay behind me.”
Fear climbs my throat like thorns, but I want to be brave.
“What do I do?” I whisper.
He glances over his shoulder. “You breathe. You stay alive. And you don’t look away.”
Then he launches into them like a storm unleashed.
Every strike is precise. Brutal. Beautiful. He moves like a blade made flesh—his blade a blur, cutting through the Nightfallen like ink through water. Tar-like blood sprays across the charred ground. It smells like rot and cold.
Malachi joins in from above, fire carving wide arcs across the earth, burning everything too close.
And me?
I stand frozen. My heart hammering. My lungs barely keeping up.
Then one of them gets past.
It moves too fast—I barely see it. It leaps for me, claws outstretched, mouth unhinging into rows of serrated teeth.
I scream.
“Selene!” Kainen shouts.
But before the creature touches me, it bursts into a thousand shards of light. I blink.
My hand is raised.
There’s a pulse in my chest. Something ancient. Magic. Mine.
Kainen turns to me, expression unreadable, eyes full of questions—and something else.
“You felt that too?” I whisper.
He nods once, eyes never leaving mine. “It’s awakening. Whatever it is inside you.”
Before I can process, another wave of Nightfallen surges from the fog.
Kainen reaches for me. “We run,” he says. “To the Mirror Hall.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s where your truth begins. And ends.”
I follow him, even as the earth burns behind us.
We run.
