The Meridian Forge

by Tara Sim

Genres: Dark Fantasy

Synopsis

When a long-forgotten god threatens the very fabric of the universe, the godly heirs must come together one last time to save their realms and those they hold dear in the breathtaking conclusion to the Dark Gods Saga.
 
In the shocking aftermath of the battle in Solara, the heirs arrive at the chilling conclusion that killing the gods will be trickier than they thought. Not only will the gods’ bodies need to be destroyed but also their fulcrums, the sources of their divine power. The heirs must return to their respective worlds to find each fulcrum and confront their ancestral deities. But the paths they take are dire, and will require calling upon the unknown—and unstable—depths of their power.
 
Meanwhile, Orsus, the long dead fifth god, seeks to return to full strength, though their motives and methods remain suspect. Only one thing is for certain: their journeys all lead to the Meridian Forge, the cradle of creation. There, the heirs will determine the fate of every realm as they face their strongest demons yet.

 

Release date: November 3, 2026

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 512

Sample

Taesia Lastrider was a nightmare that had not yet reached its ending.

She lay beneath a wounded sky that ached like a cavity in her own mouth. A throbbing echo of a name whispered accusingly across however many stars remained.

Sunslayer.

She exhaled slowly as she stared at the ceiling separating her from that accusing light, trying not to think about the devouring column of shadow, or the way her limbs had locked in divine manipulation. She tried not to think about anything at all. Her fate, her future, her fall.

But the echo would not be ignored.

Sunslayer.

That’s what they had called her since she walked out of Noctus with a star-touched sword on her back and a god in her head. A moniker that tied fear and myth together. A title she had earned—and twisted into prophecy.

Taesia turned her head to stare out the small window instead. She was spread out on the first mattress she’d encountered in months, her body confused by its slight give as opposed to the sand she had gotten used to sleeping on in the Shadow Sea. She didn’t think the bed belonged to anyone, as the room was stale and dusty, but it was just one of the many identical rooms in this fort.

Situated south of the Divine City, the fort was not as inhabited as it had been during the Century of Eclipse, when Solarian soldiers could keep an eye on the Noctus portal. What soldiers were stationed here had been cleared out by Imperator Ulshära ost Phos so that they could put their efforts into restoring peace in the Three Sisters.

And from what Dante had told her, they desperately needed it. With the Third Sun destroyed and their god’s abandonment (per Ulshära’s wording), riots had begun springing up like leaks in an arrow-riddled boat. The ruins of the Divine City were guarded by Devisers and Lumin soldiers who used lightspeed tech to create shields around the perimeter at all hours.

What fate would befall a world with no god? They were already seeing the effects of a missing sun: the days growing darker, temperatures dropping considerably in the hours between the Second Sun’s sinking and the First Sun’s rising. Taesia had seen the impact of winter on the Solarian refugees in Nexus; the longer this continued, the more Solara faced its own extinction.

Outside the window, the desert was aflame with the setting of the parent sun. Taesia tracked its slow descent as the shadows around her twitched and lengthened.

Not that she could do anything with them. Once out of the Divine City, she had reluctantly submitted to Ulshära’s demand to shackle her with lightsbane. While Taesia was far from happy—it brought up memories of being trapped in the Bone Palace with Phos—it was a better alternative to being thrown in the cells below.

These fetters are nothing, Nyx murmured in the back of her mind. His voice sounded smaller, fainter. You could break them anytime you wished.

Taesia didn’t answer. His dulcet tone ignited the edges of her rage, her breath turning harsh with the need to reach inside herself and rip him out. Organ by organ, if she had to.

She didn’t want to touch his power after what she had been forced to do with it. But at the same time, the thought of not touching it put an anxious itch in her bones.

Theatrics again, Nyx admonished. I was doing what I must. It was you, my general, who aimed our power upward.

She who had realized that Nyx, unable to possess the sword that made up half of his fulcrum, could be thwarted by her exchanging one death with another.

Nikolas, or the sun he was named after. It hadn’t been a difficult choice.

Taesia shut her eyes. Red light spilled through the window, over her prone body, over the chair Dante had inhabited hours earlier while he’d finally told her everything she had missed in Nexus.

“She didn’t mean it, Tae,” he had said then, so forcefully he might have been trying to convince himself. He had just told her about his trial, the one that had exonerated him by putting her in the line of fire instead. “Mother probably thought renouncing you was the only way to keep us safe. When we get back—”

“Why would I go back?” Taesia had asked. “She’s made it clear I no longer belong to House Lastrider.” A smile had curled the corner of her mouth, unfeeling and bitter. “Looks like I got what I wanted.”

He’d tried to argue, to insist that this was never what Taesia had wanted—freedom from her title, yes, but never exile. And because he was Dante and too damn stubborn, he’d pulled her into a rib-crushing hug, like he could squeeze the sins out of her.

“I didn’t do all this just to see you give up,” he’d growled before pushing her away. “We’re not done yet. We still have to confront Nyx.”

She had expected the god to laugh at that, but he’d been silent. Somber.

He spoke now, though. It is only a name. A name chosen by a long-gone monarch to differentiate you from their line. What does it matter when you are made of more than names—of blood and stars and shadow?

Lastrider. Sunslayer. There was no future associated with those names. Nothing she could bring herself to face, anyway.

Taesia breathed out. The crimson light spread like blood.

Long moments passed until the lock on the door unlatched. She prepared herself for Dante marching in to give her another piece of his mind; no doubt he had fumingly made a list of grievances, ranked by how much they irritated him specifically.

“I’ll slice off one of your horns and make you choke on it,” she warned.

Nikolas, halfway through the door, paused. He’d turned sideways to accommodate the two wings on his back. Although they were tucked in, they still arced over his shoulders and ended mid-thigh, permanent growths that couldn’t disappear like his Lumin wings.

Their eyes met, the scrape and spark of steel on steel. His eyepatch couldn’t hide the uncertainty in his expression.

Eventually he made his way in and closed the door behind him. “Last I checked, I don’t have horns,” he said. “But all things considered, that could change.”

Taesia sat up and swung her legs off the bed. “Who did you have to bribe to get the key? Or have they decided to let you finish me off after all?” She lifted her chin, baring more of her throat. “Go on, make it quick.”

He made the tongue-clicking sound reserved for when he was truly unimpressed with her. For the first time she noticed he wasn’t carrying the Sunbringer Spear.

Not that he needed it.

Nikolas grabbed the back of the singular chair and dragged it farther away from the bed, nearly against the far wall. Then he sat—an awkward movement that required his wings to unfurl slightly—and crossed his arms. He stared at her with one crystalline eye and remained silent.

Taesia waited a moment. Then she lay back down, occupying herself with the small crack in the corner of the ceiling. “Are you planning to say anything, or did you come here to get some good glaring in?”

He sighed. “I thought I’d know what to say. Apparently I don’t.”

“Right. Well. Wake me up once you have it figured out.”

“Fuck, Taesia.” She frowned; he hardly ever swore like that. “Like you don’t have anything to say to me?”

“What would you like me to say, Nik? That I’m sorry I stabbed your brother, intending to kill him and the god inside him? Or that I’m sorry I killed Kaspan and Varrick? Or that I helped facilitate the destruction of the Third Sun?” She waved her hands through the air, the shackles jangling as she did. “Sure. All of that.”

The chair clattered as he stood. In her peripheral vision she saw him kick it away, then resort to angry pacing. His wings fluttered seemingly of their own volition, white feathers puffed out like hackles. She kept her eyes on the ceiling, tracing that small crack over and over.

“Do you actually ever feel sorry?” he demanded after three turns around the room. “Or is every other thing out of your mouth a lie?”

A sudden weight suffused her body. Her eyelids dragged shut, and she felt herself sinking, sinking, yearning for the sand to close over her.

“If that’s what you’d like to believe,” she said wearily.

His footsteps stopped. His breathing was quiet. She remembered resting her head against his chest, amazed his heartbeat could be so steady when his life was anything but.

“Julian told me what happened. In Noctus. How you—” His voice tripped, searching for ground. “You said you’d refuse to kill Rian, if it came to that. You continually denied Nyx. So what changed? Why did you let the god have you?”

He asked like it wouldn’t cost her the opening of a vein. Taesia remembered standing on the roof of the Sanctuary of Nyx, witness to the imminent destruction of a world—her world, in some ways—and realizing she could not change fate on her own.

“To save Noctus,” she answered. Simple, blunt, unbelievable. “I realized all my talk meant nothing, in the end, if I couldn’t actually follow through. I could blame Nyx for Rian—for whispering in my ear that it was the only way. But it was what I believed, too.” She huffed softly. “Because that’s always my solution, isn’t it?”

Nikolas sank back down in the chair, wincing as he accidentally sat on some feathers. “You saw what Phos did to him and you still… you still chose to…”

Taesia slowly sat back up. Nikolas was hunched over, elbows braced on his knees, staring at his hands. At the faint halos adorning each fingertip.

She tried to imagine how it would feel to have Starfell’s power trapped inside her. The conduit not the blade, but her own bones. Was it anything like Nyx’s heavy gravity, the constant awareness of the celestial bodies beyond the suns?

“We’ll get Phos’s fulcrum out of you,” she said.

Nikolas curled his hands. He looked at her torso, at the spot where he had wounded her. Although it had mostly mended, it flared with pain under his attention.

Once, she’d thought they could heal each other. Be a haven from their families, their duties. Maybe it had been true, for a short time; light and shadow were always destined to be drawn to one another.

But light and shadow were always destined to destroy one another, too.

“You struck the sun instead of me,” he whispered. The crimson light was fading to a mellow purple beyond the window. “You’d already guessed what I was, and you didn’t take the chance to eliminate me as a threat. Why? If you were so determined to sacrifice Rian—”

“You think I wanted to sacrifice him?” she snapped. “You think I haven’t spent however many fucking months it’s been thinking about that moment, wishing I’d been just a second slower? All this time I thought he was dead. All this time he’s been haunting me. Why would I be so eager for your ghost?”

His hands, still bunched into fists, were trembling. In the gloaming he had the appearance of a celestial being, scarred and beaten by humanity.

Taesia opened a vein.

“I loved you.” She lay down and turned her back to him. “But not enough. Let this make up for it.”

Let me condemn an entire realm for you. Let me spell out their destruction just so that you may live.

His breath hitched. He stayed longer than she thought he would, but in the end he said nothing more to her before leaving in a rustle of feathers, making sure to lock the door behind him.

When the Second Sun was low in the sky, promising another eerie approximation of Solara’s new nighttime, she was summoned to her makeshift trial.

They sent Angelica and her thief to escort her. As soon as Taesia clocked the latter, her blood was up. The first time they had run into one another, the thief had stolen Dante’s Conjuration ingredients. The second time, Taesia had chased her down for a job that had eventually netted them Marcos Ricci’s grimoire.

In other words, they were tied one-one.

“Round three?” Taesia asked, shackled and all.

The thief, Cosima, gave a hungry grin. “You wish. Although maybe you need some exercise after all this time pent up. Hey, whatcha say we let her loose and I hunt her for sport?”

This was directed at Angelica, who seemed to earnestly give it some thought. “No.”

“Then what’s the point in lettin’ me keep this?” Cosima patted the sword at her hip, and Taesia’s mouth practically watered at the sight of it. “Besides your half-assed attempt to apologize.” Angelica narrowed her eyes as Cosima hit some sore spot between them.

“Well, now you have to let her come at me,” Taesia said.

“How’s this,” Angelica said. “If the others agree to put her down like a dog, you can do the honors.”

“Good to see you, too, Mardova,” Taesia drawled. “Glad you haven’t changed a bit.”

“Eat my entire ass, Lastrider.”

“I’m flattered, but no.”

Cosima snorted. When they both glanced at her, she raised her hands. “I can see you two missed each other.”

Oddly, Taesia had. Even this absurd exchange had lifted some of the crushing weight off her chest, pulling her back to a time when the two of them were teenagers sniping at each other with every breath.

Angelica eyed her critically. “You look more terrible than usual. They didn’t even give you new clothes?” She turned to the door and gestured for Taesia to follow, Cosima bringing up the rear. “We’ll see what we can do about that. If Ulshära doesn’t behead you straightaway.”

The upper floor of the infantry barracks consisted of identical rooms all down the long corridor, the lower floor reserved for communal spaces like kitchens, baths, and a library. Somewhere beyond these walls—in the centermost courtyard—she, or perhaps Nyx, felt the faint tug of the broken Noctus portal.

Much as she longed to see it, she had more pressing concerns. Specifically, the group of people who awaited her in the mess hall, clustered around a lengthy wooden table that had once been used to seat dozens of soldiers.

When they entered, Julian stood from the bench where he sat between Dante and Fin. Their eyes met briefly, a flash of green on black. Before Julian could approach her, Dante reached up and pulled him back down.

Instead, it was Ulshära who walked up to her. The last remaining imperator of Solara was dressed in her regal gilded armor, a white cloak trailing behind her. Her sleek white hair hung in a braid over the shoulder Phos had branded with his feather, which Angelica had later burned off. Without the imposing metal barrier of her mask, Ulshära’s features were haggard, drawn. Exhausted.

Of course she was; she had three cities to run while trying to quell the panic triggered by the death of a god. Dante had explained how Ulshära was working with the widows of Kaspan and Varrick to manage it all, but without the divine right granted by Phos’s blood, it was proving difficult for the women to assert their authority.

Taesia tried to meet Ulshära’s eyes as well but, whether on her part or the imperator’s, couldn’t manage it.

Ulshära grabbed the middle of the lightsbane shackles to test that they remained firmly in place. Appeased that Taesia hadn’t meddled with them, she nodded to Angelica and Cosima, who took their seats on one of the benches.

“Do I have to stand for this, or do I get a seat, too?” Taesia asked.

Ulshära gestured to the half of the bench that remained empty, and Taesia settled near Angelica while Ulshära took to the head of the table. Taesia rested her hands on top of the table with a heavy thunk of her cuffs.

“This is nice,” she said. “Everyone all together.”

Dante rubbed his temples. Rian pressed his lips together like he was fighting a nervous smile.

Nikolas was seated farther down the table to accommodate his wings. Although he stared at her shackles, it was Julian who asked, “Does she need to be chained?”

“That is up to her.” The imperator addressed her. “Do you have unfinished business in Solara, Sunslayer?”

Meaning: Was Taesia still planning on killing Ulshära. “Phos has been temporarily taken out of the game,” Taesia answered. “So, no. But if it makes you sleep better at night, by all means, keep them on.”

She regretted her words when Ulshära made no move to take them off.

“‘Temporarily’ being the word we need to focus on here,” Rian interjected. “Phos’s physical body was destroyed, but that doesn’t mean he can’t return through his fulcrum.” He visibly suppressed the urge to glance at his brother. “That’s why the gods have them in the first place, as a fail-safe. We don’t have much time to work with.”

We don’t have time to assign blame and punishment, he meant.

“She has slaughtered our soldiers,” Ulshära went on, rigid as the armor she wore. “She has murdered two imperators of Solara. My god-brothers.” Her gaze flitted to Dante, as if tempted to make Taesia face that same grief. “Such grave crimes should be met with justice. With death.”

“Ulshära,” Dante broke in before Taesia could say anything. “Do not forget I’m already dead. Don’t forget my payment for my sister’s actions.”

Taesia scowled. “What?” His curved horns had been a price he’d paid for using too much of the demon’s magic, but he hadn’t yet told her how he had used that magic.

“My people are fraying at the seams!” Ulshära seethed. “They are furious and terrified! If we provide them with the Sunslayer’s execution, they will come together and begin the work of mourning. Then we can move forward.”

Julian bared his teeth. Taesia was too far to kick him under the table.

Risha’s grave-soft voice came from farther down the bench. “It was your people who first brutalized ours.” Her gaze was heavy and dark beneath her lashes as she turned to Ulshära. “Phos’s warriors, made under your and your brothers’ supervision—willingly or otherwise—have destroyed our home. Our families.”

Thanks to her brother, Taesia knew the damage dealt to Nexus by Solara’s magically enhanced legionnaires. The Gravespire’s collapse, her mother’s injury, Rath Vakara’s death.

The hollow pain in Risha’s eyes unnerved her, and at the same time steadied her. It was only one more injustice to rail against.

Ulshära flinched and said nothing. She took something out of her pocket and began to roll it between her fingers: a little gear that looked like it belonged to a Device. It had been Ulshära’s meddling with lightspeed technology that had resulted in the method used to create those superpowered legionnaires. She was as guilty as any of them.

“I could sit here and say how much I wished it hadn’t happened, but that won’t change anything,” the imperator eventually murmured. Her wrath had muted to sorrow. “I could argue that Phos retaliated because of Kaspan’s death, but he had been making legionnaires well before then. Kaspan was only the excuse he needed.”

“And let’s not forget Noctus,” Rian whispered. “How many Phos killed in Astrum.”

“Is this how it will be decided, then?” Ulshära asked wearily. “Tally by tally?”

“Of course not.” Nikolas shook his head. “But we both know that any more deaths will only incite more violence on both sides. If Taesia is executed, it builds into anti-Vitaean sentiment. If—” He caught himself. “When the portals are reopened, what does that mean for Solarian-Vitaean relationships going forward? Phos wanted a war. We cannot facilitate one for him.”

In her mind Taesia sometimes regarded him as the lanky boy who didn’t know how to win his father’s love, soft-spoken and shy. Now he was the man his father had never seen in him—a dutiful heir until the last.

Ulshära wrapped her hand around the gear. “There is one other thing to consider. She has her god within her. If the Starscourge is also to meet his end, why not begin the process now?”

“No.” To Taesia’s surprise, it was Fin who spoke up at this. He sat on Nikolas’s other side, a bizarre alloy of King Ferdinand and her aunt, especially when he frowned. “Many thought that was the only way to save Rian from Phos’s possession, but we proved that wrong. And by that logic, you would need to kill Nik as well.” His tone implied that he’d see that happen over his own dead body.

Ulshära sighed and sat back. She regarded Nikolas, who stared back with his solitary eye. Light emanated from under his eyepatch, like the sunset colors leaking beyond the drapes.

“I have asked Oskar to meet us in the Divine City tomorrow,” she said. “To see if we may extract the rest of the fulcrum from the throne. If he can think of a way to extract the half that is in you, the…” She faltered, glancing at Risha. “What did you call it?”

“The spiritual component,” Risha answered. “If it’s divided from the physical aspect of the fulcrum, it makes it that much harder to combine and destroy them.”

“But how did it get into him in the first place?” Angelica asked.

Nikolas’s breath made his wings flutter. “I think… I don’t remember it well, but I think he transferred it into me when we were in Noctus. When Fin and I were prisoners in the Bone Palace. He…”

He raised a hand to his eyepatch, tracing the edges. The light gilded his fingertips.

“Phos partially healed my eye,” he finished raspingly. “He must have done it then.”

“Then where was it before?” Dante asked. “In Rian?”

“No,” Rian answered slowly, turning toward the Sunbringer Spear leaning against the wall. “In the desert, when I used the spear, it didn’t feel right. Didn’t feel like it had before. But Nik can use its power just fine.” His pale eyebrows furrowed. “I think the spiritual component was hiding in it this whole time. That’s why it’s not as powerful in my hands anymore.”

Taesia shifted her wrists to keep them from digging into the shackles as she thought about Starfell, currently kept in that Deviser Oskar’s possession. She thought back to her dreams and the astralam guide that often led her to Julian. The same specter she’d witnessed in her bid to take control over Nyx.

Could Starfell be the spiritual component of Nyx’s fulcrum? If so, that meant the physical component hung in a toothsome grin along Lilia Lunari’s collarbone in Noctus.

While the others deliberated how plausible it was that half a fulcrum had been hiding under their noses all this time, her gaze once again met Julian’s. She could tell he was thinking along the same lines.

“In the end, all of the fulcrums will need to be destroyed,” Taesia spoke over them. “Which means they first need to be completed by each of us.”

Risha nodded. “The rest of Thana’s fulcrum is in Mortri.”

Angelica and Cosima exchanged a worried glance. “Yvri?” Cosima whispered.

“I don’t know,” Angelica whispered back.

“There has to be a way to get the spiritual essence out of Nik,” Rian said. “Maybe Oskar will come up with something.”

“And I,” Taesia said, turning back to Ulshära, “will need to return to Noctus. I already hold half the fulcrum, which can lead me to Nyx. Believe me when I say I want him dead as much as you do.”

She expected some sort of retort from the god. Again, her mind was oddly absent his scoffs and sighs.

“I don’t care what happens to me after,” Taesia added. “Just let me finish what I set out to do.”

Someone drew in a breath—Dante or Julian, perhaps—but all was silent as Ulshära weighed her options. In that moment, Taesia truly did feel sorry for her. She knew the discomfort of being saddled with a destiny that outpaced you.

In her case, she didn’t even know what that destiny was anymore. Once Nyx’s fulcrum was dealt with—once the god was permanently dead—then what use was there for her?

Lastrider. Sunslayer. Exile and execution.

All nightmares had to end eventually.

Finally, Ulshära returned the small gear to her pocket and extracted a key. She unlocked the lightsbane shackles, which fell heavily to the table. Although Taesia had grown distrustful of Nyx and his enhanced power, she still sighed in visceral relief as her magic coursed through her, tendrils of sweet darkness twirling around her fingers.

Whatever waited for her at the end of the road, so long as she had the stars and shadows, she would prevail.

“Very well,” Ulshära gave in. “It’s true that we do not have much time to work with. We need these fulcrums found.”

“How do we destroy them, though?” Julian asked. “Once we complete them?”

“I don’t know yet.” Dante warily studied Nikolas. “But the longer it takes to find the rest of Phos’s, the more chance he has of returning. So let’s get started.”

Risha Vakara existed in the border between ghost and body.

The neck after the sword meets it. The breath that lingers in fog. The root pulled from soil.

But in that margin filled with bones and flowers, she could do far more than if she were simply alive or simply dead, and that was reason enough to embrace both.

Risha placed her palm against Nikolas’s back, between the scapulars of his wings. His body was feverishly warm, and his heart rate was faster than it should have been for just sitting on a stool. He flinched at her touch.

“It’s just me,” she said.

“I know.” His broad shoulders relaxed gradually. “Sorry.”

They were in the soldier’s room Nikolas was using for the time being. Rian had posted up on the narrow bed with his legs crossed, watching the two of them attentively. Hopefully. Fin sat on the edge of the bed with his hands clasped in his lap, looking much the same.

Risha drew in a deep breath. Her energy, black and unfathomable, ran like paint into Jas’s, green and flourishing. Death and life, hand in hand.

Hand in hand, the spirit within her echoed in agreement.

On her own, she would have been able to reach into Nikolas’s body and manipulate it to her whims—so long as those whims were destructive. Slowing his heart to silence, shutting down his organs, poisoning his blood. But with the Vitaean energy of Jas’s magic, the ability turned double-sided: destruction and restoration.

She wasn’t sure what, exactly, she could restore in this instance. It wasn’t that Nikolas needed healing, but a miracle.

The power culminating in her palm spread through Nikolas and rivered down his veins. It sought out impurities and intrusions like a hound on a scent. She did feel something colossal—the heat of Lumin magic crouched at his core—but even as she studied it she couldn’t find anything unusual.

She knew the fulcrum had altered him. It was evident in his wings, in the uneasy glow of his right eye. He had drawn down the ruins of the Third Sun to house them within himself.

But she could not sense it. Not as a tangible thing, or even as an extension of his Lumin core, nothing haphazardly stitched together.

Eventually she dropped her hand with a sigh. “I can’t find it.”

On the bed, Rian frowned. “What do you mean you can’t find it?”

“Everything feels like his magic.” Risha rounded the stool so that she could speak directly to Nikolas. “I thought it might take on a shape similar to a spirit, or even attach itself to his core.”

“Like a tumor?” Rian asked with growing distress.

“Something like that.” Risha rubbed her fingertips together. “But it’s more like… an essence.” Almost like Jas’s magic, when it combined with hers.

Fin was similarly agitated. “I think you’re overestimating our ability to tell the difference between spirit and essence. If there is any.”

Nikolas looked up at her. His eyepatch was off, showing the bright orb fitted into his right socket. He’d told her he couldn’t see through it, which made her that much more fascinated.

“It doesn’t feel like Phos’s possession did in the Bone Palace,” Nikolas said. “Julian could use his abilities to drive him out. But this…” He touched his sternum. “There’s power, sure enough. More than I’ve ever had. But I can’t tell it apart from my own.”

Fin stood up. “If it stays in him too long, will he absorb it? Will there be any chance of extracting it if that happens? What if…” He glanced at Nikolas with overbright eyes. “If Phos uses it to return, what happens to Nik?”

“I don’t know,” Risha said honestly. Nikolas’s light familiar floated around him, burrowing into his feathers. At least Lux didn’t seem much affected. “When it comes to fulcrums, we’re still mostly in the dark. Nik, have you ever distinguished the power in the Sunbringer Spear as something isolated, or an extension of your own magic?”

“Own magic,” Nikolas and Rian answered as one. Now that Rian was catching up to Nikolas, growth-wise, they really could have been mistaken as twins. Minus the fact that one of them now had wings.

“It’s the same magic Phos shared with the first Solarians,” Rian mused, voice distant as if recalling something from a long time ago. “I guess it makes sense that they would feel similar. But…”

But if they couldn’t separate the fulcrum from Nikolas, then how could they complete it? How could they destroy it without destroying Nikolas in the process?

You’ve done what you could, Jas assured Risha as she mentally berated herself. There are other ways you can help.

But what was the point in her ability if she couldn’t even do this? If she couldn’t even bring someone back from—

Risha cut herself off with a sharp breath. The others turned to her, worried, but she waved them off.

“I’m sorry, Nik,” she murmured. “Maybe once we have the physical component it’ll