The afternoon sun crawled slowly across the wooden floorboards of the Mercer cottage. For the past three days, an unnerving stillness had settled over the home.
In Damurah's bedroom, the only sound breaking the silence was the laboured breathing of a man at death's door. Zale, Jerter's older brother, lay motionless under thick quilts. Three days ago, he had fallen into the front doorway, offering a half finished greeting before completely collapsing across the threshold. He hadn't stirred since. Jerter had dragged him inside, cleaned him up, and placed him in her eldest son's bed. She has been spending the last seventy-two hours anxiously hovering over him, waiting for answers that she wasn't sure would come.
Leasie sat quietly at the kitchen table, idly pushing a wooden toy block back and forth. The usual bright energy of the household was completely muffled by their uncle's mysterious arrival.
Suddenly, the familiar clatter of the front door latch broke the silence and made Jerter jump slightly from her chair. The heavy wood door swung open, sending a small breeze throughout the home. Daria and Jemsie stepped inside, both looking exhausted. The two sisters had spent the last two weeks down in Havenport, assisting with the aid and recovery efforts at the devastated city.
Jemsie let out a heavy sigh, dropping a rucksack to the floor. She rubbed the back of her neck, dragging her sore body through the house. Daria followed closely beside her, her hair tied back in a messy knot. She unlaced her heavy work boots before she even fully closed the door.
"We're back," Jemsie called out, her voice rough from fatigue and being parched. She looked toward the kitchen and found her mother standing tensely near the hallway and Leasie staring at them.
Daria kicked her boots off and immediately sensed the heavy atmosphere. She shared a confused glance with her sister. "Mom? Why is it so quiet in here? Did we get a letter from Doren or Nergal?"
Jerter shook her head slowly, bringing a hand up to rub her tired eyes. "No letters from your brothers," she said softly. She gestured down the hall toward Damurah's closed door. "But we do have a guest."
Daria's brow furrowed. She was exhausted, but all that instantly evaporated into a sharp sense of alarm. With Doren missing, Damurah hunting for him, Nergal nowhere to be found, and their father, Sophron, gone for the last decade, the Mercer cottage was entirely devoid of any defenses besides her.
"Are you out of your mind, mom?" Daria hissed, keeping her voice low so as not to scare Leasie, though the tension in her tone was present. "Why would you bring someone into the house? Especially without the boys here to protect us? We don't know who is wandering around out there!"
"Daria, wait, it's not—" Jerter started, reaching out a hand to stop her daughter.
Daria didn't wait to hear the explanation. Driven by a sudden need to secure her home, she pushed right past her mother. Her heavy feet thudded down the short hallway toward Damurah's bedroom. She grabbed the handle and shoved.
The heavy door slammed open, the loud bang echoing violently through the cottage and making both Jemsie and Leasie jump in the other living area.
Daria stood rigidly in the doorway, her fists clenched at her sides. She was fully prepared to confront whoever her mother had dragged inside. But the aggressive fire in her chest instantly died, replaced by a cold, jarring shock.
The man lying in Damurah's bed was in terrible shape.
Thick, blood stained linen wrappings were coiled tightly around his entire torso, binding his ribs. A smaller bandage was taped awkwardly across his weathered face, and his left eye was completely covered by a dark patch.
Despite the violent slam of the door, the man didn't flinch. His chest rose and fell in a slow rhythm. He was in a deep sleep, his body completely shut down. He was exactly as he had been since the moment he collapsed across their threshold.
Daria's defensive posture melted into sheer confusion. She didn't recognize the sleeping man. There was something undeniably familiar about him though.
Behind her, Jerter finally caught up, resting a gentle hand on Daria's shoulder. "This is your uncle, Zale," Jerter explained, her fingers gently squeezing Daria's shoulder. "He is my brother."
Daria's eyes widened. The protective anger completely washed away, leaving only a stunned, heavy silence in its place. She stared down at the battered man.
"He suddenly showed up at the door," Jerter continued, her voice tight with a deep worry. She gestured toward the courtyard outside. "His Steernia is put out back."
Before Daria could fully process what that meant, Jemsie slipped gently past the two of them and into the cramped bedroom. She didn't ask questions. She walked straight to the edge of the mattress and knelt on the wooden floor beside her unconscious uncle. If anyone in the Mercer household could piece a broken man back together, it was her.
Taking a centering breath, Jemsie hovered her hand just inches above Zale's tightly wrapped torso. Almost instantly, a warm, golden glow began to emanate from her palm. She moved her hand in slow, deliberate movements over his ribs and stomach. The radiant light behaved a lot like water, seeping directly through the thick linen bandages and sinking deep into the skin beneath.
She kept the steady motion going for a long while, her brow furrowed in deep concentration as the room bathed in the gentle healing light. She carefully shifted her glowing hand upward, repeating the same sweeping motion over his battered face and the dark patch covering his left eye.
After several minutes, the golden light slowly faded from her hands, leaving the room to the dim shadows of the afternoon sun. Jemsie let out a weary exhale and slowly stood up. She looked directly at her mother.
"He had a lot of internal bleeding," Jemsie stated, her voice quiet but carrying the warmth of a caregiver. "And he had a pretty bad brain injury." Daria looked at her sister in surprise. Jemsie had always been a gifted healer, but diagnosing unseen trauma with such clinical accuracy was entirely new.
Jemsie caught Daria's surprised expression. The grueling, endless days down in Havenport had changed her. Surrounded by crushed bones, blunt force trauma, and deep wounds from the city's wreckage, she had been learning. Pushed to the absolute limit in the recovery tents, Jemsie had managed to establish a brand new facet of her light element. It was the ability to peer beneath the flesh and read the exact nature of an injury before she even began to mend it.
Jerter let out a shaky breath, stepping further into the room. "Can you fix him, Jemsie? Will he wake up? Are you that strong?"
While estranged, Jerter still loved her family. Even if the Everhearts despised the man she had chosen to marry, Zale was still her older brother. Seeing him clinging to life on her son's bed was deeply terrifying for her.
Jemsie looked up at her mother's pale and scoffed. "Am I strong enough?" The exhaustion from her time in Havenport still hung heavy under her eyes. "He should wake up," she reassured. "I don't know exactly when, though. It really depends on if the healing I did holds up against the internal damage."
Jerter let out a shaky breath, her shoulders finally relaxing. She dropped to her knees beside the bed and wrapped her arms around her daughter, pulling her into an embrace. "Thank you, baby," Jerter whispered into Jemsie's hair, her voice cracking with exhaustion and relief.
While the heavy emotional weight lingered in the bedroom, Daria quietly slipped back out into the kitchen.
Leasie was still sitting at the wooden table, her small hands resting near her wooden blocks, and her feet kicking. Daria walked over to her younger sister and pulled a small, heavy cloth bag from her pocket. Inside the bag were stone marbles she had carefully crafted on the long walk home from Havenport.
Daria loosened the drawstring and tipped the bag over the wooden table. A cascade of perfect, brightly colored stone spheres spilled out. They hit the wood with a satisfying clatter, rolling in every direction and catching the afternoon sunlight in brilliant flashes of color.
Leasie's face instantly lit up, the heavy gloom of the past couple days completely forgotten. "These are beautiful, Daria!" She shouted excitedly.
The little girl scrambled up onto her knees on the wooden chair, her eyes wide as saucers and sparkling with joy. She let out an unrestrained giggle as the marbles rolled toward the edge of the table. Her little hands darted out with lightning speed, catching the colorful spheres right before they could tumble onto the floorboards.
She eagerly gathered them into a vibrant pile in front of her. Leasie picked up a blue one, holding it up. She was practically vibrating with excitement, bouncing slightly on her knees as she rapidly sorted them by color. She was completely captivated by the perfect spheres.
For the first time in three days, genuine laughter echoed through the Mercer cottage, slicing right through the tension that Zale's arrival had brought to their home.
Jerter walked over to a pot that was suspended above the hearth. The rich, savory aroma of boiling broth finally chased the heavy stench that Daria and Jemsie had brought to the cottage.
Dinner time rolled around, bringing a much needed sense of normalcy back to their home. Jerter stood over the iron pot hanging in the hearth, ladling generous scoops of hot rabbipine soup into deep wooden bowls. She made sure each serving was thick with hearty chunks of the wild meat, bright orange porrots that had softened beautifully in the broth, tender bulb onions, and plump beans. Of course with a mixture of herbs Daria has grown.
As she filled the fourth bowl, the latch of Damurah's bedroom door clicked open. Jemsie stepped out into the hallway, looking utterly spent. She leaned against the doorframe for a moment, wiping a sheen of sweat from her forehead before walking into the warm kitchen.
"The internal bleeding finally stopped," Jemsie announced softly, pulling out a chair and sinking into it. She looked up at her mother. "But his eye is damaged. The trauma was too deep before I got to him. I don't think he will be able to see anymore out of it."
Jerter paused, the wooden ladle hovering over the iron pot. She closed her eyes for a brief second, absorbing the grim news. He was okay. That was her only thought. A lost eye was a heavy price, but she was just grateful her brother was still breathing.
"Thank you, Jemsie," Jerter said, her voice filled with genuine gratitude. She carried two steaming bowls to the table, setting one in front of her exhausted daughter and the other in front of Leasie. Leasie carefully pushed her new marbles to the center of the table to make room.
Jerter rested a gentle hand on Leasie's head, smoothing down the little girl's hair. "You're becoming quite the little hunter, Leasie."
Leasie beamed, her chest puffing out with undeniable pride as she picked up her spoon.
It was a stark, jarring contrast to the little girl who had just been giggling over colorful glass spheres. Necessity had a way of forcing everyone to grow up fast. With Sophron gone for ten years, Damurah off playing pirates, Nergal exploring, and now Doren gone on a grand adventure, the Mercer cottage had been left without its usual providers.
In her brothers' absence, Leasie had taken up the mantle as the hunter. She had spent the last few weeks wandering the woods at the edge of the property, mimicking the snare traps and tracking techniques Nergal had once shown her. To everyone's absolute shock, the youngest Mercer was actually good at it.
The rabbipine in their bowls tonight was entirely her doing. It was a small but vital victory that kept her family fed. The porots had came from the garden that Daria had planted a couple weeks ago. Thanks to Daria's abilities, they grew faster than normal. The onions and beans came from the yard. The onions sprouted up in bundles randomly on their property, and the beans grew up the trees.
Jerter had just taken a slow, comforting sip from her wooden spoon, her shoulders finally relaxing. "So," she asked, looking between her two older daughters, "how was the trip down to Havenport? Did you two manage to stay safe in all that wreckage?"
Daria and Jemsie froze completely.
Daria's spoon halted halfway to her mouth. Jemsie's eyes darted down to her bowl, suddenly finding the floating porrots incredibly interesting. A heavy silence descended over the kitchen table. The silence was so thick it made Leasie stop kicking her feet beneath her chair.
The two sisters exchanged a glance. Finally, Daria carefully set her spoon down onto the polished wood. She swallowed hard, her voice coming out barely above a whisper. It was terrible. There was so much debris everywhere. So many hurt people. And…" she paused for a moment. "We... we saw Damurah while we were down there."
Jerter looked up with an expression of shock and confusion. There was a flicker of maternal relief that sparked in her chest at the mention of her eldest. "Damurah? What was he doing in Havenport? Is he alright? Did he say when he's coming home?"
"He's not coming home, Mom," Jemsie said, her voice shaking. She looked up, meeting her mother's eyes directly. "He's tracking Doren. And... and Doren might be responsible for Havenport being attacked."
Clack.
The wooden spoon slipped from Jerter's fingers. It hit the rim of her bowl with a sharp crack, sending a splash of hot broth directly onto the table. The broth barely missed Leasie's pile of marbles.
Jerter didn't even flinch at the spill. The color drained from her face, she looked suddenly ill. She sat rigid in her chair, the breath knocked out of her lungs by the impact of the news. Her mind rejected the words the moment they left Jemsie's mouth. Havenport was a catastrophic event that had left buildings destroyed and killed dozens.
"Don't be ridiculous," Jerter whispered. She let out a breathless, hollow laugh that held absolutely no humor. "Doren? Your brother? He could barely summon the earth, how could he destroy a town?" She planted her hands on the table, her eyes darting frantically between Daria and Jemsie, looking for the punchline to this terrible joke.
"Havenport was devastated by some kind of monster... or a siege!" Jerter pleaded, her voice rising in pitch as panic began to claw its way up her throat. "Doren doesn't even have any control of his elements! He can't even light a candle! That's... that is physically impossible. What exactly did Damurah tell you?!"
"He's going after Doren. To try and get him to gain control of his elements," Daria said, her voice dripping with a mix of exhaustion and deep-seated resentment. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling. "If he doesn't, he could apparently destroy the world." Daria let out a harsh scoff, the bitterness she had been harboring for weeks finally spilling over. "I doubt Doren could ever."
For Daria, Doren's sudden departure wasn't some grand, noble quest, it was a betrayal. He had packed his bags and walked out the door, leaving her and Jemsie to shoulder the weight of a broken family. Especially after Nergal and Damurah departed.
"Destroy the world?" Jerter whispered, letting out a breathless, hollow laugh that held no humor.
Jemsie reached across the table, gently placing her hand over her mother's hand. "Mom," Jemsie said softly, "I didn't want to believe it either. But you didn't see Havenport. You didn't see the craters, or the ships. I found someone crushed under the rubble of a building." She stopped with tears coming to the corners of her eyes. "I found a dead baby, mom…" she sobbed, holding her gaze on her mom.
Jerter looked between her two eldest daughters, desperately searching their faces for a lie or an exaggeration. Daria's jaw was set in anger, and Jemsie's eyes were shadowed with profound grief.
"My boys," Jerter breathed out, a single tear finally breaking free and tracking down her pale cheek. She slumped back into her wooden chair, the fight completely draining out of her. "Divines protect them... what has that cursed thing done to him?"
At the end of the table, Leasie sat perfectly still. She looked down at the marbles Daria had made her, her small grey hands pulling them closer to her chest as the reality of her brothers' absence settled over the kitchen.
For a few long moments, the only sound in the kitchen was the gentle bubbling of the iron pot over the hearth.
Then, with a strained, almost lightness, Jerter broke the quiet. "What about Nergal?" she joked, forcing a brittle, wavering laugh that didn't reach her eyes. "Did you see him too?"
Daria and Jemsie exchanged a sharp, deeply unsettled look across the table. Beneath their mother's laughter, they could hear the fraying edges of her sanity. It was the sound of a woman whose world was spinning entirely out of control, desperately clinging to the memory of her family before her husband's draft.
Then, a deafening crash from Damurah's room shattered the quiet of the cottage.
Daria was instantly on her feet, her chair screeching backward. But before she could take a single step toward the hallway, an unnatural gale of wind roared out of the corridor. The sheer force of the blast slammed Daria backward, throwing her hard onto the wooden floorboards. Damurah's heavy bedroom door was ripped completely off its hinges, rocketing through the air and smashing into the kitchen wall with heavy force.
Through the open kitchen windows, the trees outside were barely swaying in a gentle afternoon breeze.
Daria pushed herself up onto her elbows, her ears ringing and her visions blurred. She looked toward the hallway just as Zale stumbled out of the shadows, falling into the doorframe.
He looked like a cornered, half blind animal. His one good eye was wide, bloodshot, and completely devoid of recognition. Trapped in a waking nightmare, his brain couldn't process where he was or who was in front of him. Pure panic radiated from him and his magic was reacting violently to his sheer terror.
Jemsie scrambled backward against the cabinets, her breath catching in a suffocating knot. She had spent hours piecing his body back together, but she didn't realize that his mind may have still been broken. The paralyzing terror of knowing that her healing might have just caused him to spiral into a psychosis sent a chill down her spine.
"Zale! Zale, it's me! It's Jerter!" Jerter cried out, throwing her hands up as the wind whipped her hair into a frenzy.
Zale couldn't hear her over the roaring in his own head. He let out a terrified scream, throwing his hands out to blindly push away the invisible enemies swarming his mind.
The wind howled through the kitchen, violently knocking the heavy iron pot off its hook. The rabbipine soup spilled directly into the hearth, hissing violently as it hit the hot coals. Zale's manic energy latched onto the heat.
A roaring torrent of wind and fire surged out of the fireplace, carrying the flame across the kitchen. A blinding spray of flames washed across the dry wooden floorboards, the woven rugs, and the wooden cabinetry and ignited it instantly.
A sickening dread washed over Daria as she raised her hands, the heat blistering her skin. She was the protector of this house now, but against a wild elementalist in a state of absolute psychosis, her fists and her bravery meant nothing. She was entirely powerless as the fire cut her off from her mother.
Jerter let out a scream. Not out of the fear of the fire but of the fear of losing her cottage. This cottage was her sanctuary. It was the only thing she had managed to hold together since Sophron left. The horrifying realization that her own brother had caused her home to ignite, and potentially harm her children, completely paralyzed her.
Beneath the wooden table, the world had turned into a literal nightmare. Leasie shrieked in pure horror, pressing her hands over her ears as the deafening roar of the fire consumed the room. The fire bit at her skin.
The beautiful, colorful marbles Daria had just given her scattered across the floorboards, rolling directly into the growing inferno, reflecting the terrifying, blazing destruction of the Mercer family's safe haven.
The blistering heat instantly raised painful, angry welts across Daria's arms. Though badly burnt, the adrenaline surging through her veins completely muted the pain. She couldn't panic. If she panicked, her family was going to burn alive.
Daria drove her heavy boot into the kitchen floor with brutal force. Beneath the foundation of the cottage, the earth answered. A concentrated pillar of rock punched upward, violently buckling the floorboards and throwing the heavy wooden table onto its side. It created just enough of a makeshift shield against the flames. Daria grabbed Leasie by the collar of her dress, her blisters popping against the hot fabric. Daria threw the terrified little girl out the open front door and into the safety of the cool afternoon air.
One down.
Daria spun around. The kitchen was rapidly becoming an unrecognizable hellscape. Zale was still lost in his terrifying hallucination, using the air to move the flames into a frenzy.
Against the far counter, Jemsie was frozen, her eyes wide and glassy with shock as the fire boxed her in. Daria sprinted through the smoke, her boots skidding over fallen eatery ware. She grabbed Jemsie's wrist and yanked her forward.
"Move!" Daria screamed over the roar of the fire.
Jemsie stumbled, her foot catching on the leg of an overturned chair, and she fell hard into the floorboards. Daria didn't let go. She hauled her sister back to her feet with brute strength, dragging her toward the door.
Just as they neared the threshold, a terrifying, deafening crack echoed above them. Daria looked up just in time to stop, holding Jemsie back as well.
A massive, burning wooden crossbeam from the ceiling gave way. It plummeted down, crashing into the center of the kitchen and sending up a blinding shower of embers. A solid wall of jagged, flaming timber now completely separated Daria and Jemsie from Jerter, who was trapped on the other side near the hallway. From the crossbeam falling, a thick plume of smoke covered the air in the cottage.
"Go, Jemsie! Get the hell out of here!" Daria roared, her voice tearing her throat. She needed Jemsie to snap out of her dread, she needed her to survive.
Jemsie stumbled backward through the front door, coughing violently as she hit the fresh air. Two down.
With her sisters out, Daria spun back to face the inferno. The heat was absolute agony and the smoke was making it hard to breathe. The ends of her hair began to curl and scorch, filling the air with a sickening, acrid smell amongst burning fabric and wood.
Through the commotion of fire and smoke, she could see Zale wildly lashing out at nothing. His panic was still getting the best of him despite being burnt alive. Beyond him, her mother was screaming for her over the roaring flames. Daria needed to move that fallen beam, and she needed to do it right now.
She planted her left foot, drawing in a sharp breath of ash filled air, and raised her right boot high. She focused every ounce of her will, preparing to stomp down and send a surge of earth through the foundation to shatter the burning timber out of the way much like what she did with the table
She drove her foot down with all her might. But the fire had been far too fast. The heat had already hollowed out the structural integrity of the wooden planks beneath her. Instead of her boot striking a solid surface to channel her earth element, the charred floorboard instantly gave way with a sickening crunch.
Daria plunged downward. The jagged, splintered edges of the burning wood clamped violently around her calf like a bear trap. She stumbled forward, catching herself hard on her hands just inches from the roaring flames. The rest of the blisters on the palm of her hands exploded on the impact. She pulled her leg frantically, but the jagged splinters bit deep into her flesh and caught the thick leather of her boot. She was completely stuck, pinned to the floor of her burning home as the fire rapidly closed in around her.
Daria let out a grunt, gritting her teeth against each other as she ripped her leg upward. The jagged, burning splinters of the floorboard dug into her calf, biting deep into her flesh and ripping through her pant leg.
She let out a scream that tore at her throat. The pain was blinding. Jerter coughed. She held her breath and slapped both of her bare hands flat against the wood of the floor, her chest heaving as she tried to leverage herself up.
Tears of panic sprang to her eyes, but the heat of the room was so oppressive that the moisture instantly hissed and evaporated before it could even roll down her cheeks. Her heart was racing.
She pulled again, screaming into the roaring inferno. With her hands pressed firmly against the foundation of the house, and her body surging with desperation. Her magic answered in a way she hadn't consciously commanded. Her scream seemed to travel straight through her palms and deep into the very bones of the earth.
A tremor deep under their home shook the entire cottage, so powerful it rattled the entire space. Directly beneath the fallen crossbeam, the floor exploded upward. A massive, jagged pillar of solid bedrock punched through the burning timber, snapping the heavy beam perfectly in half with an explosive crack. Just as quickly as it had erupted through the floor, the stone pillar retracted back into the earth, leaving a wide, clear path through the flames.
Jerter didn't hesitate. Coughing violently into her sleeve, she scrambled through the opening. She stumbled out the front door and collapsed into the yard into her knees. Immediately she gathered Leasie and Jemsie into a desperate embrace, sobbing into their hair.
"Uncle Zale!" Daria screamed over the deafening roar of the fire, her voice cracking and straining. "We have to get out of here!" She coughed, the smoke invading her lungs and tightening her chest.
But Zale was completely unbothered by her pleas. He stood in the center of the kitchen, his one good eye wide and unseeing, violently thrashing his arms as he commanded the air to fight the phantom enemies only he could see. The air he was controlling, lashing and feeding the flames all around them.
The flames under Daria's trapped leg had finally done their work, eating away at the boards that held her. With one final, agonizing heave, Daria ripped her leg upward, her flesh tearing and sending blood down her ankle.
She tumbled backward, finally free. Her boot was a shredded, smoking mess ruined leather, and her calf was bleeding, chunks taken from her muscle from the wood. But she was loose.
She pulled herself up, putting all her weight on her good leg. She looked at her uncle. If she tried to grab him, he would likely retaliate against her. So, she used the only thing she had left.
Daria raised her uninjured foot high, wincing at the pain of having her weight on her other foot, and slammed it down onto the floorboards with force enough to call the earth,but not enough to break through again..
A thick, solid wall of rock and dirt erupted between him and the rest of the kitchen. Daria threw both of her hands forward, gritting her teeth as she forcefully channeled her element. Like a massive battering ram, the wall surged forward. It slammed into Zale, physically bulldozing him across the kitchen and shoving him out the back door of the cottage, safely depositing him into the dirt outside.
He was out.
Gasping for air, Daria spun around on her good leg, facing the open front door. Safety was just a few feet away. Above her, the burning ceiling let out a deafening groan.
Before Daria could take a single step forward, the main structural supports of the cottage gave way. The roof collapsed in a catastrophic shower of flaming timber and ash, crashing down over the entryway and completely burying the front door in a wall of fire.
Daria stumbled backward into the center of the blazing kitchen. She was trapped. Through the roaring, suffocating inferno, she could barely hear the frantic, terrified screams of her mother and sisters from the yard, screaming her name. The air was so thick, she could barely make a sound anymore. Her vision began to blur and the.moisture.from.her eyes began to dry.
She needed to get out. The blazing wall of collapsed timber and the roofing completely sealed off the front entrance.
She whipped around, her chest heaving as she locked her gaze on the rear of the cottage. The exact path she had just forced Zale down was going to be her escape route. Driven by pure survival instinct, Daria moved with shocking speed for a girl with a shredded and bleeding calf. She limped and scrambled over the broken floorboards, dodging the raining embers as the ceiling continued to give way above her. She held her blustered arms over her head.
She reached the back door, but her own earth wall blocked the exit. The thick, earthen barricade she had used to bulldoze her uncle outside was wedged firmly in the frame.
Without breaking her stride, Daria pulled her right arm back and drove her fist squarely into the center of the wall. With contact, the earth shattered into loose dirt and dust, blowing outward and clearing the way.
Daria stumbled blindly through the threshold, falling forward and crashing hard onto her stomach in the cool, damp grass of the backyard, her arms buried under her.
She rolled onto her side, violently heaving and coughing up thick plumes of black smoke. Every breath burned her lungs like she inhaled glass, but she was out. She had survived.
Trembling with exhaustion, Daria planted her blistered hands in the dirt and forced herself up onto her knees. But as she raised her head, the relief instantly vanished.
Standing right over her was Zale. The blind panic that had consumed him inside the cottage had hardened into something far worse. It was pure, rabid aggression. His chest heaved, and his one visible, bloodshot eye was locked directly onto Daria, burning with a misdirected, murderous fury. His hands twitched, the wind beginning to pick up and push the fire from the burning house toward the tree line.
Daria was completely spent. She didn't have the strength to fight a maddened elemental. She braced herself for the incoming assault.
Then there was a snap. The sharp, crisp sound of small fingers snapping together echoed over the crackle of the flames.
Before Zale could even raise a hand, the air directly behind him fractured. A sudden, terrifyingly silent shockwave of pure, pitch black energy washed over the back of his head. The manic fury in his singular eye was instantly extinguished, replaced by a slow eye roll. The fight left him all at once. His knees buckled, and Zale collapsed face first into the dirt, entirely unconscious.
Daria blinked, her expression confused and her mouth falling open in shock.
Peeking cautiously around the corner of the burning cottage, still a little bit away, was Leasie. She stood completely still, her small hand still raised in the air. Wisps of inky shadows were slowly dissipating from her tiny fingertips, melting harmlessly into the afternoon sunlight. That little girl just dropped a manic, grown man with a single snap of her fingers.
"Leasie..." Daria gasped, her chest heaving as she coughed up another cloud of thick smoke. She slumped back onto her elbows, staring at the tiny girl. "You're a lifesaver, kiddo."
A brief smile broke through the soot on Leasie's face. The terrifying moment passed, and she simply turned on her heel, her little dress, that was burnt and holey now, fluttered as she scurried back around the corner of the burning house to find her mother and Jemsie.
Gritting her teeth because of the immense pain in her leg, Daria forced herself back up. She grabbed Zale by his armpits, and flipped his limp body onto his back. She picked him back up by the pits and began the grueling task of dragging his dead weight through the grass. She put as much distance between them and the roaring inferno as she could.
Around the front of the property, the heat was suffocating, emotionally and physically. Jerter stood frozen in the yard, Jemsie and Leasie clinging tightly to her dress. She didn't blink. Tears streamed down her face. She couldn't look away.
The structural beams of the cottage finally gave out completely. With a horrific groan, the walls folded inward, collapsing into the blazing belly of the kitchen. A massive plume of black smoke and orange sparks rocketed into the setting sky. It was gone. In an instant, the sanctuary she had bled for was reduced to a mountain of glowing embers.
For Jerter, she wasn't just watching a building burn, she was watching her entire life crumble to ash before her eyes. This was the place where she and Sophron had started weaving the delicate, beautiful fabrics of their family. Every square inch of that house held a ghost. The hearth where Sophron used to sit and carve wooden toys. The doorframe in the hall covered in tiny, scratched lines tracking the growth of her children. The floorboards that had been worn smooth by the heavy boots of her boys wrestling and laughing. The first board that Sophron placed to start building the house.
All of it, turning to ash. And she could do nothing to stop it. Nothing to save it.
A crushing weight settled over Jerter's chest, stealing the air from her lungs. The destruction of the cottage was the final, devastating blow in a relentless cascade of loss.
Her husband, the love of her life, was gone for ten years, leaving her with a hollow ache that never truly healed. Then, her sons were stripped from her, destiny calling each of them. Doren, her gentle boy who couldn't hurt a soul, was now branded a monster. Damurah, her eldest and her protector, had abandoned them to go dwell on some pirate dream. Nergal going on his own adventure. And Zale, her brother she never thought she'd see again, had finally returned to her. Only to arrive half dead and inadvertently burn away the last piece of stability she had left in the world.
The universe had taken every single pillar holding her life together and smashed it to dust. To ash.
Jerter's knees finally buckled. She sank slowly into the dirt, her hands covering her mouth as a sob tore its way out of her throat. She had spent the last decade desperately holding the frayed edges of her family together, fighting tooth and nail to keep her children safe. As the fire roared, painting her tear streaked face in a harsh, orange glow, the terrifying reality set in. The Mercer family, her family, was completely shattered, and she had nowhere left to hide them.