Abolisher

World appeared in sharp stabs of venom.

She was still in the alley, but everything hurt.

Someone was beating her. Her body was limp; she didn’t feel her limbs. There was blood everywhere. It dripped from her waist, her severely bruised face. It cascaded from her heart, her spirit.

Someone was carrying her over his broad shoulder—thick mass digging into the blinding wound in her stomach.

There was no life left in her. She was dying. She was dying—

The man slammed her into a stone wall nearby—hard enough that she was surprised her body didn’t burst in mass and organs. Her skull met the stone with a pitiless impact. Starlit night came across her sight.

“Get up,” he growled.

The voice—that voice …

It’d been a year, but dread and venomous wrath still woke in her, lit up her insides in a fierce fire.

She felt her power surging to meet with her, felt the support and the destruction it offered. And for once, she didn’t fight it.

Her limbs came alive, her whole body did, and a roar tore from her throat—inhuman, unearthly. Under any other circumstances, she might have shrunk away from it, might have let question of humanity break her.

But today, Syrene Alpenstride embraced the monster.

For there, before her eyes, stood the Overseer of Jegvr, the Voiceless Pits. There, before her eyes, stood the man who’d drunk out her life drop by drop.

And, behind him, lay the Prince of Cleystein’s lifeless form.

A raging sorrow came across her sight.

Darkness pulsed beneath the overseer’s pale skin, in his eyes. Profane and otherworldly.

But Syrene saw none of that, she only saw the twisted grin on his face as he watched her, once again, bleeding and broken, before himself. Watched her drained and vulnerable. Syrene wasn’t surprised when the lively force inside her gripped her legs and dragged her to her feet.

She wiped the blood from her mouth. “You’re a dead man.”

There was no whip in his hand today. No, the fingertips of his hands were inky black. Then—

That black spread like molten night, until it took over his entire hand. The Darkness rose over it, obscured the hand behind itself as if it were something precious. Then it warped and took shape of the head of a spear.

Syrene forgot the pain, forgot the noise. The only bellowing in her head, in her body, was kill him, kill him, kill him

The overseer charged with a spearhead—where his hand should’ve been—with an uncanny speed. The force—or maybe her roaring instincts—wrenched Syrene away before she could even register.

The overseer’s spearhead slammed into the wall. No—

Syrene watched, struck, as the shaped weapon cracked the centuries old wall—as if it were any other fruit.

The man whirled, and when Syrene saw that grin again, her blood thrummed with rage.

This time as he came, the hand shaped itself into a hammer. Syrene whirled and ducked. As she did, her eyes swept across Azryle’s dead body.

Her chest twisted, and the sound from Syrene’s throat was pure animal.

Then she was burning.

No—she was on fire. Flames erupted from each inch of her. Bluer than the sky, the sea—not to burn, but to bite into the skin with a cold not of this world at all.

The ground beneath her feet froze—and continued spreading.

Behind the blue in her sight, she caught the overseer, utterly unfazed, advancing towards her with a giant fist.

Syrene moved fast.

She was behind him before he took another breath, and forced him to his knees. The ground cracked with the impact. When his hand touched the frozen ground, frost spread to his fingers. She didn’t allow herself to consider that she had no control over the power, didn’t allow herself to think that if she continued this, it would spread beyond any leashes.

The overseer attempted to wrench his hand from Drothiker’s grip, but failed. He brought another hand and yanked his arm, but—

The ice stretched to his other arm.

The flames died from Syrene as she willed her entire power in her hands, her limbs, and stepped before him.

She took his face in her hands.

His eyes flashed as he looked up at her, no doubt remembering the last thing she’d said to him a year ago.

We will meet again, I swear it to all the otsatyas.

Power seeped into his skin where she touched, and the overseer’s screams echoed in the stones of this alley.

And I will be the last person you will see.

“MERCY!” he bellowed. “MERCY, CZAR!”

Syrene squeezed his head. “Once I was at your feet begging for mercy.” Her voice was low, but her words carried. “I now understand what you meant when you said you do not recognize the word.”

The head in her hands burst out in chaos, blood erupted everywhere. She felt it as it smeared across her face, as it soaked her sleeves.

Blood. No quite.

Olive green liquid ran all over the cobblestones as the body toppled to the side. It landed with a sickening crunch.

Silence.

The power retreated from her on its own, as if offering her a moment of peace. She wasn’t even panting as she should have been, was barely breathing.

Such dead silence struck her.

Then came the slaughtering pain in each inch of her, as if someone had torn open through and through, looking for a treasure hidden deep within, right to her spirit. And then, as if in a disappointment, her spirit was charred to ashes.

Syrene turned to Azryle.

And fell to her knees, the butchering pain coiling her heart squeezing so hard that it bled.

She didn’t know what she felt.

She didn’t know what was happening, why she felt so broken and lost. What was this emptiness within her? This roaring silence?

Flarespirit, her mother had called her. A spirit of fire, full of life. Right now, it felt like anything but.

“Help me,” she whispered onto the earth, hoping something—someone—would listen. “Please.”

No one but silence answered.

She didn’t know what she’d become, where she was supposed to go from here. Suddenly everything felt so useless and unnecessary.

No matter what world, there was always suffering. There was no escape from this.

Syrene lifted.

She limped over to Azryle, her heart twisting sadistically.

She’d seen death … a lot—she’d learned to endure, to move on. She’d lost people, and she’d healed. But she didn’t think this yawning wound would ever stitch back together, she didn’t think any salve could dull this agony. All those other deaths … she’d never felt like this—as if her soul were weeping, so alone that even she didn’t hear its sobs.

She sat beside him. She found she didn’t ever want to leave his side. Something deep within her—deeper than the heart, deeper than even the soul—didn’t want to leave him. As if he were the only salve that could dare mend her.

Syrene took his hand. Heavy, unmoving.

Cold.

“Come back,” she whispered. “Come back to me.” Then—

At the corner of her eye, she caught a movement. She hadn’t the heart to go for her weapon as she turned to face the approaching figure.

“Syrene?”

Kefaas was limping. His arm bandaged thickly, still healing.

Behind him, at the end of the alley, stood a horde of whispering people, drawn by the screams. Only now did she heed the stench of terror tainting the area, the disgust. Their eyes were on the felled overseer, his crumpled mass. And—

The puddled blood wasn’t olive-green anymore. But red as a human’s. She looked down at herself, and found no traces of that vile liquid, but a human’s blood. For a second, Syrene thought she might have imagined the baeselk blood. But then she recalled the dungeons.

The Vegreka in the cells, and the cylinders—the pipes in their veins.

And understood. The Queen of Cleystein was bringing baeselk to this world—taking human bodies as hosts.

Syrene knew she should’ve been shocked—the information should have made her hysterical, should’ve had her planning to defeat the queen.

But she couldn’t muster the life.

“Syrene.” Kefaas came beside her. His hand came for her shoulder. The brown eyes fell on Azryle’s unmoving form. “Kosas,” he cursed.

He crouched beside her. His hand went for the wound at Azryle’s chest. It came away covered in red.

Then, slowly, his gaze slid to her, then to the entangled fingers. He stretched out a hand. “May I?”

Her grip only tightened around Azryle’s hand.

Kefaas noticed it. Then, he reached out to take it—

Syrene’s snarl echoed in the stones. Afraid, the horde behind shuffled, ready to bolt, as if she were some wild animal.

That was what they saw, she supposed—a monster who’d butchered an innocent man’s head.

Kefaas’ hands shot up, as if in a surrender. “You’re bound to him. The bond is still alive—”

“There was no bond.” Syrene kept her gaze on the ripper. “Leave.”

He blew out an exasperated breath. “The pain you’re feeling is never going to heal, kid. Literally. That’s how a ripper’s leash works—”

“There was no leash!” Her voice rose. “Not to me.”

She felt Kefaas’ confusion. “He’s not leashed to Queen of Cleystein anymore, Syrene.”

She knew that—she just didn’t think she had the energy to heed what Kefaas was implying. That would require her recalling all the moments she’d been with Azryle a year ago—all the words they’d exchanged since he’d arrived here.

And Syrene was too tired. Too lost.

“Syrene,” Kefaas pressed. “I don’t know how you feel, I cannot possibly comprehend. But you need to think. I can see the connection, kid—you have to heal him before the leash dies. You cannot afford to be … desolated right now.”

“How …” she whispered, losing all the will to argue.

She heard the man swallow. “You have to figure that out yourself.”