Chapter 35

  The wards bent like soft grass underfoot. The King had entered the room and everyone needed to know it.

  It was like the world was folding in on itself, crushing him between walls of unseen force. The air turned heavy and metallic, filling his lungs with the taste of blood and stone. His vision fractured into bursts of silver flecks that pulsed with each pounding heartbeat, the edges closing in until only the King’s silhouette remained.

  Calira’s essence, normally a steady flame beside him, flickered faintly. Its warmth was smothered beneath the suffocating tide rolling from the King. This wasn’t just power; it was something older, deeper, an essence that bent the world to its will without asking.

  Anger was all that kept River tethered to the moment. Not the quick flash of rage, but something raw and jagged, carved over years. The King’s treachery had been one thing when it was cold politics—calculating, maybe even understandable. But family? Knowing all along and still doing it? That was a wound that would never close.

  A fresh surge of essence slammed into him, lashing his body like a whip of lightning. Muscles spasmed, every nerve screaming as if torn apart and stitched back together in the same breath. The pain was nothing compared to the crushing weight in his chest, slowing even his thoughts. Warm blood spilled onto the cold floor, the only outward sign of the damage.

  The King’s presence was everywhere, pressing against his skin, sliding into his lungs, worming into the corners of his mind until there was no space left for his own will. Somewhere, faint and distant, came the sound of chains rattling. Or maybe it was just his own bones. Essence wrapped around him like a predator’s coils, every breath a battle, every blink an eternity.

  Still, he forced his eyes upward. When their gazes locked, something inside him shattered. His mother’s face flashed in his mind; soft, unreachable, followed by the jagged truth of the brother before him. The yearning for what might have been clashed with the hatred for what remained.

  It felt like his soul tore wide open. Power didn’t just return; it flooded in, searing through every vein. His aura swelled, each pulse brighter than the last. Essence wrapped around him, sealing torn flesh, the familiar warmth of nature magic knitting his wounds closed.

  River staggered upright, muscles thrumming with the raw pulse of essence. The ground seemed steadier beneath him, as if the world itself had shifted to hold him. His magic no longer flickered; it devoured the air between them.

  Every fiber, every breath his own. The Kings control was gone.

  The King’s face paled despite the hatred twisting it. For the first time, the monarch seemed smaller. River’s eyes burned with unyielding light, his swirling storm of essence richer, wilder, and utterly untamed.

  His friends stayed frozen, whether from fear or the weight of his aura, he couldn’t tell.

  River struck first. Twin bolts of fire and water spiraled from seperate hands, their glow flooding the dark. They smashed into the King’s aura with the clang of hammers on steel, then fizzled. That shimmering wall was no mere shield; it was the King’s domain, and River’s control wasn’t yet enough to break it. The distance set him at a disadvantage.

  The King moved. Lightning coiled thick in his palms, the air warping from the heat of it, ozone burning in River’s nose. Distracted by the sight, River almost missed the flicker of the other hand until a blast of fire smashed into him. His aura caught most of it, but the sting still burned across his skin.

  But it wasn’t going to slow him down.

  Essence roared through River, propelling him forward faster than thought. One blink, and he was face-to-face with the King.

  “Too slow,” he hissed. His fist cracked against the King’s chin, hurling him back only for River to close the distance in an instant, another blow hammering down. Yet the King’s aura absorbed each strike, undisturbed, like the sea swallowing raindrops.

  “How could you betray them? Those with power are supposed to protect.”

  The King didn’t answer and River didn’t need one.

  Boots skidded as he shifted tactics. Nature magic surged at his call, vines as thick as tree trunks ripping through the stone, scattering debris. Essence streamed along their lengths, tips flaring with fire and lightning. They lashed forward, cracking the floor, slamming against the King’s aura hard enough to make it shiver.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Dust filled the air; only the King’s aura and his flaming eyes were visible as he moved forward once more.

  The King’s breath came faster. “These subjects are mine to break or keep as I choose,” he growled, voice grinding like stone. “And that includes you.” He bellowed, the sound shaking the chamber. “No one is worth more than a King!”

  The words hit like a hammer. Heat bled into River’s vision until the world swam in crimson. Every betrayal, every injury, every shred of restraint burned away. He advanced, the air rippling with his essence, each step like a drumbeat of fury.

  His body moved on instinct now. Essence spun around him, no longer his to command; it commanded him. And he let it. The surrender was a relief.

  Then the King’s aura began to shift, gold and purple twisting into something darker. Shadows seeped into it, pulsing foully. River knew that signature instantly. Lucius. The blightborn. Philip.

  River hadn’t sensed it until now—anger clouding his judgment. He should have expected it, yet he hadn’t.

  It erupted like a volcano, cold and violent. Life seemed to drain from the corridor itself.

  The King smiled at River’s brief moment of hesitation. This was his battlefield now. His power no longer radiated, it swallowed the essence around. A void of power.

  “Too slow, little brother,” he rasped, his voice crackling with the Blightborn’s hiss.

  Each step shattered stone, corrupted essence pouring from him in waves. Frost bloomed along the walls where it touched.

  Sudden shards of dark essence shot out, invisible until they struck too fast to dodge, too sharp to block. They sliced through River’s aura, shallow burns marking his skin. His healing fought to keep up, but the strikes came faster and faster.

  Then the King lunged. His form was lost in the mass of shadow as tendrils whipped outward cold, wet, coiling around River like the embrace of some abyssal predator. His aura blazed, but each heartbeat saw it weaken, his own essence siphoned away into the dark.

  “You pesky bastard…” the King hissed. “You’ve been a pain in my ass.”

  The monarch stood tall, smile widening with every crushing moment as the tentacles of dark essence squeezed the life from River’s aura. The pressure was relentless, and River knew it: he was out of moves. Every technique, every scrap of strength had already been spent.

  Then, through the roaring storm, a voice cut into his mind warm, steady, achingly familiar.

  “I’ve got you.”

  Calira’s body jerked as essence flowed from her. The effort forced blood to flood from Calira’s nose. The bond between them flared, and essence flooded into him like a dam breaking.

  It was too much, wild and unrestrained, surging past what his body could command. His vision blurred, not from pain, but from sheer immensity. For a moment, he wasn’t just River; he was more essence than flesh, more storm than man.

  The battlefield dissolved. In its place stretched a limitless sea of threads: glimmering currents of life weaving through every stone, every breath, every living soul in the kingdom. Each was a pulse, a voice, a point of light on a vast and endless map.

  And there, distant yet burning like stars in the dark were others. Signatures unlike anything he had felt before. Ancient. Immense. Waiting.

  The King’s corrupted flame snarled black and violet amid the glow, twisting and choking the currents around it. River’s focus locked on that darkness, and the world snapped back into place.

  His mind was clear. His fear was gone. Every problem that had clawed at him moments ago was nothing but dust on the wind.

  The tentacles squeezed harder, but now they met something unyielding, something vast. River’s aura didn’t just hold; it expanded. It swallowed the monarch’s shadow, drowning it in essence.

  The corrupted essence writhed, biting back, but the King’s control faltered under the tide. It was too for even his aura.

  The monarch’s eyes darted, searching for some shred of control, some path to escape. His breath came in ragged pulls as River’s aura pressed in, swallowing the last threads of his corrupted essence. The once-crushing tentacles faltered, recoiling against a force they couldn’t pierce.

  River stepped closer, each footfall deliberate, echoing in the stillness. He could feel the King’s fear—sharp, metallic—pouring off him like a scent. For a moment, River hesitated, not from doubt, but from the weight of what he was about to do. This wasn’t a strike to win a battle. This was an ending.

  His hand rose almost of its own accord, hovering above the King’s bowed head. No memory, no lesson, no technique guided him, only instinct. Something older than training stirred within him, a deep, unshakable knowing.

  He gripped the connection. It pulsed under his touch like a living vein of light, thick with power, history, and blood. And then, with a single, precise pull, he severed it.

  The sound was not a snap, but a rush, a long exhale of essence fleeing its prison. It poured from the King in pale, ghostly wisps, slipping through his skin as if escaping from the dead. The oppressive weight in the air broke with it, the chamber suddenly vast and hollow, frost on the walls hissing into steam.

  King Leo’s eyes, once burning with command, glazed over. His hands clawed at the air as if searching for something invisible, something that had always been there but was now gone. “No… no… this can’t be…” His voice cracked, trembling under the ruin of certainty.

  River said nothing. The silence between them was louder than any roar. The King collapsed to his knees, stripped bare not of life, but of the power that had defined it. Around them, the echoes faded, leaving only the ragged sound of the man’s breathing and the steady, unyielding thrum. Then the cold hit. His hands blue; fingers slow to answer. But he would make them work.

  River turned on his heel, the King’s lifeless eyes burning in his memory. They had become like clouds trapped in glass, grey and dreary.

  But his friends were waiting.