Chapter 196: Veins of Fire
The ruin reeked of burnt blood and scorched ash. The wind had teeth, jagged and cold, howling between broken pillars as if it mourned the dead that had not yet fallen.
Damian stood in the wreckage, shoulders rising and falling like a beast held barely at bay. His breath steamed in the chilled dusk air, unnatural for the season. He had stayed back dealing with the assassins that were still alive. Umbrazin magic crackling like embers against his skin. The black in his veins pulsed visibly now, not beneath but through him, laced with threads of silver like cracks in obsidian. Around him, Sombrosi assassins lay crumpled, some still twitching, others already dust on the wind.
He hadn’t meant to stay behind, not truly. But when the eastern flank collapsed and the shadows poured through the breach like a tide of knives, he couldn’t leave.
Suddenly, Serel’s scream pierced through the chaos. He had found her beneath a broken column, crushed but alive, her eyes wide and wild with pain. A healer would’ve said she’d never walk again. Damian had just growled and pulled the stone off her with his bare hands, not noticing his skin tearing open like parchment over muscle and fire.
She’d whispered something, he still didn’t know what. But her hand had brushed his chest, and in that heartbeat, it all came undone.
The Umbrazin inside him rose.
He’d fought it for years. Holding a daily disciplined training and exerting control and restrain over a natural desire he had never truly understood. But now it answered with a roar.
Flames unfurled from his back, black fire edged in violet. The ruins howled with it, metal screeched as old weapons twisted from the heat. The assassins turned, but it was already too late. Their shadows lit like candles.
The ground beneath Damian fractured, scorched veins of earth running out from his boots like roots seeking hell. He might have burned the whole mountain down if Isla hadn’t found him.
She moved through the smoke like vengeance reborn, hair singed at the edges, face smeared with soot and blood, but eyes clear and golden, locked onto him.
“Damian,” she called, voice cutting through the storm like iron. “Look at me.”
He didn’t because he couldn’t abide the guilt pent up inside him.
“Damian, come back. You said we’d do this together.” She walked closer, through the rising Umbrazin heat that no creature nor human should’ve survived.
Still, she came.
When she touched him, just fingers on his cheek, the fire shuddered. His knees buckled and a sound wrenched from him that was neither human nor wolf.
Then the fire collapsed inward, searing and silent.
Damian crumpled forward, caught in her arms.
“I saw si many assassins, I couldn’t bare them hurting you. So I stayed back and then I found a woman, I believe her name is Serel, she was chanting some words I didn’t recognise,” he rasped.
“I know,” Isla whispered. “You did what you had to do.”
Behind them, smoke still climbed like prayers unanswered.
Down below, Aryia’s blade slid cleanly through the last assassin’s throat. She didn’t even pause to watch the body fall. Her arm ached, slick with blood, her own and theirs, but she didn’t stop because she couldn’t.
She was undone. She couldn’t stop calling, sniffing and reaching beyond herself with senses that hadn’t failed her in years.
“Cassian!” she screamed into the air.
Only echoes answered, ash and echo.
Then something changed. The group was close behind her, but she was too fast for them.
The scent hit her first, faint, flickering, but unmistakable. Cassian. Sweat, fear, and the wolf beneath all of it.
She pivoted sharply toward a collapsed chamber entrance, its stones still warm from the earlier fire. A whimper, soft and strained, came from beyond.
Then there was movement, but it certainly wasn’t Cassian. A blade flashed, and she barely turned in time. One of the red-robed assassins lunged from the shadows, silent as a nightmare. His blade caught her ribs, slicing flesh. She twisted, bringing her sword up in a perfect arc. Sparks lit the darkness as metal clashed.
He hissed, it sounded inhuman. Like the wind had been given teeth and rage.
They clashed again. Her muscles screamed. Blood poured down her side, warm and sticky. She didn’t care. This was what she was made for, blood and redemption.
He overreached. She ducked, rolled, came up behind him and drove the blade in under his ribs, up and through.
He spasmed. But didn’t die. That’s when she saw it, his blood wasn’t red. It was silver, Umbrazin-infused. The Elders had altered them, once again.
The assassin twisted on her blade, mouth opening in a wordless, gurgling snarl. She kicked him off the sword and stumbled back.
“Aryia!” Isla’s voice came up behind her.
Relief nearly took her knees out. She turned just as Isla, Damian, Brienne, Vincent, Leo, and Alaine emerged from the smoke like phantoms, bloodied and scorched, but alive. Damian’s eyes were still rimmed with shadows. Vincent held his blade low but ready. Brienne’s face tightened when she saw Aryia’s wounds.
“I’m fine,” Aryia barked.
“Where is he?” Isla asked.
Aryia pointed with a trembling hand toward the stone pile behind her. “There. I smelled him and hear something. But it’s sealed.”
The group converged. Vincent dropped to his knees first, pressing his hands to the stone, closing his eyes.
“Still breathing,” he said, after a moment. “Faint.”
Brienne’s blade was out, but her other hand ghosted near Aryia’s arm. “You’re bleeding too much.”
“Don’t touch me,” Aryia whispered. “I failed him.”
“No,” Isla said firmly. “You kept him alive.”
Alaine had dropped her pack and was already tracing the glyphs along the stone face. “They reinforced this with old blood magic.”
Raven appeared from behind, quiet as a falling shadow. “Then it will take old blood to undo it.” She raised a hand, pressed it to the stone. Her eyes darkened, black to crimson. The glyphs flared. Then a sound shattered the silence. None of them were expecting to see her but they all felt relief. She always appeared in the most unexpected moments.
A scream erupted. It was Cassian’s. It sounded muffled, choked, but raw with terror. Aryia went rigid and everyone froze.
The red-robed assassin they thought Aryia had killed shifted behind them. His voice was wrong, layered, ancient, as if something deeper now wore his flesh.
“You’re too late.”
They turned just as he vanished into dust and a rumble began beneath their feet.
Aryia’s voice broke. “No… No, please!”
The stone cracked and Cassian screamed again. But this time, it wasn’t fear. It was rage and something else, something older, answered from below.
The Veil was opening. They were out of time.