Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 125422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125422 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
A roar shakes the battlements. One of the mightiest Old Gods—a towering behemoth of bone, antlers, and horns—lumbers toward the main gate. Its hollow eyes glow green, and it raises massive claws to tear down what remains of our defenses. Soldiers cry out in dismay. If that horror breaches the gate fully, we’re done for.
“Focus on that one!” I bellow.
Hanna responds with a column of light so bright, I must shield my eyes. The beam hisses as it strikes the behemoth’s crown of skulls, cracking them open. The creature howls, staggering, and I race forward, sword raised high. Lovia joins me, blade gleaming. We attack its flank, carving into a joint.
With one final heave, I drive my sword deep into the creature’s chest cavity. The smell of rot and old bones engulfs me. Lovia slashes its tendon, causing it to collapse in a heap of debris and dust. Before it can recover, Hanna’s light intensifies, reducing the behemoth to a pile of ash drifting on the breeze.
A ragged cheer goes up. Is this it? Are we winning?
Have we won?
The undead army, leaderless and battered, begins to falter. Without the Old Gods to push them forward, skeletons mill in confusion. Some attempt to retreat, clattering away towards the south, while others simply collapse into inert heaps. Flying horrors, once so bold, spiral away, wings tattered by sunbeams.
I peer over the broken wall. The enemy is in disarray.
But we have survived.
The courtyard, once hellish, now lies strewn with broken bones and steaming ichor. Soldiers stumble and cough, some crying tears of relief. Tapio and Tellervo sink to their knees, exhausted. Vellamo presses a hand to her chest, breathing hard. Ilmarinen wipes sweat and soot from his brow while Torben slumps against a parapet, staff rattling on the stones. The Magician folds his arms, galaxies swirling faintly, as if pondering the odds of what just transpired. Rasmus, chest heaving, looks at me in stunned disbelief.
I turn my gaze upward, heart pounding. Hanna still floats there, lined by fading brilliance. The fierce glow begins to dim slightly, letting me see more of her form. She descends, not swiftly like a joyous return, but slowly, deliberately, as though considering whether to grace us with her presence. I wait, hands trembling, longing to touch her.
Lovia and I move closer together, father and daughter standing atop a shattered tower. The light that guided our salvation now seems distant and uncertain. Hanna’s feet touch down on a high parapet bathed in half-light, and the sunbeams retract, leaving faint halos around her shoulders. Her hair, once dark, now shifts with hues of gold and red, like embers at dawn. Her eyes—oh Gods, her eyes—are not the warm brown I recall, but pale, molten copper.
I swallow, stepping forward. “Hanna,” I say quietly, voice breaking. “You came for us.”
She tilts her head, studying me with an odd detachment, as if I am something curious rather than familiar. Lovia’s breath catches. Even the cries of the wounded and the grieving seem to fade, as if waiting for her response.
Hanna’s gaze sweeps over the courtyard, taking in the wounded, the dead, the lingering beams of sunlight. Her expression is blank, eyes distant. She offers no smile, no word of comfort.
Nothing.
I force a step forward, pain in my muscles a reminder of all we’ve done to reach this moment. “Hanna,” I repeat, softer this time. “Please. Join me.”
For a long moment, she does not respond. Then, her lips part, and I expect a flood of relief or apology, an explanation for her strange magic and long absence. Instead, she speaks a single word in a language I do not recognize—harsh and clipped, like sparks struck from flint. The sound scrapes over my heart like a blade.
My chest tightens with dread.
“Hanna?” Lovia says. “Are you alright? It’s us.”
Hanna regards us both as though we’re strangers and she’s where she doesn’t belong. Her posture is regal, spine straight, but there’s no sign of love in her face, no flicker of recognition. The final rays of her conjured sunlight fade from the stones, leaving only the dim, natural twilight and distant fires burning in heaps of slain horrors.
A chill runs through me. Could the sun’s power have changed her beyond recognition? Did her trials in the celestial realms strip her memory?
Her compassion?
But no, that can’t be. She saved us. That’s compassion.
She knows we’re worth saving.
Doesn’t she?
The silence stretches, and my allies shift uneasily below. The Magician tilts his head, as if unsurprised by this terrible twist. Torben’s knuckles whiten around his staff as he stares at his daughter.
“Hanna? It’s me, your dad,” he says.
Hanna lifts a hand toward him, and I instinctively brace myself, unsure if it’s a gesture of greeting or a threat. She utters another low phrase in that unknown tongue, and her eyes flick to my sword, then to Lovia’s blade, then across the corpses of the slain Old Gods. Her gaze returns to me, staring as if I am some puzzle to be solved.