Blood and Water - The Darkling

Chapter 25: Remembrance

*Unedited

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𝕴 find her gripping Mal, crying into his prone form.

Tolya turns to me and whispers, "She can't summon."

What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men.

What lesson is this? What sick joke? When the Darkling had toyed with the power at the heart of creation, the Fold had been his reward, a place where his power was meaningless, an abomination that would keep him and his country in servitude for hundreds of years. Is this Alina's punishment, then? Was Morozova truly mad, or was he just a failure?

"I don't understand," she cries as she presses her wet cheek to Mal's. His skin is already cooling.

Baghra had warned us: You may not be able to survive the sacrifice that merzost requires. But what is the point of this sacrifice? Had we lived only to be a lesson in the price of greed? Is that the truth of Morozova's madness, some kind of cruel equation that took all our love and loss and added them up to nothing?

She doesn't deserve this. Not really. My heart breaks with her. I feel her hate and her pain and her grief as if it were my own.

But then we see it - a light in the distance, a gleaming blade that pierces the dark.

Before I can make sense of it, another appears—a bright point that becomes two broad beams, sweeping high and wild above us.

A torrent of light bursts from the darkness just a few feet from me. As my eyes adjust I see Vladim, his mouth open in shock and confusion as light pours from his palms.

I turn my head and see them sparking to life, one by one across the Fold, like stars appearing in a twilight sky, Soldat Sol i Zvezda and oprichniki, their weapons forgotten, their faces baffled, awed, terrified, and bathed in light.

The Darkling's words come back to me. Morozova was a strange man. He was drawn to the ordinary and the weak.

He'd had an otkazat'sya wife.

He'd nearly lost an otkazat'sya child.

He'd thought himself alone in the world, alone in his power.

Now I understand. I see what he had done. This is the gift of the three amplifiers: power multiplied a thousand times, but not in one person. How many new Summoners have just been created? How far has Morozova's power reached?

The arcs and cascades of light blossom around us, a bright garden growing in this unnatural night. The beams meet, and where they cross, the darkness burns away.

The shrieks of the volcra erupt around us as the Fold begins to unravel. It's a miracle. But somehow I don't know if it's enough.

I raise my hands to help when I hear him.

"How?"

I turn to face him. The Darkling stands behind us, stunned, taking in the impossible sight of the Fold coming apart around us. "This can't be. Not without the firebird. The third—" He stops short as his eyes settle on Mal's body, the blood on Alina's hands. "It can't be," he repeats.

Even now, as the world we know is remade in bursts and flashes of light, he can't comprehend what Mal truly was.

"What power is this?" he demands. The Darkling stalks toward us, shadows pooling in his palms, his creatures swirling around him.

The twins draw their weapons. But even now, I cannot find it in me to fight him. Alina can't either, although for a different reason. She lifts her hands, reaching for the light. Nothing happens.