Jarek wrapped his fingers around the flaming thorn.
For a moment, nothing occurred.
Then—
Pain.
The world was reduced to broken images.
His tongue was covered in blood and salt spray.
A whispering voice from a woman. "The vessel has always been you."
Instead of reforming in his hand, the void-blade passed through it, the metal merging with bone.
By the time the vision cleared, the thorn had stuck in his chest.
Mara collapsed, gasping.
The sky trembled.
When the injured Star screamed, the cliffs trembled and rocks fell into the raging sea below.
With their bodies twisted and emerald fire bursting from their eyes and mouths, the marked children let out a collective screech.
Jarek moved.
Not by choice.
He was led by the thorn.
Instead of striking the kids, his void-blade arm slashed out at the space between them.
The edge caught nothing.
And yet—
One of the threads broke.
The emerald light instantly went out as one of the marked children fell to the ground.
The boy's golden thornmark turned to a pale scar as he gasped and looked up at Jarek with human-like clearness.
"It's gone," he whispered.
…..
When Mara's mind was released from the thorn's hold, it rushed into the glass plain, which was now more ocean than a mirror, its surface spewing with reflected starlight.
As she came closer, Ethan's shape solidified, standing waist deep in the emptiness.
"He can't sever them all," he said urgently. "Not without…."
Mara already knew.
"Not without becoming what we fought."
…..
He cut the second thread.
Then the third.
The thorn in his chest grew, its roots spreading farther with each severing.
His veins darkened beneath the skin like creeping rot, and his skin became cast in a greyish shade.
As he came closer, the fourth child started crying.
"Will I die?"
Jarek's voice wasn't his own when he answered.
"Only the hunger."
The remaining marked children combined.
Their bodies melted together in a hideous image of the skeleton of the Duskheir, a tall, emerald-fired creature with twelve arms spread wide and a single eye blazing with the stolen light of the Star.
It roared, "YOU CANNOT REMOVE US."
Jarek raised his blade.
The thorn throbbed.
…..
Now she realized the truth.
The Duskheir's scheme.
The Ravenscroft's purpose.
The price.
"Ethan," she whispered.
He was on the move already, his body melting into the glass sea.
"I'll hold the door," he promised.
Jarek's blade struck the abomination's core, and Mara opened her eyes to find herself back in the cave, in her own decaying body.
…..
Light.
Noise.
Pain.
Then….
Silence.
…..
Jarek stood amid the ashes, his void arm completely changed now.
It was a twisted skeleton of bark and blade, the roots of the thorn clearly pounding beneath his flesh.
The marked children lay scattered around him, breathing but hollowed.
There was nothing in the sky.
Mara crawled to his side.
"It's done," she rasped.
Jarek turned. His eyes had lost their humanity.
"No," he said gently. "It's contained."
He placed his hand on his chest.
There was a faint glow from the thorn under his skin.
…..
The Star wasn't dead.
It could never be dead.
But the Duskheir's thorn, now connected with the last Ravenscroft kept its hunger at bay.
For now.
…..
Mara's scar ached as she helped the children to their feet.
Ethan's voice whispered from the space between her breaths.
"We'll watch over him."
She knew what that meant.
Knew who "we" was.
The Duskheir's thorn.
The void-blade's remains.
And the man who had become their prison.
Jarek gazed at the horizon from the edge of the cliff.
"As soon as it wakes up," he said.
Mara squeezed his corrupted hand.
"We'll be ready."
Behind them, the first of the marked children began to cry not in pain, but in relief.
The world was in ruins.
Yet it belonged to them.