ADARA

A strangled, birdlike shriek pierced the air.

"Let me go!" she snapped against her captor's arms, but they held her in a deceptive vice-grip, pushing, tugging. Yuven and Fenrer needed her. Mist cascaded over the cliffs when a spark of explosions rocked the ground beneath her feet. Her captor stopped with a huff behind the mask, but when she tried to kick out his knees, he steadied her with a grunt in a cold song.

"Master Mazril."

Adara thrashed when they turned her to face the voice. Blackwall. Silver fury burst at her fingertips, but a sleeve stifled her sob when they returned the white twine around her wrists. Embers crackled at the edges, then died from the oppression in the air. "Keeper," Master Mazril growled. "We need to get out of here quick before we raise alarm." His accent had none of Yuven's melody within it, and she wriggled when he hauled her closer to Blackwall. "You are going to get that portal up, yes?"

"It takes some time to search our previous path," Blackwall pointed out.

"Why are you doing this?" she begged.

Blackwall finally acknowledged her with a blink. "Do you remember what I told you at the Summit, Miss Sazaka?" he questioned, but before she could reply with her own bite, he continued, "I told you your magick is a beacon. In more ways than one. You will see once we have Yuven Traye and pass through the portal. Master Mazril, if you would." Blackwall indicated the shimmering air forming into a twisted, unclear circle. "We have the morn until the twilight path closes on us."

Other Iceshards that remained gathered in front of it, their hands on the girls of their hidden daggers. Her captor stopped, then twisted around to the misted cliffs. A question escaped his lips with a plume of smoke, though she struggled to decipher his words. Adara tried to elbow his ribs, but he scoffed and kept her arms behind her back and dragged her to the forming portal, where the Iceshards stayed at the sides to keep their gazes on her.

Mist fluttered.

Wings gleamed violet at the whisk of air through it.

A shape stumbled out of it, another Iceshard. "Massa'lan—"

Adara choked when a needle of ice burst through the front of their neck, to tear apart sinew and a stream of blood flowed out of their lips. Behind them, a different icy figure moved forward, dropping the Iceshard off their pinpoint sword and into a puddle of blood. Beads of violets rumbled with the hiss of a wyvern.

"Kehja... Trayes," Master Mazril grunted, then tossed her into another Iceshard's arms.

One Iceshard rushed for the violet-eyed mist. Adara found herself on her knees when the violet mist lunged at their attack. Wyvern teeth formed out of the mist when another squirt splattered the grass, and her heart slammed in her chest when Yuven Traye dragged himself out of the mist, tugging the Iceshard along as he went. Plumes of fire left his nose, a draconic rage in his eyes as he tossed their corpse to the ground. Feathers straight and fluffed out, he broke his needle sword in their throat, and let it melt into the blood.

Some of the Iceshards stared at Yuven Traye, though Master Mazril dragged out a gleaming blue sword. Yuven tugged out his seaxs, reinforced with sharp ice on the blade. Blackwall tucked his hands in his sleeves when Master Mazril glared at him, then faced down Yuven, and the Iceshards circled him.

"Yuven..." Adara winced when the Iceshard behind her dragged her to her feet.

Master Mazril readied his sword with a hiss through his nose.

Yuven's gaze scanned in one sweeping motion, then snapped when a couple of Iceshards took their advantage. In a graceful dance of a wyvern, golden glyphs followed his movements through the mist as he drove one seax into the chest of an Iceshard, who screeched and grasped at the hilt when Yuven sent his foot into it. Another duck, and Adara gasped when he tugged out a magnificent glaive made of ice to skewer them through the stomach.

Yuven twisted on his heel to push through the air, and Master Mazril raised his sword.

Yuven leaped, and a whisk of snow fell behind him when he clashed with the sword. Adara screamed when Master Mazril pierced him through the chest.

Snow fell out, and Yuven sneered at him — a reflection of the Tebora round robin tourney turned on its heel

The clone exploded in the face of her captor, who twisted around to Blackwall when Yuven sped for him. He lowered his hands from his sleeves, a dark brown glyph spinning from his fingertips. Tendrils stretched out of the focal points, but he grunted when Yuven crashed into him with a plume of ice and snow.

Adara froze at the gurgling sound behind her. The Iceshard fell behind her, spreading a pool of blood as Yuven swiped blood off his last seax with a flick of his fingers onto their cloak. His fingers clenched, and the other seax whipped through the mist, washed off the blood from the moisture and back into his hands.

Adara went to leap up in joy, but she froze when he latched onto her from behind, and she winced when he brought the metal to her neck, right against her veins. Blackwall hesitated.

"That's what I thought," Yuven said with a pained cackle. "I see now. Tell me, Blackwall. Whatever it takes, you said? You know what? I can concur with you on that, so how about we test it?" Adara whimpered and gripped onto his forearms when he pressed the biting blades against her throat. "You think I have any qualms? I'm not Fenrer Pyren."

Fenrer? Where is he?

Blackwall stiffened. "You want to test me on a bluff?"

"You're an Aurus," Yuven hissed and tucked his head against hers. "I'm sure you can see it."

What was left of the decimated Iceshards shifted in discomfort, though circled around to block their escape.

The headsman's axe.

Her heart slammed against her chest when Yuven tightened his grip, stone cold as the mist left his ashen, bloody lips. Blackwall blinked, then said, "That would be exceptionally ruthless of you, Yuven Traye."

"Like I said, I'm not Fenrer," his voice cracked, and Adara frowned when he shook, but pulled her closer. Adara bit down on a sob when he slid the metal across her skin, not hard enough to break it, but the cold touch threatened to bleed out her life. "You need us both alive, but I'm not playing this game anymore."

Ice crackled around them, and an ice glaive formed behind Yuven, aimed straight at both their heads.

Blackwall stared.

"Oh, I didn't mean to make you think I'd only kill her," Yuven said and tapped her chin with the other seax, but returned it against her neck. "Oh no, no no, Blackwall. I want you to watch as your plan turns to ash." A different textured growl rumbled his chest against her back. "All that effort, only to lose it all with one stroke. You make one move, I will kill us both."

The beautiful glaive hovered in the air — her final moment.

Beautiful, and deadly.

He wouldn't.

Yuven glared at her.

He will.

Adara held onto his forearms, but resisted the urge to thrash. "Yuven—" A squeak left her lips when he pressed the seax's closer, and he tilted his face against hers.

"Ask yourself," he murmured. "Why do they want us alive? Why give them the satisfaction?"

"I don't know," she whimpered.

Blackwall took a step, and she stiffened when Yuven adjusted his grip on her to point the edges into her throat. "You have one option the way I see it, Blackwall," Yuven said. "You can break the Auric Law. You can break it, and I will be the first to watch as you suffer the consequences that would make you wish it'd be the Storm Wardens delivering the punishment."

"Yuven," she begged.

Bubbles of mist collected around them, and she breathed out her life when Yuven relaxed his grip. "Say the word, Adara," he whispered. "Say the word, and I will end this farce right now. It will be quick, I can make you that final promise."

"Where's Fenrer?" He said nothing and continued to glare at Blackwall, the stalemate palpable as the portal waited for its creator to open it in full, she asked again, "Yuven? Yuven, where's Fenrer?"

"Say it," he whispered on his tongue.

Say it. Say it, Adara. Say it.

It thunked against a block, and heads rolled.

"I don't want to die," she whimpered. "Not like this."

Yuven blinked at her, and the bubbles popped without a reply. "You want to know what happened to Fenrer?" he asked, louder, and his voice rang out with a melodic passage of grief. "These people murdered him!" He used a finger to point at them, but he refused to shift his seax off her throat. "Every single one. They took my Oathbound away from me!" Tears cracked down his skin as he gasped out in pain, and her blood froze over in fiery rage. "They didn't need him alive, oh no! He was just in the way, wasn't he? So you killed him! You killed a Storm Warden! Imagine that! A Storm Warden dying due to the very people we're trying to protect!" Yuven shrieked the same song, and it fluttered her boiling heart.

Everyone I loved...

Tara smiled at her.

Everyone I cared about...

Jisa created a bird, and told her to fly.

Auroras pulsed across the ground.

"So, you tell me, Adara," he growled, full of hate. "At what point does this stop? Why let them wash the inferno with cruelty when it tried to love? I say let this world burn."

Fenrer pushed the wooden wolf in her hands. 'You will,' his voice, so far away, but close enough to tickle her ear. 'I trust you. I have faith in you.'

I believe.

Auroras shone against the rain, and her heart matched the thunder in the flow. It screeched in her ears as the entirety of the world opened its silver jaws. It left her throat, awash in green cracked memories. It burst apart to swallow her childhood, and her rush through the forest, when a beast slavered and called out her name with a rumbling, twisted moan. Tendrils stretched out of its black carapace, but a golden crescent blade lodged into its throat when it went to take a chomp out of her small arm. Distortion rippled and focused the aurora upwards, and Yuven's violet eyes thinned into beads as silver flecked across them.

A beacon of might.

It exploded upwards and spread her scream throughout the world as Yuven tugged her backwards, in the full burst of her rampaging inferno. The ice glaive behind him swirled with ribbons of silver flames. The bubble of his magick distorted and cracked from the force of her broken heart. It bled into her throat as she expelled out the inferno, to leave the grass at her feet scorched to nothing, to the bare dirt, no, deeper. Scoured to the stone. A tornadic supercell of flames.

Blackwall headed for the shining portal, the path of twilight in front of her.

The future untold?

Adara clenched her fists, and Yuven released her.

Why must I lose everything I love for it?

One Iceshard rushed for them, but when Master Mazril tried to stop them, the glaive of silver ice slammed through their head instead. Tendrils of tar burrowed through the grass, and latched onto the auras to drain the light.

Master Mazril ran for Yuven with his own snarl. Embers danced on her skin and swallowed her in flames, but he parried both hits from the sword.

The tendril snaked closer to her arms.

It broke apart in the bubble, and exploded upwards into the sky to pierce the storming clouds with silver rain.

Yuven struggled and blood slipped down his chin, and Master Mazril shoved him to the ground with a punch. White twine wrapped around his arms, and it poured into her mind. Adara rushed for the Iceshard, to protect him as he had protected her, to not make all the sacrifices to get her there go to waste ever again.

"Now's not the time for that, Sazaka. I think we've seen enough death today to add an entire city to it, wouldn't you agree?"

Tendrils of tar snapped around her arms, and she gasped out when numb pinpricks swept through her limbs as Master Mazril hauled Yuven up by the arms. Blackwall headed for her, colder than ice.

"Keeper, it is time to go! Someone would have seen," Master Mazril snapped as Yuven's eyes fluttered. "And he will not stay this way for long."

No!

Adara thrashed in her fire when two Iceshards dragged her closer to the portal, to the end.

Fenrer!

Her heart screamed out his name, the power in it, and she longed for him to rush out of the mist and prove the strength of the Storm Wardens.

Back in the twilight sea, the stars wasted into blood, the final, shimmering green star fading out into the distance.

Powerless in the phoenix fire, it crumbled to ashes, and bubbled into the calm of the ocean waves.