Chapter 16: Splinters of a Crown

The plateau wasn’t a plateau anymore.

It was a carcass.

Bones jutting out, skin split open, blood-water flooding the gaps. Every step we took was on something that had already died.

And Max was standing tall on it.

The crown of shadow twisted around his skull like it had grown from him. Not a trophy. A tumor. Its tendrils curled into his veins, black rivers snaking down his arms, his chest. His grin wasn’t human anymore it was the grin I’d seen stretched across the horizon.

“Grace,” he crooned, voice splitting into two pitches at once. “You’ve done the impossible. You made it sing.”

He meant the light. The glow boiling in my veins, tearing me raw from the inside out. Every heartbeat was a scream. My ribs felt like they’d split again, but I refused to bend.

“Get used to disappointment,” I spat, blood running down my chin.

His laugh rolled across the wreckage, bouncing from slab to slab. “Not disappointment. Revelation. You stole the fire. And now it burns you. Exactly like me.”

The flood surged around us, snapping stone into shards. Evelyn was still fighting the current, one arm wrapped around my sister, knife clenched in her other hand. Her eyes never left me.

Don’t die, they said.

Don’t make this choice mine.

I took a step forward. The skin beneath me rippled, trying to give way, but the glow held it firm. My body was a furnace, my shadow cast white instead of black.

“Then let’s burn each other out.”

Max’s grin widened until it cut his face. “Finally.”

He leapt.

The flood rose to meet him. A black column lifted his body high, tendrils lashing from it like a throne on the move. He came down hard, fist slamming the stone near my feet. The plateau split, a spiderweb of cracks vomiting red water.

I barely rolled clear before his second strike landed. The glow inside me pulsed outward, a shield of blinding light. The tendril that whipped toward me sizzled and snapped, retreating like it had touched a hot iron.

“Too slow,” I rasped.

Max only laughed harder. His hands dug into the wreckage, pulling it up like it was soft clay. The stone screamed as he wrenched an entire slab loose and hurled it at me.

I raised my arms. The glow roared out of me, splitting the rock mid-air, shards raining like glass. My skin blistered from the release, but I didn’t stop moving. I charged.

We collided with a crack that shook the carcass beneath us. His crown slammed into my forehead, tendrils biting. I felt the shadow in it trying to worm its way inside, trying to choke the light. My scream met his laugh in the middle, a jagged chord that tore the air apart.

For a moment, there was nothing but pressure.

Like the whole world held its breath, waiting to see who’d break first.

Then the plateau gave its answer.

The ground beneath Evelyn and my sister collapsed, plunging them waist-deep into the flood. Evelyn’s knife flashed as she cut at a tendril trying to drag them under. My sister’s bracelet glinted between waves, the last bright thing in the black.

“Grace!” Evelyn’s shout was half-drowned, but it carved through me sharper than Max’s claws.

I shoved him back with a burst of light that left my veins smoking. His body skidded across the bleeding stone, crown hissing as the glow clung to it. He snarled for the first time, grin cracking.

“Always them,” he spat. “Always the leash. You’d be so much stronger if you cut them loose.”

“Maybe.” I raised my fists, shaking, burning. “But then I wouldn’t be me.”

His eyes went blacker than the flood. “Exactly.”

He charged again.

We slammed together, fists and light and shadow breaking everything around us. Tendrils coiled my arms, tried to snap them like twigs. I let the glow flare through my veins, searing them off. My knuckles split across his jaw. His claws raked my side.

It wasn’t a fight. It was erosion. Two storms grinding each other down.

And still, Evelyn’s shouts cut through. My sister’s cry cut deeper.

I saw them slipping under.

Max saw it too. His grin came back, jagged and holy. “There. That’s the choice. Save them or stop me. You don’t get both.”

The light in me buckled. The shadow in him swelled. He was right I couldn’t be in two places at once.

But the glow wasn’t mine alone anymore.

I closed my eyes. Opened everything else. And let it out.

Not a beam. Not a shield. A fracture.

I tore myself apart with it.

Light split into shards, each piece tearing from my veins, my bones, my teeth. It screamed across the plateau in white lines, lashing the flood, cutting through tendrils, burning the crown that sat on Max’s skull.

One shard slammed into Evelyn, not to harm but to lift. She rose with my sister clutched to her, dragged upward on a current of light toward a slab that hadn’t sunk yet. Their screams twisted into gasps as they landed.

Another shard carved across Max’s chest, ripping through the shadow armor. He howled, crown flickering, tendrils retreating.

The last shard burned me hollow.

I collapsed to my knees. Blood poured from my nose, my chest, every crack in me. The glow inside was almost gone, the pulse a faint flicker.

Max staggered, crown cracked but still fused to him. His laugh came back, weaker but sharp. “Almost… Grace. Almost.”

I wiped blood from my mouth, forced myself upright. My legs shook, but they held. “Not almost.”

The plateau groaned, split wider. The flood surged higher. And in the distance, the shadow roared not dead, just waiting.

This wasn’t the end. Not

yet. But one of us was going to break before the shadow did.

And I was ready to find out who.