Chapter 150 It's Broken
They moved under the cover of night; the moon was a white scab in the sky. Oliver led, his steps almost silent on the frost. Daisy took the rear—not from distrust, though she trusted no one, not even herself, but so she could better hear the chain’s vibration. It warned or invited; she hadn’t decided which.
The north bridge had been a checkpoint; now it was a meat market. Daisy counted four bodies over the barricades, their skin flensed for crows. Soldiers huddled by the fire, bickering over something Daisy couldn’t see. She signaled halt, and the group crouched, eyes level with the dead.
Xeris whispered, “We could go around.”
Daisy shook her head. “Not with Delia. She’ll lose the hand if we don’t get it cleaned.”
Oliver grinned, teeth gleaming. “I’ve seen worse odds.”
Daisy flexed her fingers as the chain’s music rose in her forearm. The black had spread to her shoulders; it always worsened when she used its power. Each time she drew on the chain, she felt its gift—strength in her veins, speed not quite hers, blue magic sparking from her fingers. But the chain took from her too, eating at her nerves and staining her blood black. She wondered if it reached her heart.
“On my mark,” she said.
Xeris nodded and rolled his neck. For a moment, the air flickered around him—his skin seemed to scale, heat rolling off in waves. Delia, cold and alert, blinked twice and silently crawled to position.
The attack was simple: Daisy and Xeris drew fire, Oliver slipped through the gap, and Delia covered with whatever magic she could muster from the scraps in her blood.
The first guard died from a chain through his eye, the sound barely louder than a cough. The second reached for his horn, but Xeris caught his wrist, ripped his arm free with a snap, and let him crumple. The third, smarter, raised his blade and called for the Emperor’s mercy, but Daisy strangled him with her own magic, blue sparks hissing in the cold.
Oliver brought Delia to the water barrel, guiding her trembling hands as she washed her infected wound. She drank deeply, trying to flush the poison, then scrubbed at the festering bite where the chain had marked her. Magic flickered; Delia forced it, coaxing black fluid from the wound, her breath ragged with every effort. When finished, her face was gray and sweaty. She leaned forward, vomited, and shivered violently, purging the corruption with magic and will. “Worth it,” she whispered, then collapsed, spent.
Xeris found her at the bridge’s end, licking a gash in his arm and watching for movement.
He glanced at the veins on her neck, the veins blackening her lips. “You’re running out of time.” The ache in Daisy’s feet crept up her body, heavy and cold. She steadied her breath. “If I become like him, you know what to do.”
Xeris did not answer, but she saw the promise in his eyes.
They moved on, leaving the bridge as a smoking ruin and Delia limping, half-blind but alive. The chain in Daisy’s blood quieted to a low hum, while the air ahead thickened, charged with what awaited.
When dawn came, everything had changed. The group left the shadow of the trees to find the land ahead burned flat—a no-man’s land, the ground still hot from whatever weapon the Emperor’s blood mages had unleashed in the night. The old riverbed had boiled dry, the mud hardened to a glassy crust. Scattered across the plain, figures in the Emperor’s uniform patrolled, moving slowly, like ghosts gone soft with disuse.
Delia coughed, wiped her lips, and pointed to a cluster of standing stones at the edge of the burn. “There. The chain wants us there.”
Oliver checked his knife, eyes sweeping the field. “Is that where we die?”
“Not if we’re clever,” Daisy replied. “Or if we’re fast.”
They sprinted across the dead zone, every step ringing on the crust and drawing them nearer to their goal. The chain in Daisy’s veins sang louder; the world tilted beneath her feet. At the first stone, she found Cornelius’s body—or what remained. His face was gone, but his hands still gripped an iron bar.
She knelt, pried the weapon from the corpse, and kissed the knuckles. “Rest easy, old man.”
Delia knelt beside her, shaking. “He didn’t run,” she said.
“None of us do.”
The Emperor’s patrols turned at the sound, but didn’t charge. Instead, they formed a line at the rise’s top, eyes black and empty. Daisy saw their center: tall, veiled, every inch a wound made flesh.
Xeris bared his teeth. “This one’s not human.”
Daisy stood, chain clenched in both fists, resolve shaping her stance. “Doesn’t matter. Neither am I,” she said, her words heavy with how far she’d come from who she once was.
She led the group up the rise, step by step, never taking her eyes from the thing at the front. The closer they got, the colder the world felt, until even the wind seemed to freeze.
The champion raised an arm, and the patrols split, making a corridor to the stones.
Daisy entered first. “What do you want?” she called.
The champion answered, but not with words—just a rattle, like teeth on bone.
Behind her, Delia collapsed, blood streaming from her nose. Oliver caught her and set her down, then stood guard.
Xeris strode up, face split with fury. “You come for the chain? Come take it.”
The champion lowered his veil, and Daisy saw a face not much older than hers, worn through with magic. Black veins sprawled across his cheeks and into the corners of his mouth. His eyes were empty, but almost human in the way he watched her, sharp as broken glass. The champion fixed his gaze on Daisy and spoke, voice rough and cold. "You are its last root. Give it up."
Daisy almost laughed. “You can have it when you pry it from my corpse.”
The champion did not smile, but the patrols closed in, ring after ring.
She prepared for battle, dropping her coat and letting the chain shine. Black had crawled up to her eyelids. Searching Xeris’s and Oliver’s faces—her last found family—she steeled herself.
“Hold them off,” she whispered, and the two nodded—Xeris with pride, Oliver with that doomed, reckless spark that Daisy had loved since the first day he’d tried to rob her.
The fight was ugly, raw. Xeris charged first, slamming into the left flank of the Veilseekers and scattering them with sheer force. For a moment, he stood alone against a tide of enemies, claws flashing, but they swarmed him, clutching at his arms and dragging him down. Daisy caught a glimpse of his face, teeth bared in fury as he fought beneath a pile of grasping hands.
Oliver darted in next, weaving between the Veilseekers. He slashed at exposed backs, aiming to draw attention away from Xeris, but one of the patrols caught his ankle and pulled him down, his knife flashing desperately. Blood stained his fingers—his, theirs, it didn’t matter.
At the center, Daisy faced the champion, a chain wrapped tight around her fists. They circled each other in a ring of enemies, magic crackling in the brittle air. Each strike sent sparks flying and rang with a force that shook her bones. All around, the Veilseekers pressed closer, intent on closing the circle and crushing them all.
“You can’t win,” said the champion.
“I don’t need to,” Daisy replied. “I just need to break you.”
They collided, and the world flashed white. Daisy felt the chain flare in her veins, tearing through her body and burning out every nerve. She saw the Emperor—his face, eyes, his throne, daisies at his feet—and then herself, a mirror, a possibility.
She screamed, and the chain broke.
When she woke, the world was fire and frost, and nothing in between. She was sprawled on the ground, and the black veins had receded from her arms. The champion was gone—just a smear of ash where he’d stood.
Xeris crouched over her, battered and bloody, his own wounds healing slower than before.
Oliver was next to Delia, her hand clutched in his. She was breathing, just barely.
Daisy stood, braced herself on the stone, and looked down at the ruined field.
The patrols were gone. The air was silent.
“You did it,” Xeris said, voice hoarse.
Daisy flexed her fingers. The chain no longer felt like a prison—more like a memory. She looked at the others. "He was the last," she said, voice raw. Xeris stared at her, blood still on his lips. "He cheated death." Oliver hesitated and then asked, "You broke it?"
Daisy shook her head. “I changed it.”
He laughed, then coughed, then laughed again.
Delia sat up, eyes glazed but alive. “What happens now?”
Daisy looked at the horizon and saw the first red of sunrise.
“We run,” she said. “We live.”
She helped Delia to her feet, put an arm around her, and together they limped into more dead ground. Now, it was their ulcer.
And Daisy, for the first time in her life, felt hungry for what came next.