Chapter 117
*Nathaniel*
I knew Kael had arrived before I saw him
The air changed
Magic crackled through the tunnels like dry lightning–violent, bitter, ancient. The walls shuddered, the floor pulsed, and every inch of the leyline we’d taken shelter near began to buzz with energy that fell Wrong Not just powerful Unstable
Jiselle stirred beside me, her eyes flashing open. She didn’t speak, but her body went still
She felt it too
Maximus was already moving before I could call to him. He stepped into the tunnel’s mouth with his blade drawn, power bristling at his back like a cloak of smoke and steel.
Eva swore under her breath.
“I told you we didn’t have time,” she murmured.
Kael didn’t make an entrance. He never had to.
He arrived–and the world bent around him.
He stepped into the corridor ahead of us like it was a throne room. And maybe, to him, it was. The leyline ran beneath his feet, pulsing white–gold and fractured. His cloak dragged ash behind him. His hands weren’t glowing, not yet, but the flicker of energy between his fingertips said more than words could.
His face was different now.
Not composed.
Not regal.
Fractured.
He wasn’t trying to be a leader anymore.
He looked like a god on the verge of collapse.
*Jiselle,” he said. His voice echoed like thunder behind iron.
She stepped forward before I could stop her.
Maximus held her arm for just a moment. Then let go.
“You’ve come far,” Kael said, voice quieter now, too quiet. “Further than anyone expected. Even me.”
Jiselle didn’t answer.
He smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes.
“You’ve seen what lies beyond the gate. You’ve felt what you could be. So why do you continue to crawl backwards, toward mortality, toward him?” He gestured toward me without looking.
The flames in Jiselle’s palms sparked to life.
Kael’s smile widened. “Still protecting him? Still clinging to something that died the moment I took you from the battlefield?” “Nothing died,” Jiselle said, and her voice was calm, but it burned beneath the words. “Not then. Not now. Not us.”
Kael’s eyes flicked to me then.
And the lie fell from his lips like venom.
“You can’t carry both,” he said. “The flame and the boy. The Sovereign and the lover. You’ll split. You’ll break. And you’ll take the veil with you.”
“I’d rather shatter for something I chose,” she said, stepping forward again, “than live a thousand years as something you built.”
He exhaled slowly, and for the first time, the facade cracked.
“What a waste,” he said.
Then he lifted his hand.
The leyline burst.
Magic screamed through the corridor, rupturing stone, splintering light. Maximus threw himself in front of Jiselle without hesitation. I charged forward, magic flaring in both hands, my body barely registering the burn as Kael released his fury.
We collided like storms.
Chapter 115
His first strike knocked me clean off my feet i slammed into the wall, ribs crunching, but I didn’t fat I sorged back up and slammed my fist into the ground, sending a shockwave toward him.
Maximus was already at his flank, blade flashing. Kael turned, caught the blade with a shield of flame, and twisted the energy. The steel warped, melted at the edge–but Maximus didn’t stop, He drove his shoulder into Kant’s side kaneking him off balance
I followed, launching toward him, slamming both fists into his chest.
He absorbed the impact, staggered back, and grinned like a wolf drunk on power
“You can’t stop me,” Kael hissed. “You don’t even know what I’m becoming”
“Neither do you,” I spat, striking again.
He caught my arm, twisted it hard enough to make my vision go white. But before he could strike, Jiselle’s mice cut through the air.
“Enough.”
The flames bent to her.
They didn’t fight.
They didn’t recoil.
They listened.
Kael froze.
Jiselle stepped forward, and in that moment, she didn’t look like a girl caught between destiny and disaster
She looked like truth.
No crown.
No throne.
Just fire made flesh.
“You built your kingdom on fear,” she said. “You wore prophecy like armor and carved obedience into wolves who never had a choice. But I do.”
He didn’t move.
He couldn’t.
She extended her hand.
And a throne rose behind him.
Not built of stone or gold–but of ash.
Every manipulation. Every lie. Every spell he’d cast to twist her path into his vision. It all rose behind him like a monument of failure.
“I’m done playing Sovereign,” she said. “I’m done being rewritten.”
And then she burned it.
The throne ignited in white flame. It didn’t scream. It silenced. The kind of flame that erases instead of devours. The kind that doesn’t ask what it destroys. It just ends it.
Kael staggered back.
“No,” he whispered. “You don’t understand–if I don’t rewrite the veil, if you don’t take your place–it all collapses. The gate opens. The realms merge. There will be nothing left.”
“Then maybe it’s time to stop pretending you can save what was never yours to hold,” she said.
He lifted his hand again–rage replacing desperation.
I moved instinctively.
But I didn’t have to.
Because Jiselle was faster.
She lifted her palm, and the flame she cast wasn’t fire at all.
It was light.
Pure.
Unyielding.
It struck Kael square in the chest–not to kill, not to destroy–but to remove.
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Chapter 117
His magic fractured.
The energy around him dissolved like mist in morning sun
He dropped to his knees.
And the leyline beneath us stilled.
Eva rushed forward to help stabilize the corridor. Maximus stood over Kael, watching as the man who once played god gasped like someone waking from a dream.
But Jiselle turned to me.
And in her eyes, there was no flame.
Just clarity.
And I finally understood-
She hadn’t just burned the throne.
She had burned the story.
And for the first time, she was writing her own.
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