“If you won’t give me blood willingly, I will take it.”
The remaining soldiers—those too lost to remember, those too angry to accept release—surge toward me in a wave of rusted steel and rotting flesh.
And at my side, Aradya begins to whisper.
FORTY
ARADYA
Ihave been afraid of my power my whole life.
The whispers came naturally, easy as breathing. I taught myself to bear the nosebleeds, the fainting, the way each rite left me hollowed out and shaking. I convinced myself that the pain was the price of compassion.
My mother used to tell me I was a gift to the grieving. My father said I carried death in my throat and should never let it loose. They died in a border skirmish before I turned twelve, and I never got to ask them which one was right.
Now, standing in the heart of the Gravetide King’s realm while the dead rage around me, I think I finally understand. They were both right. And both wrong.
But beneath the whispers lies a darker capability. A power I sensed the first time I forced closure on a spirit who didn’t want to release, who clung to the living world with desperate fingers even as my magic pried them loose. The ability not to let the dead speak, but to command endings. To reach into a soul and drag out its final truth whether it wants to share or not.
I’ve never embraced that power. Never let it take full hold. Because using it feels wrong. Violent. The opposite of everything a mourning witch should be.
But the King is attacking, and Drokhar is fighting, and the soldiers who haven’t found peace are swarming toward us with centuries of rage driving their rotting limbs.
Hundreds of them. Thousands. The ancient dead, the ones too lost to remember who they were. The angry dead, the ones who refused release even when Drokhar offered to listen. They surge across the blood-soaked plains in a wave of rusted steel and rotting flesh, their mouths working in wordless screams, their hollow sockets fixed on the man who burned them and the witch who dared to set their comrades free.
The ground shakes with their advance. I feel it through my boots—the accumulated footsteps of an army that should have been laid to rest centuries ago. Flags from forgotten wars snap in a wind that carries the stench of old death. The sky darkens from blood-red to crimson as the realm responds to the King’s fury.
Drokhar’s blade sings through the first rank. His movements are precise, economical—the efficiency of a man who has destroyed revenants for twenty years. But there are too many. For every corpse he drops, three more take its place. The dead press closer, their reaching hands mere feet from his back.
From me.
The mark on my collarbone burns with desperate heat. I can feel him—his location, the solid certainty of him fighting to keep the dead from reaching me. The claiming changed us both. I know exactly where he is without looking. Twenty feet away. Fifteen. Ten, as the tide pushes him back toward where I stand.
He’ll die here. We both will. Unless?—
The thought cuts through me with perfect clarity.
Unless I stop being afraid.
I close my eyes. Reach for the power I’ve spent my life avoiding. It’s there, waiting—a vast reservoir of dark magic that has been building since the first time I whispered for the dead. Every rite I’ve performed, every spirit I’ve channeled, every dropof blood I’ve paid as the price of grief. All of it pooling beneath my consciousness, forming a weapon I never wanted to wield.
The Gravetide King’s realm is saturated with death magic. I can draw on it freely—I felt the truth of it the moment we crossed the Veil. Power presses against my skin, eager to be used, hungry for direction.
Guardian of endings. That’s what I am. Not a passive channel. A guardian.
I open my eyes.
Blood runs from my nose in a steady stream. More trickles from the corners of my eyes, mixing with tears I didn’t know I was crying. The pain is immense—pressure building in my skull, in my sternum, in the mark that connects me to the orc fighting for his life ten feet away.
But I don’t stop.
I rise to my full height. Spread my arms. Let the power I’ve been holding back my entire life surge through me in a flood of dark intention.
My voice starts as a whisper. Builds to a roar. Shakes the very foundations of the realm:
“I CALL EVERY FALLEN SOUL TO WITNESS.”
The battlefield freezes.