Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 140780 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140780 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 469(@300wpm)
I stumbled into a large cavern with a giant pool in the centre. This one hadn’t dried up, full to the brim with sloshing angry water. Endless eddies churned, thanks to the hypnotic spiral in the middle—a whirlpool pulling down into death.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose.
A sharp tug on my heart, sudden and hot—begging me to come quickly, come fast, come now.
I staggered and broke into another run.
Skidding around the deep pool, my bare feet slipped as the roar of water hurt my ears.
The red glow brightened as I paused on the threshold of yet another cave.
In the distance, in the middle of a dried basin, I found him.
Exactly like I’d seen in my mind’s eye. Hunched over his crossed legs, clinging to his knees, every muscle rigid and quaking while savage flames burned him alive. Fire poured from him in violent surges, licking up the cave walls, turning dripping droplets into hissing steam.
I went to move.
I opened my mouth to scream—
But pure agony tore across his face. The intricate web of veins beneath his skin ignited bright gold.
Too late.
I was too—
A supernova burst out of him—a roaring sphere of incandescent destruction.
It blasted toward me like a bomb.
Smacked into me harder than a devil’s fist.
It hurled me backward as if I was a flimsy butterfly caught in a flaming hurricane.
The cave shattered around me. Walls crumbled. Ceilings gave in.
And as his power fully unleashed, I was flung into the swirling water behind me.
I hit hard.
I sank quick.
My teeth punctured my tongue as burning water swallowed me deep, yanking me into its violent spiral.
I fought.
I fought so hard.
I kicked and flailed, clawing toward the blazing fire on the surface.
But it was no use.
My back smacked against rock; my knees whacked against stone.
I couldn’t tell which way was up.
Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t scream.
My hair wrapped around my neck like a noose.
I choked and tumbled, spinning and somersaulting.
The whirlpool sucked me down.
And down.
And down.
Darkness chewed me alive as the water forced me into a claustrophobic chute.
The tunnel tightened like the throat of an ancient beast, feasting on me as my lungs screamed. Something whacked against my spine and suddenly...I couldn’t feel anything below my waist.
No—
Horror made me inhale.
Hot water flooded in.
I slammed shoulder-first into stone.
Something cracked.
The stone or bone...I couldn’t tell.
Pain radiated down my arm, white-hot and dizzying.
But the water didn’t care.
It just kept breaking me into pieces, pulverising me as it sucked me around a narrow bend, tearing, shredding—
I hit another wall.
And another.
Something sharp scraped along my chest, splitting my skin open and snagging against my collarbone. It hooked onto the only keepsake I had of my mother.
The chain that’d been around my neck ever since I could remember fought to stay with me. It clung to me so tightly—stretching, shivering, refusing to leave.
But then...it broke.
My raindrop pendant vanished in a surge of bubbles.
No!
My necklace!
My mother’s necklace!
I reached for it blindly, fingers scraping against rushing rock.
My body hit yet another obstruction with a savage smack.
I convulsed—
And something answered.
Snow and sleet and ice, ice, ice ripped through me in a soul-rending flash.
Power flooded my veins—so cold it burned, so vast it erased pain, so wicked it ripped me from death’s embrace and roared.
My bones rang like struck crystal.
My blood frosted like red mercury.
Glacial fractals burst from my fingertips, turning the churning water stark white.
I was the cold between stars.
The silence after extinction—
But then, the mountain rejected me.
My head cracked against the rocky chute.
Something punctured my ribcage, stabbing straight into my lung.
Water poured in through the hole in my body.
And with a final bite, I plummeted into the mountain’s belly...
Chapter Forty
AGONY TORE ME APART.
Three kinds, all at once.
The first detonated in my chest—fissuring through my soul where Rook’s heartbeat lived inside my own.
The second came with fangs—teeth driving into my shoulder.
The third came with lightning-bright pain—my skin cracking as if I’d been roasted.
My body broke with a ruin of ruptured veins and torn flesh.
A loud growl echoed in my ear as the fangs in my shoulder drove deeper, wrenching my attention to the fact my protective, lovable panther was currently eating me alive.
“Whisper.” I choked on ash. “What...What are you—?”
He snarled like a monster and got a better grip with his jaws.
Agony exploded as he hauled me upward, my ruined body scraping over stone. Every inch he dragged me, my chargrilled skin tore even more, leaving my nerves exposed, my muscles uncovered, dragging me from the crater I’d chosen for my grave, all while doing his best to shove me into a different one.
I was dead weight—just a hunk of meat being pulled from a battlefield by something that refused to let me die.
But I wasn’t dead.
How wasn’t I dead?
I’d reached the crux.
I’d felt it.
After endless hours doing my best to cool down, I’d lost.
The fire had taken over.
I’d burned—