Chapter 74 The First Cut
KAI’S POV
The blade screamed before it struck.
Not audibly, not to the room, but to something older inside me. The wards under my skin detonated into heat as the air split, and instinct tore control from thought.
“Zara!” Too late.
The blade wasn’t metal. It looked like obsidian glass, curved and narrow, veins of silver light pulsing through it like a heartbeat. It emerged from nowhere, no summoning circle, no warning glyph, just there, sliding out of empty space and into flesh.
Mira’s flesh.
She didn’t even have time to scream.
The blade punched through her lower ribs from behind, erupting from her chest in a spray of blood and light. Not red. Silver. Her eyes went wide, mouth opening in a soundless gasp as the weapon drank.
Because that’s what it was doing.
Drinking.
I lunged forward, catching Mira as her knees buckled. She was too light. Far too light for someone who’d been standing and breathing a heartbeat ago. Her blood steamed against my hands, glowing faintly as if the blade had stripped it of something essential.
Her power.
Her life force.
“What did you do?” I roared.
Dr. Voss stood ten paces away, perfectly calm, hands clasped behind her back like this was a lecture gone slightly off-script.
“I introduced a variable,” she said mildly.
Zara moved.
I felt it through the bond first, a violent snap, like a chain pulled too tight. The Devourer surged, not roaring, not losing control but rather....
Focusing.
The shadows around Zara thickened, clinging to her skin as she stepped forward. Her eyes weren’t glowing. That terrified me more than if they were.
“You said this was a demonstration,” Zara said quietly.
“It is.”
The blade tore itself free of Mira’s body with a wet, vicious sound and snapped back into the air, hovering between us. Mira convulsed once in my arms.
Then went still.
“No,” I whispered, pressing my hand to her chest.
There was a heartbeat. Faint. Flickering. Like a dying star.
Zara’s gaze flicked to Mira.
Something ancient shifted.
The blade tilted toward Zara.
I stepped in front of her without thinking.
“Don’t,” I snarled.
Voss’s lips curved.
“Fascinating. It recognizes hierarchy already.”
The blade lunged.
It didn’t aim for my heart.
It went for my bond.
Pain exploded through me, white, searing, intimate. The blade skimmed my chest, carving a sigil into my skin that burned straight through flesh and into spirit. I hit the floor hard, the world shattering into sparks and echoes.
Zara screamed my name.
The sound cracked something open.
The blade froze midair.
Every light in the room flickered. The temperature plummeted. Power bent toward Zara like gravity had suddenly chosen her.
She didn’t shout.
She didn’t cry.
She reached out.
The blade began to shake.
“No,” Voss said sharply for the first time.
“Not like this..”
Too late.
Zara’s fingers closed around empty air, the blade answered. It screamed again, this time audibly, a high, agonized wail as black veins crawled across its surface. The silver light dimmed, corrupted, swallowed by shadow.
Zara breathed in.
I felt it. Gods, I felt it.
She didn’t take Mira’s life. She took what the blade had stolen and ripped it back through sheer force of will. Power flooded the bond, wild and burning and furious. Zara staggered once, teeth gritting, blood trickling from her nose.
Then she shoved it back.
Mira gasped.
Her body arched violently, lungs dragging in air as colour slammed back into her skin. The silver glow vanished. Her heartbeat surged under my palm, strong and real.
Alive.
The blade shattered.
It didn’t fall. It imploded, collapsing into itself with a thunderous crack that sent shockwaves through the room. I was thrown back into the wall, ribs screaming in protest.
Silence followed.
Thick. Horrified.
Dr. Voss stared at the empty space where her weapon had been.
Then she laughed.
Soft. Delighted.
“Extraordinary,” she breathed.
“You reversed a harvest.”
Zara turned to her slowly.
“I warned you,” Zara said, voice low and shaking with restrained violence.
“You do not use the people I care about as bait.”
Voss’s gaze flicked to the sigil still burning on my chest.
“Oh, but I had to,” she replied.
“Now we know.”
“Know what?” I demanded, forcing myself upright despite the pain.
Voss’s eyes gleamed.
“That the blade works,” she said.
“And that even you can bleed.”
She stepped closer, boots crunching over shattered stone.
“That was a prototype,” she continued.
“A Devourer’s Fang. Designed to sever bonds. To harvest selectively. To test limits."
Zara’s hands curled into fists.
“And the consequence?” Zara asked.
Voss smiled thinly.
“You just killed it.”
The words landed wrong.
Behind us, alarms began to wail deep, ancient tones that shook the academy to its foundations. The walls hummed. The air shifted.
Voss glanced upward, frowning slightly.
“Hm,” she murmured.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen yet.”
I followed her gaze.
Above the academy, beyond stone and steel and wards meant to hide truth...
The sky cracked.
Not lightning.
A seam.
Something vast moved behind it, blotting out stars as shadows rearranged themselves into impossible geometry.
The mothership.
Zara stepped to my side, her hand finding mine without hesitation. Power coiled around her like a living thing, no longer curious. Awake.
“You wanted a test,” she said coldly to Dr. Voss.
The academy shuddered again, harder this time.
“Congratulations,” Zara finished.
“You’ve failed it.”
And somewhere deep within the walls, other blades began to sing.
Dr. Voss had tried to kill us, but somehow, somehow, she couldn't touch us. It was like there was something hidden in the three of us that would not let her get through to us. It was like we were shutting her out in one way or the other.
It was so confusing, and my head began to fill fuzzy. Zara reached out to me through our mind link.
"I don't feel so good, Zara." I had said.
"Hey... Just breathe." She said.
I was trying so hard to do that.
"You can't pass out on me now." She said angrily.
That shook me a bit.
"We can't let Dr. Voss thinks she has won." She said.
That was all the courage I needed to put myself in check, even if it was just for a few more hours.