Chapter 14: The Broken Mirror
The courtyard tiles erupted like shattered teeth. Jagged fissures spiderwebbed outward, vomiting up thick ropes of those same black roots—each one studded with blinking, hungry eyes. The air reeked of wet soil and copper, the scent so thick it coated Evan's tongue.
Kai screamed as the roots lashed around him, their tendrils sinking into his watery flesh. His form rippled violently between solid and liquid, his mouth stretched in a silent plea.
Caine didn't even glance at him. The headmaster stood transfixed as the roots coiled up his own legs, his chant never faltering even as black veins crawled up his neck.
"Fool," Mira spat. Her flames guttered weakly in her palms. "He's offering himself as a conduit."
Evan didn't think. He ran.
But The roots moved faster.
One whipped out, catching Evan across the chest. The impact sent him skidding back, his shirt tearing open to reveal the jagged scar where the dagger had been. The eyes along the vine swiveled to stare at it.
A collective whisper slithered through the courtyard:
"Keystone."
Then the roots surged for him in earnest.
Rowan's terramancy sent stone spikes erupting from the ground to intercept. Isolde's hasty barrier spell shimmered like heat haze in the air. Aria's alchemy bombs bought them seconds, not minutes.
Mira grabbed Evan's arm, her fingers searing his skin. "You're the only one who can stop this."
"How?" His voice cracked. "I don't even have my magic anymore!"
Mira's eyes reflected the churning sky. "You don't need it. You are it."
She shoved him forward—
Right as Caine's ritual reached its peak.
The rift yawned wider, its edges dripping that same black ooze. Something moved in the depths—something vast and coiled and waiting.
Kai's body convulsed. The roots were inside him now, threading through his water magic like parasites. His mouth opened in a soundless scream as his form stretched, his limbs elongating, his features dissolving into something neither liquid nor flesh.
The first tendril of the Vessel slithered from the rift.
Evan stumbled back—
And the scar on his chest burned.
It wasn't pain. It was memory.
Selene's voice, whispering from his own blood:
"The cage was never the prison. The storm was never the key."
The roots recoiled from Evan's scar as if scalded. The eyes along their lengths squeezed shut.
Caine finally noticed him. The headmaster's own eyes were fully black now, his mouth moving with words that weren't his own:
"You will kneel."
The command hit Evan like a physical blow. His knees buckled. His vision swam.
Then—
A silver flash.
Aria's knife buried itself in Caine's throat.
For one suspended moment, everything froze.
Caine gagged, black ooze bubbling from his lips. The roots spasmed. Kai's half-transformed body collapsed.
Then the rift screamed.
The Vessel's tendril lashed out blindly, smashing stone and flesh alike. Aria went flying. Rowan barely yanked Isolde out of the way in time.
And Evan—
Evan reached.
Not for magic. Not for power.
For the memory of lightning.
For the echo of the storm that had lived in his bones.
His fingers closed around nothing—
And the sky answered.
It struck like vengeance given form.
Lightning split the unnatural clouds, spearing down into the courtyard with deafening cracks. Not blue-white, but silver—the same shade as Selene's dagger, the same hue as the cage that had lived in Evan's chest.
The bolt hit the rift dead center.
The explosion threw Evan back. His head struck stone. The last thing he saw before darkness took him was the Vessel's tendril withering to ash, the roots crumbling like dead ivy.
And standing amid the ruin, her gray eyes glowing with reflected stormlight—
Selene Arkwright, whole and alive and furious.