Chapter 148 Pain
She woke with her cheek pressed to the mud, the taste of iron and dirt in her mouth. Before anything else, Daisy wanted to survive, to find the others if they still lived. The sky overhead was a smear of gray, rain falling in a steady, cold sheet.
Someone had dragged her to the foot of the willow. Xeris lay nearby, chest rising and falling in shallow bursts. His arms were shredded, the black veins on his skin gone wild, curling inwards like barbed wire. A sharp memory struck Daisy then: the warmth of Xeris’s hand over hers, steady and laughing the night they’d stolen apples together, the moon painting silver over his unmarked skin. Now his fingers trembled in the mud, and for a dizzy moment, Daisy felt everything at risk—the future she’d barely begun to trust. In that haze of pain, she realized her feelings for Xeris had shifted, sharper and stranger after everything they had survived. She still saw the kindness in him, but fear tangled with hope now, as if losing him was no longer unimaginable but inevitable, and she had to decide if she could let herself rely on someone who might break before she did.
Oliver crouched beside her, one arm wrapped around his ribs, blood soaking his shirt. He grinned when he saw her eyes open. “I told you not to die.”
Daisy sat up, body protesting, but managed.
“What happened?”
Oliver shook his head. “We lost. Mostly. The villagers ran. Some made it to the caves. The rest—” He looked away. “You bought them time, though.”
He glanced at Daisy’s hands. “When you broke the warding stone, all that light—that noise. It stalled them, forced the chainbearers back. The stone was our last line of defense; shattering it released the magic that kept the village safe. The chainbearers, those armored hunters with lengths of the Emperor’s chain, bind and break anyone with magic-blood. It gave us just enough time to get the children through, even if it cost you. You barely made it out.”
Daisy scanned the square: bodies, daisies blackened, willow roots scorched.
Elder Fern was gone.
Cornelius was gone.
Delia—
She tried to stand, fell back, and Oliver caught her.
“Where’s Delia?”
Oliver’s face twisted. “She was with your mom. I haven’t—” He stopped, throat working.
With shaky resolve, Daisy moved toward the cottage, drawing a line between the devastation outside and what waited within.
Inside the cottage, a different world pressed in: the air was thick with the copper stink of blood and the sweeter, choking rot of magic gone bad. Flakes of tarnished silver littered the floorboards, tiny sigils burnt black at their centers. On the wall above the bed, a once-glowing ward was a smear of dull ash, its spiral lines cracked and seeping a thread of smoky light. Maribel lay on the bed, eyes closed, lips parted. Delia knelt at her side, hands pressed over Maribel’s heart, sobbing.
Daisy dropped to the floor next to her and put her hand over Delia’s.
“Is she—?”
Delia just whispered, voice cracked and raw, “I tried. Everything.”
Daisy looked at her mother. Maribel looked peaceful at last. The locket hung from her neck, chain tangled in her hair.
Daisy reached out, brushed a strand of hair from Maribel’s face, and closed Maribel’s eyes.
Delia’s sobs faded. “I’m sorry,” she breathed.
Daisy felt hollow, as if the chain had emptied her. A faint music wound through the void, distant but unbroken. Would that song give her strength or consume her? Fear flashed—could the chain change her until nothing was left but its music? Yet hope lingered too: maybe the song could make her strong enough to carry the loss and protect those she loved. That hope and fear tangled inside her, the future uncertain.
Xeris stood in the doorway, unsteady but alive. His eyes found Daisy, and he nodded once, slow and deliberate.
Oliver helped Delia to her feet, then to the door. He waited for Daisy.
She lingered, then kissed her mother’s cool forehead.
She stood, squared her shoulders, and walked out into the rain.
Later, as the afternoon waned, they buried the dead in a ring around the willow, each grave marked with a stone and a single daisy. The survivors—only a handful—watched in silence, their faces masked by mud and grief. Some stood rigidly, fists clenched at their sides, while others wept quietly or reached for one another, seeking comfort in the presence of those left behind. Their silence was heavy, not only with loss but also with the unspoken questions of what it meant to endure when so many had not.
Elder Fern returned at dusk, limping, one eye swollen shut. She nodded at Daisy and sat by the firepit, singing.
Mira limped in on a splint, face pale but resolute. She found Daisy at the edge of the square, sat beside her, and stared at the sky.
“You’re still here,” Mira said.
Daisy flexed her fingers, watched the black veins retreat down her arms. “Not for long.”
Mira let out a soft, stubborn laugh. “I plan to last. Someone has to,” she said, her voice edged not just with determination but with a flicker of defiance. “If people like us give up now, what’s the point of surviving at all? I want to be here when things change, even if it’s dangerous.” Their gazes met, sharp with a question neither wanted to ask: survive and hide, or fight and be seen?
Mira nodded. “The Emperor’s chain isn’t finished. He’ll send more. Word is, the falcon banners are already massing to the east, bringing the Iron Knights and the hounds that track magic-blood. There’s talk of those black mirrors, too, the ones that turn spells inside out. He won’t let the village rest.” She paused, worry flickering in her eyes. “He calls himself the Restorer, you know. Claims he’s scouring all the old blood and wild magic from the land, like he’s fixing the world. Some say he was once a healer who lost his family to a spell gone wrong. Now he thinks only chains and order will keep anyone safe, even if it destroys us all.”
Daisy closed her eyes. “Let him.”
“Where will you go?”
Daisy looked at Oliver, at Xeris, at Delia, all three watching her from across the square.
She smiled, bitter. “Anywhere he doesn’t expect.”
They sat as darkness fell, willow roots aglow with ethereal blue, casting wavering patterns across mud-soaked stones and the battered remains of the square. The soft luminescence seemed to press outward, cloaking the survivors in a hush that almost, but not quite, felt safe. Yet beneath this fragile calm, the air seethed with sensory reminders of recent violence: the acrid bite of smoke tainted with burnt flesh, the sharp metallic tang of blood lingering stubbornly at the back of the throat, and the cloying, damp heaviness of rain-sodden earth. The chain in Daisy’s blood went quiet for a moment, but the hush was never whole; even beauty trembled with menace.
She knew tomorrow would be worse than the war wasn’t over, not by a long shot.
But tonight, the story belonged to her.
That night, Daisy dreamed of the city—not a ruin, but alive. In her vision, the streets brimmed with people she had never met, faces blurred, hands outstretched. She stood on a dais at the center, the locket heavy at her throat, the chain in her blood humming. Behind her, the Emperor watched, his eyes bright with hunger. When Daisy met his gaze, a jolt of fear and recognition flooded her. He was not just watching, but searching for something inside her, some hunger that echoed his own. In that moment, Daisy understood that her internal struggle was not merely about resisting the Emperor, but about confronting the power within herself. Shame at her own capacity for ambition and defiance at the thought of losing her independence coiled within her, caught between the intoxicating lure of the chain’s strength and the values she still wished to uphold. The image left Daisy reeling, the choice already looming—would she surrender to the chain’s power, risking the loss of her identity for the strength needed to fulfill her promises, or restrain herself and risk failing those she loved? If she allowed herself to embrace the chain, she feared becoming like the Emperor—formidable, yet emptied of compassion—or she might find a path to wield her power without losing herself. She recognized that, eventually, she would face the decision of how much of her own nature to sacrifice and at what cost to achieve liberation. The Emperor’s hunger thus appeared as both a warning and a challenge, compelling Daisy to examine the depths of her own dilemma.
She turned to face him.
He smiled, and she saw herself reflected in his teeth.
Wake up, Daisy told herself.
When she did, the world was unchanged, but the chain’s music was different—less a dirge, more a promise.
In the morning, she slipped out of bed and found Oliver waiting in the yard. He handed her a cup of something hot, and their fingers lingered a little too long.
Xeris appeared on the porch, his wounds bound, hair wild, a devil-may-care glint in his eye.
Delia emerged last, eyes puffy but steady.
They stood together, four against the world, the valley still and cold around them as Daisy saw it then.
Daisy cracked a smile. “Let’s see if we can’t do better this time.”
As she looked at her friends and the broken valley beyond, the question echoed in her mind: What would it truly cost to do better, and who would they be when the reckoning ended?
The others nodded, and for a moment, she believed it.
They walked out into dawn, into the end of the world, and whatever came next.