Chapter 63 Come What May
The new day broke with a sound like the world splitting open. Above the castle’s shattered spires, Xeris lifted himself on wings the color of arterial blood, beating the dawn out of the sky and replacing it with the thunder of his own ascent. For the first time since the old order fell, he flew with company: behind and below him streamed a ragged formation of city flyers, half-trained mages, and anyone who’d discovered in the chaos that they could levitate, hover, or simply believe hard enough to stay in the air. Some flew on awkward, stitched-together wings; others on boards, doors, scraps of slate. In the rising sun, they looked like a murder of crows with a dragon at their head.
From the high ramparts, the war council watched as Xeris banked and roared, sending a pulse of fire over the ridge where the first wave of foreign mages massed. Their lines broke, scattered by the promise of destruction. The sky was theirs, at least for now.
Below, Daisy threaded through the castle’s underbelly with Samuel and Eleanora at her heels. She moved fast, the spiral on her wrist pulsing with an energy that was more alive than she’d ever felt. Every time they hit a new corridor, Daisy flicked a bead of blood from her fingertip; it hovered, then zipped ahead to sketch a sigil at the subsequent branching, burning crimson in the dark.
“Are you sure this is the way?” Samuel called, ducking a splintered lintel.
Daisy grinned, not looking back. “The city’s bleeding. I just follow the flow.”
Eleanora trailed, blade drawn. She wore battered leathers now, every trace of noble elegance burned out by necessity. Still, her movements had a precision that made Daisy almost jealous. When they reached a crossroads, Eleanora stepped forward, swept the corners for threats, then gestured Daisy on.
As they descended, the tunnels changed. The walls went from worked stone to something older, the brickwork giving way to blocks shot through with fossils and veins of something that glowed faintly blue. Samuel ran his hands over the markings, pausing often to mutter to himself.
“These glyphs,” he said, breathless. “They predate the caste system. Hell, maybe the city itself.”
Eleanora rolled her eyes. “Fascinating. Will it help us not die?”
He shrugged, but Daisy could tell he was cataloging every symbol. He’d be dangerous with a few days to study. Too bad they had minutes.
At the next turn, Daisy’s sigil lit up and then burst, slight, bright, a warning flare. She slowed, pressed her back to the wall, and listened.
Voices ahead: foreign accent, clipped, cruel. The soft pop of spellwork, and then a child’s whimper.
Daisy’s jaw flexed, scales at her neck prickling.
She signaled the others to hold, then crept forward, claws digging into the old mortar. At the edge of a crumbling arch, she peered in.
A makeshift checkpoint: four enemy mages in tight formation, blue-and-gold uniforms glimmering with static. Behind them, two city kids, couldn’t have been more than twelve, hands bound and heads shorn to the scalp, veins dark with injected ward-ink.
Daisy bared her teeth. Xeris’s voice rumbled through her mind, the urge to burn and consume.
Instead, she acted.
She strode out into the open, letting the mages see her.
They spun, hands already drawing sigils, but Daisy just grinned, slashed her palm, and let her blood arc through the air. The droplets caught the torchlight, then solidified mid-flight, forming a crescent blade. She swept her hand, and the blade sliced through the first mage’s wards like paper.
The man collapsed, screaming, his body unraveling in a haze of red.
Samuel and Eleanora took the cue. Samuel pulled a handful of powders from his sleeve and blew them at the closest foe, turning her into a statue of salt before she could finish her incantation. Eleanora closed the distance, blade flickering, and drove it through the third’s eye.
Daisy caught the last one by the throat, claws digging in, then ripped him off the floor and drove him headfirst into the stone. He didn’t get up.
She wiped her hand on her jacket, then knelt by the kids. Their eyes were wide, but not empty.
“You okay?” she asked, voice gentler than she felt.
One nodded, the other just stared at the spiral on Daisy’s wrist. “Are you… her?” the girl whispered.
Daisy shrugged. “If I am, you don’t want to be.”
She broke their bonds, then pointed them down the tunnel. “Find the river. Stay low. Don’t stop for anyone in uniform.”
They ran, ghosts in the dark.
Eleanora crouched by the dead, studying the uniforms. “That was a scouting party. There’ll be more.”
Samuel nodded. “We’re close. I can feel the engine’s wards.”
Daisy felt it too, the pressure in her bones, the way the air got thicker with every step. The spiral on her wrist was burning now, and the scales along her jaw and ribs glowed faintly red.
At the next turn, the tunnel ended in a door.
Not a door, a monument: ten feet high, carved from a single slab of black stone, the Ravensworth crest burned into its surface. Around the edge, intricate locks, no keyholes, just slots where bone or blood might fit.
Daisy stared at it, the spiral on her wrist prickling with cold fire.
Samuel read the wards. “It’ll kill anyone not of the blood.”
Eleanora stepped back. “That’s you, then.”
Daisy sucked in a breath. She pressed her palm to the spiral, let the blood pool, then slammed her hand into the center of the door.
The stone drank her blood, the lines lighting up in sequence: one, then the next, until the entire crest glowed with power. The locks slid open, mechanisms grinding like a dying animal.
The door swung in.
The stench hit them first: not death, but decay, like a room sealed for centuries, every moment of suffering captured and distilled.
Inside, a chamber as vast as a city block, lined with slabs. On each, a citizen strapped down, tubes in their arms and throats, magic drawn out and fed to a central column. Hundreds, maybe more, every face twisted in agony or locked in a final scream.
The central apparatus pulsed, veins of blue and red running up its length, the power in it so intense that the air shimmered.
Samuel staggered back, hand over his mouth. “They’re… they’re alive.”
Eleanora looked away, bile rising in her throat.
Daisy walked in, every scale on her body standing up.
The spiral on her wrist spun faster, responding to the agony in the room. The hunger in her bones became a roar.
She put her hand to the column, felt the old magic reach for her, trying to suck her dry.
She let it.
The pain was instant and complete. It burned away her skin, then her nerves, then her mind. She saw every victim, felt their last memories, their fear, the way the city had turned them into sacrifices. She saw herself in each face: the kid who ran from home, the mother who bled for her children, the monster who’d never had a choice.
Xeris’s mind surged into hers, not to feed, but to steady.
You are not them, he said. You are the last, and the first.
Daisy screamed, pouring her own blood magic into the engine. The spiral on her wrist snapped, sending a line of red fire through the room, lighting every tube, every vein. The engine fought back, but she pushed harder, clawing at the power until the column shook and the stone began to fracture.
Samuel was shouting something behind her, words in a language she’d never learned, but understood anyway. The blood wards on the walls burst into flame, and the locks that had kept the victims trapped started to break, one by one.
Eleanora rushed to help, cutting straps and dragging people off the slabs. Some were too far gone, but others staggered upright, dazed, alive.
The engine’s howl rose, a keening so loud it split the stone.
Daisy felt her own life draining away, but she didn’t care.
This was the end, and she was going to write it in blood.
She drew on everything, Xeris, her own rage, the memories of every ancestor screaming in her head, and slammed it into the engine.
The core cracked, then exploded, sending a shockwave down every tunnel.
The last thing Daisy saw before she blacked out was the faces of the survivors, wide-eyed, staring at her like she was something new.
She smiled, then collapsed.
She woke in the dark, Samuel and Eleanora crouched over her, the smell of ozone and fresh blood thick in the air.
Eleanora’s hand was on her chest, grounding her. “It’s over,” she said, voice raw. “The engine’s dead. The city’s alive.”
Daisy tried to sit up. Every muscle screamed, but she managed.
Samuel grinned, tears streaming down his face. “You did it, kid.”
Daisy looked at her hand. The spiral was still there, but now it pulsed with a different light. Not hunger, but hope.
Xeris’s mind brushed hers, warm, proud.
You are the key, he said. But you are also the lock.
Daisy laughed, her voice echoing through the ruined chamber.
She looked at the survivors, at Samuel, at Eleanora, at the city above, and at the long road out.
“This ends today,” she said, her scales flaring.
She stood, every part of her on fire, and led them out of the dark.