Page 28 of The Ascended
“Nyvora.” His tone was polite. “I wouldn't dream of disappointing you.”
A Legend with black armor huffed a laugh. “Come now, Xül. We both know punctuality was never your strong suit. Remember the last time you kept the Council waiting?”
“I remember you timing it, Drakor. How... thorough of you.” Xül settled into his throne. “I trust you found something to occupy yourself while you waited.”
“Oh, I always do.”
Another voice cut in, cold and distant. “Some of us actually take our responsibilities seriously.”
Xül's mismatched eyes found the owner of the voice with lazy interest. “And some of us are effective enough that we don't need to arrive early to compensate, Chavore.”
Chavore. My half-brother.Fuck. He looked so much like Thatcher.Like me. With his dark hair tied down his back and his structured jawline.
Nyvora's laugh echoed through the arena. “Boys, please. We're all here now, aren't we? That's what matters.” Her gaze lingered on Xül and I recognized the look. If they weren’t already fucking, she sure wished they were–
"Begin."
The voice boomed from everywhere and nowhere, shaking the walls and reverberating through my bones. The six of us looked at each other in confusion, waiting for further instruction that didn't come.
What happens now? Panic fluttered in my chest. Do I just... do it?
The Aesymar finally looked upon us, countless golden eyes studying us like we were insects. Footsteps echoed from my right—a contestant in liquid silver was walking forward. Did I miss something? As if she’d received some instruction the rest of us hadn’t, she raised her hands and drenched the space around us in heat. Just as she cocked her head to the side, fire erupted from her palms.
The fire-wielder's dance weaved past a second contestant that was breathing rapidly, waves of energy leaking off of him, coating his body in shimmers. The mousy-haired man from earlier was making elaborate sculptures rise from the arena floor, vines with sharpened thorns twisting into gnarled masses.
I took a step back—away from them all—and lifted my face to the bleeding dusk above.
Power writhed beneath my skin, begging to get out after days of being leashed. I let it loose with a shuddering breath, feeling that ancient, wild magic spark through my veins. It started as a whisper in my fingertips before roaring up my arms as I reached, reached, reached for that thing that called to me from the infinite dark.
One star flickered in answer. A single pulse against the dying light.
Then another. And another.
Like warriors answering a battle cry, they blazed to life—dozensupon dozens of stars igniting with savage brilliance. The arena drowned in their light as I dragged night into day with nothing but will and that feral thing inside me that had always belonged more to the sky than the earth.
The world went utterly, terrifyingly still.
Every contestant froze. Every breath in that godsdamned arena ceased. I could taste their shock on my tongue, could feel the weight of their stares like brands against my skin. The Legend's attention was a living thing, pressing against me.
I bared my teeth in something that might have been a smile—andpulled.
The power I'd caged for so long detonated from my chest with such ferocity that I nearly screamed. It wasn't enough. I needed more—needed everything the stars could give me. I pulled harder, desperate, until something inside me began to crack.
The sensation was terrifying. My carefully maintained control, the discipline I'd clung to for so long, was fracturing. My instinct screamed to stop, to reinforce those walls, to maintain the boundaries I'd lived within for so long.
Instead, I let them fall.
The moment those internal barriers shattered, power flooded through me in a torrent so overwhelming I couldn't have contained it if I tried. My head fell back, a sound between a laugh and a cry escaping my lips as years of restraint dissolved into nothing. The release was unexpected ecstasy.
My power shredded through whatever flimsy veil separated our world from the heavens, and the stars?—
Gods, the starssangas they fell.
They plummeted toward me, each one a separate heartbeat of raw, undiluted power. High and wild as they slammed into my outstretched palm with enough force to shatter bone. I could taste starfire and eternity, could smell smoke and cosmic dust—ancient and terrible andmine.
The rush of it threatened to tear me apart. To remake me into something other.
And a treacherous, damning thought slithered through my mind as starlight flooded my veins:This is what I was born for. This is what I am.
