One Hundred and Four Kaden

My soul screamed as bone and tissue became muscles, followed by skin to cover it all. My fingers curled into soft soil as I pushed myself up. Sharp, blistering pain radiated from my spine, skipping along newly regrown nerves. I screamed as my body put itself back together, every cell burning with agony. I rested on my hands and knees, panting, taking in as much air as possible.

He had killed me.

Samkiel had killed me.

Everything came back as consciousness took form. He’d stood there, exhaling anger, hate, and rage with every breath as he held that blackened death blade. His eyes burned as Father’s had, and the hair along my arms had prickled. I had timed it right, timed my movements, but he was too quick, too fast. I hadn’t even seen him move, and I hadn’t felt the blade. There had only been a brief pinch and then absolute nothingness, no pain, no fear, just absolute and complete nothingness. I did not even exist anymore.

My heart pounded in my chest. Death. I had experienced true death.

“Oblivion,” a deep, hollow voice said, and my head whipped toward it.

Only the empty battlefield greeted me.

“What?” My voice didn’t even sound like my own, as if my body was still struggling to heal.

“It should never have happened. What Oblivion does is forbidden and quite bothersome, but at the same time, it does make my job a fraction easier. Fewer souls entering my kingdom, you see?”

My mind reeled. I couldn’t catch my breath, and my vision swam as I tried to bring the old, half-burned woman into focus. Her wrinkled hands were propped on her hips, the apron she wore covered in soot and smoke.

“You brought me back? Who . . . Who are you?”

“I have many names,” she said, her eyes raking over me as if assessing my injuries or lack thereof. “This will do.”

I started to ask what she meant, but her form burst into a bird the color of night and shot into the sky, a caw raking across the sky before disappearing past the tree line.

What the fuck?

I rolled my neck to the side and pushed to my feet, trying to remember everything about that night, and then I remembered Isaiah.

I spun, looking in every direction for scattered armor, a limb, or even dust. There was nothing but me and my own remains here.

I was no fool. Samkiel had ripped the sky apart to get to his . . . wife. His ear-splitting roar had shaken the planet and me to the core. I’d felt it then, how similar he was to our father. I had been a fool. Everything we’d heard of him was true. Samkiel was that powerful, that strong. He was the World Ender. I hadn’t wanted to believe how lucky we had been to survive our previous encounters with him. I could sense the same thunderous power that had flowed through Unir’s veins, but it was combined with Samkiel’s power, and it was devastating. Did he know just how powerful he was?

I shook my head, forcing clarity into my thoughts. I needed to get Isaiah back. If he had not fallen here, that meant Samkiel took him and would try to get every bit of information out of him. Regardless of the fear and apprehension that ate at me, I could not fail the one person who had never failed me.