The moment we step out of the circle, the woods react. The stones beneath our feet break and contort to comply with our enemy’s wishes. Void energy erupts like geysers and the sky seems to crack.

  “This won’t be enough,” I growl.

  They had the right idea with the first attack. Throw innocents at us. Fill the sky with the void. But whatever Mirage did, we are nowhere near the tortured souls who held me back before. It is safe to use all of my mana here. And I can still hear Mirage screaming. She is perhaps the most ancient source of grief in this world. And it’s no longer muffled. Not for me. And who is trying to stop me but the direct source of that grief himself?

  My boot touches the dirt, and the world changes with it. Mana erupts from me in all directions. As the earth tears itself apart and launches at me, force, lightning, and air lash out from me, sending it everywhere but where we stand. Riley has her void mana ready, but she doesn’t need it. Again, riot spikes fall from everywhere Oakley’s space energy exists. It does little. They may disperse mana, but not the natural effects created by it. Powerful wind throws every spike away like so much worthless debris.

  “You were pretty confident before we intruded on your cute little stone,” I shout. I know they are listening. The architects of this stone. The Original and the Void. The Void and the Original. Riley knows who I am speaking to as well. I speak with mana like the world itself, and my intent demands to be known. “When you had us cornered. Before you saw your own tool of hate and death, ripe and ready to bludgeon you.”

  I step forward again, and the sound of my foot falling screams through the world around me. Sound mana assaults everything but Riley, shattering stone like glass. Vines of blood tear through the air, desperate to bind me. They shrivel in the heat. Blades of wind try to cut at me, but they are smothered by my air. I remember when I saw Godfrey with his full Aura for the first time. It was like baroque glass on reality. Cracking it. Defying it. I’d thought it was unassailable. Like fighting it would be death. Right now, my aura is not glass. No, it is tectonic. Reality doesn’t distort to accommodate the pure mana around me. Is shifts to get the fuck out of my way. Each step I take creates continents from Pangea.

  “But you remember now, don’t you?” I threaten. “You remember why I am here? Why I, of all people, am going to eat your heart in your own goddamn kitchen?” They know. But hearing me say it, especially Oakley, may kill them before I get the chance. Riley has begun countering any void energy erupting from the ground with her own mana, keeping the only dangerous weapon they have safely contained. As such, pillars of lava erupt alongside them. Less dangerous, but carefully calculated to shake me. And shake me they do, but they only make me furious. They are Oakley’s answer to me. I clench my fists.

  “Mirage showed me, you know. She showed me what you did to my girlfriend when she was only a child. When you force-fed her poison to keep her weak. When you tried to own her body. When you tried to tell her who and what she was, by force, so she would be ripe to consume and use for yourself,” I hiss. I don’t know when Oakley and the original started working together. But I know they were both involved in hurting Sarafyna, and I know they are both going to suffer for it.

  I keep walking, glaring at the pillars of useless lava. The weapon used to kill my brother. I get the message, but that means they get mine. They collapse under my glare, force mana crushing any pressure they could possibly build. I bare my fangs as I continue to speak. “She was so, so scared. She was a child. Terrified. Alone. Mutating against her will. Manipulated and abused. But you know what? She was still stronger than you. Even as a terrified child desperate to see her father again, Sara was stronger than you. Even as you offered her more pain and trauma than you could ever grasp, she was stronger than both of you. Even as she lashed out blindly, desperately, hopelessly, she still managed to answer you in kind. To make you just as afraid as she was.”

  I clench my fist and a wall of stone turns to dust in front of us. I can see it ahead of us. Tangled in roots and connected to dozens of trees. A wooden heart. The core of this stone.

  “She wanted help, and she got it. She wanted you to hurt, and she got it. She wanted you afraid, and who else would she bring but the woman who terrified you so much you had to flee to an entirely new planet to feel safe again. I get it. Lava pillars. My trauma. Sara’s trauma. Throw them in our faces. Because you, Oakley, you have to deal with the same. Because your trauma has a name, a face, and teeth that rend and tear. And she knows your fucking name. That’s why I am here. Because a scared girl reached out with nothing but the desperate hope to be saved and to stop the people hurting her. And she found your nightmares, Oakley. She found me.”

  The ground tries to tremor beneath us, the trees try to scream, and bleed, and distract. The air tries to turn to ice. The dirt wants to shift to mud, too thick to walk through. Leaves and pines fly toward us like blades and needles. I decline. My mana scowls at every attempt to harm either of us. Ice evaporates into harmless steam. Leaves burn to ash. The ground turns to steady steel, immovable beneath my feet. The sounds are muted, so only Mirage’s screams can be heard. I continue to move forward.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “And you, the so-called ‘original’. I think I’ll call you Alpha. A fitting name. It does imply originality, but it’s also adopted by the pathetic and insecure where I come from. You. Mirage doesn’t understand rage. She understands fear. And betrayal. And hurt. You taught her those. Even still, she can’t conceive of hate or anger. But I know you. I’ve met you too many times. Abusive pricks who want to own people. Who call control protection, and call force love. You’re afraid, too. Always afraid. Terrified that your greatest victim will learn to see you. Will learn to loathe you. Well. She’s not alone anymore. You may have most of her power. You may be using it to set yourself up as a god. But I have her pain and her grief.” The trees move, trying to block my path to the heart. They last less than a breath before they are splinters in my path.

  “I have her pain and grief,” I repeat. “And believe me, I can conceive of rage.”

  The only answer I receive is more desperate attacking, but I can’t be stopped. Not by these men. Not right now. There is a reason they were too afraid to come here in person. There is a reason they are attacking with a world they control and their faces hidden. I take another step, and another, and another. I keep moving, entirely unimpeded despite their attempts. Until it is right in front of me. A heart of wood. Suspended in the air by the roots, connecting it to the trees around it. It’s beating. Taunting my still heart. But not for long.

  “That’s why. For both of you assholes. I am here because, at your core, deep down, past your superiority complexes and the pedestals you’ve built for yourselves. You are both cowards. Afraid of your mothers loving other men more than you, and little girls who can say no. Because I am every woman, and you are alone. Because you are afraid.” I reach out and grip the heart in my left hand. I can feel the shift immediately. This part won’t be easy. It’s going to take most of my mana. I look at Riley. “I need you to protect me. Distract them. And I will get us out of here.”

  She nods in understanding, and white mana explodes from her. She doesn’t have nearly my aura, but her aspect is a destructive one. And her father is too afraid to come here and match it with his own. It’s her turn. To speak to her father. Meanwhile, I clench my fist and dig my claws in. It fights me, even as real blood leaks from the wood. I pour my mana into it, and it fights the nexus energy it is composed of. It is so dense. So determined. I have to tune out the attacks coming at me. I trust Riley. I pour everything into crushing the heart of the stone while Riley speaks up for the first time.

  “Moron,” she says. “You’re a moron, Rowan. Oakley. Dad. Whoever you are. Are you any of these? Really? Growing up, you were a monument. You were storm clouds in the sky, and I sought shelter when you approached. Because that’s who you wanted to be. The man on the peak of every mountain. The best at everything you do. Unassailable talent and genius. You wanted to be a god. An object of desire and worship. But you never were. You were never good at anything but being a sage. An ability which, it turns out, is entirely stolen. You were never real, were you?

  “So many years, propping you up. Bringing praise to you with my abilities. Until I turned out to be a woman, when I was just an embarrassment. Someone to be punished for existing. You are no more my father than you are a god. No more than your name is Rowan. You are a ghost. An idiot. A fool in the king's court. In Alpha's court. Playing your games with people’s lives and homes. Running, over and over, when you are eventually unmasked as a ghost. When you are eventually hated. And you always are, aren’t you? By your daughters. By your wives. By your sons. Even by your sycophants, if you don’t replace them frequently enough.”

  I can hear her breath growing more frantic as she screams at him. She is fighting, as she does. But I can feel it. The yelling is helping. The pressure of my mana is collapsing the heart in my hand. Blood no longer leaks, now spurting and spattering in all directions. Still, it beats in my hand.

  “But you are a moron. You are stupid, and small, and sad, and lonely. I hate you, Dad. I have always hated you. Long before you tried to punish me. Long before I supposedly humiliated you. And I am in good company. Because even those who love you don’t respect you. All the envy in the world can’t make you respectable. I fucking hate you, and I am going to kill you. Now that I know that, in addition to everything else, you are terrified. You have always been weak, and now I know. You–” She cuts off in the middle. I hear cracking noises, then screaming from her.

  I put everything I have into crushing the heart. Vines finally reach me, wrapping themselves around me. They burn and they tear at my clothes. But they can’t touch my left arm, where all my aura is focused. So they pull. And pull. And pull. I grimace. My right arm is jerked back in an attempt to tear me off the heart. I can feel the skin in my shoulder tearing as the steel is pulled from it.

  I join the chorus of screams, and my hand closes the rest of the way. With such force, my claws stab straight through the heart and into my own hand.

  And the stone is gone. I stand in the middle of a stone pit. High above me is the broken glass of Markus’ window. Behind me, Riley is gripping a bleeding side. And all around us are hundreds and hundreds of people, all with faces I recognize. All in their own original bodies, and none still attached to a single mass of agonized flesh.

  Mirage’s screaming is dulled, but still there. The power her grief gave me is more distant. But we won. The first stone has been destroyed, and Mirage has part of herself back.