Page 86 of The Ascended
Think, Thais. Think.
"Marx," I whispered, pulling her aside, out of the portal's view. "I need your blood for mine."
She stared like I'd lost my mind. "The talisman won't bond to you."
"I know." My voice barely carried. "But trust me. I can't explain now."
She studied my face for a long moment, filing questions away for later. Finally, she nodded.
"We stick together," she whispered. "If the wards won't bond to you, we cover you with ours."
"Thank you."
She drew her blade again, filling an empty vial. I took the knife and returned to the cooling wards, using my body to hide the deception as I passed the vial to Thatcher. Both wards flared with brilliant blue before settling into protective radiance.
Kyren added his blood to the final ward, and then we all carried talismans pulsing with sapphire light.
"It’s night," Thatcher observed at the window.
Darkness had swallowed the last traces of daylight, painting the world in shadow and dread. And with it came new sounds—things that made the hares seem tame.
A roar pummeled through the wood, deep and primal andwrong. Another answered, then another, until the forest rang with nightmare voices.
"The light," Kyren pressed his face to the window. "It's still there."
The golden beacon pierced the sky, steady and bright.
Everyone looked to me for the next move, the next decision, the path forward. As they always did. As Thatcher always had. The responsibility of their lives pressed against my chest until breathing became an act of will. In that moment, I longed for someone else to step forward, to take this burden from my hands. To exist in a space where every choice, every consequence, didn't rest solely on my judgment.
But no one did. No one ever did. And so I straightened my spine and pointed toward the beacon, burying the exhaustion beneath determination as I'd done my entire life.
"We go now," I decided. "Together."
I threw open the door and we burst into chaos.
The forest exploded around us. Creatures poured from shadows. Too many legs and flame-bright eyes. Writhing masses that reached with grasping fingers. Flying beasts shrieked as they dove.
We ran for the light. East, always east, using the beacon as our only guide. The terrain dropped as we left the foothills behind, plunging back into the dense lowland forest. Ten minutes of hard running. Twenty. My legs burned, and still the beacon seemed impossibly distant.
The wards seemed to work—creatures fell back from the blue radiance.
But they didn't stop hunting.
They kept trying to circle us. More converged on our position with every heartbeat.
"They're not after you." Horror dawned on me. "They're after us."
"Our wards aren’t covering you," Marx said desperately. "Fuck."
The creatures grew bolder, pressing closer.
"We have to split up," Thatcher's resignation echoed through our bond.
"No," Kyren protested. "We stick together."
A massive beast burst from the undergrowth—bear-like but wrong, its fur made of thorns. It swiped at Marx, but its claws stopped inches from her skin, repelled by ward-light.
Then it turned its burning eyes toward me.
