Cale

  I moved down the hallway as I heard the noises of commotion and people screaming. There was a large set of double doors that looked far more ornate than it should have been. I ramped up Kinetica and Reinforcement and simply slammed into the door with my weight and the full might of my mana. The door gave way under my shoulder.

  The wards didn’t scream or flare. They peeled back, layers collapsing inward as if the structure had reached the same conclusion I had—there was no point pretending anymore.

  I stepped through. The room was too large. Too open. It might have been a ballroom at some point, something where rich people would socialize and network. Now it was retrofitted to hold people.

  I felt my anger again—hot and visceral.

  There were people there. A lot of them. And not just children.

  Women, too. Half a dozen at least, pressed together in the center of the space. Some held children to their chests. Others had wrapped their arms around shoulders that shook too hard to stay upright. Fear had arranged them into a single, tight shape—backs touching, no space left between them.

  Men lay on the floor around them.

  Dead.

  These were not mercenaries or the zealots currently hovering threateningly over the people. One sprawled near the wall, his head turned at an unnatural angle. Another lay closer to the group, one arm extended as if he’d tried to shield someone and hadn’t been fast enough. These were civilians, men who had seen a need and stepped up to protect the most vulnerable. Heroes; heroes that would be remembered.

  Bonnie’s voice came through my ear, tight and brittle.

  “Cale—I broke three feeds. Word got out. Some people realized what this place was.”

  I didn’t answer.

  The smell hit me next. It was an odor of blood and burned stone. Old incense clung to the air like something meant to sanctify what had happened here.

  The zealots were already in position.

  A dozen of them, maybe more, spread in a rough arc around the captives. They wore layered armor and robes stitched with overlapping symbols—none of which mattered to me. Aura rifles rested against their shoulders, steady and aligned.

  They weren’t aiming at me. They were aiming at the people in the center. One of them was shouting, voice raw with conviction.

  “The signal’s been given! No more delays—this ends now—”

  Two men broke from the side of the room. They were unarmed and desperate.

  They tackled two of the soldiers trying to get to their rifles. The other zealots adjusted their weapons, the Aura rifles snapping up. Molten-hot metal shot out of the rifles, killing the men and the commanders of the zealots.

  The women screamed. The children cowered.

  They were too quiet. Too still. Shock had locked them in place, eyes wide, mouths open without sound.

  Something inside me went very cold as I considered my approach.

  Bonnie was talking—numbers, angles, warnings—but none of it mattered. I didn’t need a breakdown.

  I needed space cleared.

  Now.

  I stepped fully into the room, but someone saw me. A shout went up. Rifles began to pivot.

  Too late.

  “Everyone,” I yelled, magically amplifying my voice, reinforcing the command with compulsion and targeting the civilians. “Get on the ground!”

  Every single person, excluding the zealots, dropped to the floor.

  I pulled Arcanum up hard and fast, without finesse or layering. This wasn’t a spell meant to be admired. It was heat, compressed until it screamed inside my channels. Lightning burned beneath my skin, white-blue and contained, while Aura locked the power in place.

  Aura Fortis and Reinforcement anchored me to the floor.

  I raised my hand.

  The beam started out the size of a fist—until I really fed the spell. The beam rushed forward and grew to the size of a large tree trunk, coming out like a geyser.

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  It cut forward from my palm in a straight, unforgiving line, white-hot and absolute. The sound was a roar of violence so primal that no one who had experienced violence would have been able to ignore it.

  The first zealot vanished.

  He wasn’t injured or broken. He was gone.

  Simply gone.

  I fed more power than I meant to. I meant to destroy the zealots. I didn’t mean to destroy the wall behind them.

  Stone didn’t collapse—it ceased to exist. Reinforced masonry unraveled into nothing as the beam punched clean through the structure. The line continued on, carving through rooms beyond, through supports and corridors I couldn’t see, leaving a glowing wound where a building used to be.

  One hundred meters into the open air outside.

  One hundred meters… maybe more… probably more.

  The sound arrived late. Air rushed in to fill the absence. A thunderclap shook the floor as reality slammed back into itself.

  I moved my arm. Deliberately.

  The beam tracked across the arc of zealots. Rifles disappeared. Bodies came apart. Faith failed them all the same way. Anything the beam touched was erased. Anything near it was thrown aside, scorched and broken.

  Aura rifles detonated as their matrices failed. Shockwaves tore through the room, melting zealots who hadn’t yet realized they were already dead.

  The floor cracked beneath me, glowing fissures spreading outward as pressure bled into stone.

  I felt the cost immediately. Channels screaming. Vision narrowing. Copper and the smell of burned flesh flooding my mouth.

  I held it anyway.

  I cut a clean barrier between the captives and everything else, then snapped the beam off.

  Silence fell like a dropped blade.

  Smoke rolled through the room. Glowing debris clattered and cooled. The far wall was gone—night visible beyond a jagged opening, stars framed by steaming stone.

  The women didn’t move at first.

  Some stared at me like I might vanish if they blinked. Others cried without sound, breath shuddering in tight, broken pulls. One dropped to her knees, hands clamped over her ears, rocking as if the world might still be tearing itself apart around her.

  A little girl looked up at me from the floor.

  Her face was streaked with soot and tears, eyes too large for how small she was.

  “Is it… over?” she asked.

  I didn’t answer right away.

  I lifted my hand and let the last of the lightning bleed out of my channels, drawing it inward until the air stopped buzzing. Then I pushed Aura outward—not as force, not as threat, but as structure.

  The barrier unfolded around us in a wide, shallow dome. It settled into place with a low, steady pressure, the kind that told the body it was enclosed and safe. The shattered edges of the room lay outside it now, smoke and night held back as if by an invisible wall.

  Only then did I look at the girl.

  “Yes,” I said. My voice was rough, but it held. “It’s over.”

  Her shoulders sagged as if the word itself had lifted something off her.

  My knees finally bent, but I forced myself upright. I stayed where I was and forced my breathing to slow. In through the nose, hold for a count I didn’t track anymore, out through the mouth, longer than the inhale.

  Again. Mana flooded me.

  The tremor in my hands eased. The backlash settled from a scream into a dull ache. Only then did I let Sanatio move.

  I opened it up and let it spread. The magic bled outward as a low, pale mist, warm against the skin, rolling across the floor and rising to waist height before thinning. It didn’t glow. It didn’t sparkle. It felt like standing near a hearth after coming in from the cold—heat that didn’t demand attention, only presence.

  People inhaled without realizing they were doing it.

  I felt the change ripple through them as the Sanatio took hold. Bleeding slowed, then stopped. Cuts drew together just enough to hold. Bruises softened from angry purple into something survivable. Shock loosened its grip—not erased, but eased—breaths deepening, shoulders lowering, hearts finding something closer to rhythm again.

  The woman nearest me let out a shaky sound that might have been a laugh or a sob. Another sank fully to the floor, not collapsing this time, just sitting as if her legs had finally remembered they were allowed to stop shaking.

  A little girl stood in the mist and looked at her hands as the warmth curled around her fingers.

  She glanced up at me, eyes wide and earnest.

  “Are you… a Saint?” she asked quietly. “Like the Twelve?”

  The question landed harder than anything else that night. I was a little surprised that she wasn’t scared of me. I had just killed a bunch of men, and my mask wasn’t exactly kid-friendly.

  I shook my head once. Gently.

  “No,” I said. “Just someone who wanted you to be safe and got here in time.”

  She seemed to think about that, then nodded, satisfied in the way only children can be when the answer is simple enough to hold.

  The mist thinned as the spell finished its work, fading back into nothing once it had done all it could.

  It wasn’t perfect healing.

  But it was enough for now.

  Bonnie’s voice came back through the comm, breathless and unsteady. “Cale… every sensor on the island just screamed. Everyone with a sensor array knows we are here.”

  I closed my eyes for half a second and let my breathing settle again.

  “Good,” I said.

  I stayed where I was, one hand on the floor, the other steady as the healing finished its pass.

  I looked up at the nearest woman. Her hands were shaking, but she was upright now, eyes clearer than they had been moments ago. Tears rolled down her face.

  “Everything is going to be okay,” I said, my voice soft. I reached out and wiped away the woman’s tears.

  She leaned into my hand and nodded.

  “When I say move, you move,” I said. “Stay together as you come out. Help is on its way.”

  More nods rippled through the group. They were far from confident or calm, but willing—and considering what they had been through, that was enough.

  I let my gaze pass once over the bodies outside the barrier—the men who hadn’t made it. I didn’t linger. There was no time, and they wouldn’t have wanted it. But I swore right there and then.

  These men would be avenged. I gave them a slight bow, closing my eyes.

  You have my word. I will find anyone who had anything to do with this. And they will die. A horrible painful death. So rest, my friends. Rest in the Fields of Ancestors, and have peace.

  Bonnie spoke again. “Knight Order is seconds out. Full response. They saw everything and they are really coming in hot.”

  “Tell them to secure the perimeter and bring medics,” I said. “We’ve got survivors.”

  “They’re asking who did this.”

  I glanced at the scorched floor, the open night beyond the shattered wall, the space where zealots had stood and no longer existed.

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I said they wouldn’t believe me if I told them.”

  Despite myself, that made me laugh.