Book 3: Chapter 13
The silence after the roar was worse than the chaos.
It wasn’t peace-it was absence. A hollow, suffocating void that pressed against my chest until every breath felt like shards of glass. The vault was now a ruin, a graveyard of shattered runes and broken bodies. Smike curled through the air like dying ghosts, carrying the stench of blood and burning magic. The walls trembled under the weight of distant howls, but inside, there was nothing.
No gods
No guards
No Jasper.
Just me.
I tried to move, but pain ripped through me like fire, tearing a scream from my throat. My leg was a wreck, my ribs splintered, my body a map of agony. I collapsed back onto the cold floor, my breath coming in ragged gasps. The silence pressed harder, heavy and merciless, until I couldn’t tell if the pounding in my ears was my heartbeat or the echo of something worse.
“Jasper….” His name was a prayer on my lips, broken and desperate. “Please…”
No answer
Only the whisper.
Miley….
It curled through the darkness like smoke, soft and sweet, threading through my thoughts like silk. My skin crawled, my blood turned to ice, but still I wanted to listen. Wanted to follow that voice into the black.
“No,” I rasped, forcing the word past lips that felt like stone. “No….”
A shadow moved at the edge of the flickering light.
I froze, my breath hitching, my heart slamming against my ribs. For a heartbeat, I thought it was Jasper, tall, broad-shouldered, his blade flashing in defiance. But then the light caught its face, and my hope shattered.
It wasn’t Jasper.
It wasn’t human.
Eyes burned like embers in a sea of night, teeth gleaming like knives. Its limbs were long and jagged, its movements fluid, wrong, like smoke given flesh. It didn’t rush; it didn’t need to. It moved with the certainty of a predator that knew the hunt was already won.
I tried to crawl backwards, my fingers clawing at the cracked floor, nails splitting against the jagged concrete as I dragged myself forward. Every inch was agony, every breath a war. My heartbeat thundered in my ears, a savage drumbeat that drowned out the screams behind me. The air was thick with smoke and blood, choking me, burning my throat, but I kept moving. Crawl. Just crawl. Jasper’s voice echoed in my head as a command carved into bone. Don’t stop. Don’t look back, but the darkness was alive, pressing closer, whispering my name like a lover’s promise.
Miley…. come to me….
“Yeah, no. No creepy voice was going to get me to go anywhere near them.” I rasped through the night.
The whisper wasn’t just a sound now.
It was inside me.
Threading through my veins like fire, curling around my bones like chains. My head lolled back, my vision swimming, and for a heartbeat, I wanted to go. Wanted to surrender. Wanted to let the darkness swallow me whole.
And then light flared.
It wasn’t bright, not like runes, not like the gods, but it was enough. A pulse of silver fire that carved through the black, searing the shadows, burning the creature back with a hiss of smoke and rage. I blinked hard, my breath hitching, and saw him.
Jasper.
But not Jasper. Not the Jasper that I knew, not the Jasper my brother, this Jasper was something else, something stronger: a protector, a fighter.
He stood in the wreckage like a storm given flesh, his body a silhouette of light and shadow, his blade burning like a star. His eyes were molten gold; his skin etched with runes that crawled like living fire. Power rippled off him in waves, bending the air, warping the light, pressing against my chest until every breath felt like drowning.
The creature hissed, its smile twisting into something feral, and lunged.
Jasper moved like lightning.
His blade flashed, carving through the darkness in arcs of silver fire. The creature shrieked, a sound that clawed at my ears, and collapsed in a head of smoke and bone. Jasper didn’t pause. Didn’t breathe. He spun, his eyes burning, his voice a snarl of fury.
“Stay away from her.”
The shadows recoiled, their whispers curling into screams, but they didn’t retreat. They surged forward, a tide of hunger and rage, their eyes burning, their teeth gleaming.
Jasper roared, his blade flashing, his movements faster, sharper, inhuman. Each strike was a storm, each blow a roar of defiance, but even I could see the tremor in his muscles, the strain in his breath. He couldn’t hold them all.
No one could.
“Miley!” his voice ripped through the chaos, raw and desperate. “RUN!”
“I…I can’t….” The words tore from my throat, broken and useless. My body was a ruin, my leg shattered, my ribs splintered. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t even stand.
Jasper’s eyes locked on mine, fierce and unyielding. “Then crawl,” he snarled, his voice a blade. “Crawl and don’t look back.”
And then he turned, his blade flashing, his body a wall of light and fury as the shadows closed in. He looked strong, brave and scary.
I crawled.
Every movement was agony, every breath a war, but I crawled. My fingers clawed at the cracked floor. My fingers clawed at the cracked floor, dragging my broken body towards the faint glow in the tunnel ahead.
Behind me, the air was a furnace of fear, thick and choking, filled with screams and howls and the thunder of claw against steel.
Jasper’s roar echoed through the darkness, raw and feral, a sound that didn’t belong to any human throat.
I reached the tunnel mouth, my vision swimming, my breath ragged, and then I heard it. The thing that I was dreading, the thing that I started to hate more and more. The darkness was suffocating, unable to see where you were going, moving as you could not, knowing where you were going or what was hiding in the dark, waiting for you, waiting to kill you. But that I could take right now, it was the other thing that scared me more than anything in this world right now.
Silence.