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AMALIA

Istand at the heart of the Opal Court’s death as the ley line continues to pour through me, raw and inexhaustible, stripping the last rigid shapes from a realm that has been calcifying for centuries.

Its final structures fail around me, pillars fracturing, corridors collapsing, crystal tearing itself apart under the strain of its prolonged existence.

I open myself further, widening the channel until my bones ring with power and my blood runs too thin to contain it. The court responds, not by stabilizing, not by reforming, but by loosening. Crystal walls lose cohesion, unraveling into motes of Opal light. They drift upward, the last breath escaping a dying body.

Relief ripples through the structure.

The scream fades.

In my palm, the small portal ripples as ley line magic streams through it and into me, power meant for creation. Power the fae had cut away from their world. The ancient magic woven into this realm recoils under the influx, its long-hoarded energy unraveling, stripped of form and authority as it returns to its most basic state.

“No,” Keleros snarls, staggering as the magic he stole begins to slip from his grasp. The Opal within him spasms as he tries to anchor himself, to hold shape. “You’re dissolving it!”

His hands slam into the floor, fingers digging into crystal now deaf to his commands. It fractures at his touch and breaks down, luminous dust seeping through his clenched fists.

“This court was never meant to endure like this.” I hold firm. “It’s been choking on its own immortality.”

The ley line surges again, tearing through me and into the court’s foundations. Entire sections simply cease, not exploding, not collapsing, but unthreading. The magic once defining halls and thrones sheds its architecture, reverting to pure, undifferentiated energy, unstable enough to bleed into the surrounding realms if left unchecked.

I reach for it, gathering the particles of crystal, pulling them away from the fissures in reality. I seal those access ways shut, protecting the fae world as I draw the Opal magic through myself and return it to the ley lines.

Kelaros lunges for me, wild now, stripped of everything but desperation. “Stop! If it dies like this, there will be nothing left for me to rule!”

The court throws up crystal spikes between us, but they disintegrate before they can strike, too unstable to hold form. The court is past obedience. Past Kings.

Past survival.

I keep the channel open as the last intact structures around us come apart, their magic peeling away layer by layer, shedding identity, shedding memory. What was once fae-made and court-bound pours back into the deeper currents of creation, where it belongs.

Kelaros screams as the power he consumed is ripped loose, stripped of resonance and authority. “You can’t do this! You’re destroying everything!”

“That’s the point.”

Kelaros lunges for a pillar to steady himself, but it crumbles beneath his touch, and he screams in rage. “I command you to stop!”

I laugh, the sound rippling through the disintegrating realm. “How many deaths have you survived, Kelaros? Do you not wonder what comes next?”

He blanches. “You’re crazy.”

“I should have died so many times, but it never sticks.” I surrender more of the disintegrating court to the ley line. “Perhaps it will this time.”

The floor buckles, crystal plates grinding past one another with tectonic force. Kelaros loses his footing, sprawling across the jagged surface. Blood seeps from cuts across his body, red and mortal.

“Why do Dark fae bleed like humans?” I ask, curious in the end.

Kelaros’s lips peel back in a snarl. “How dare you.”

“No matter.”

A massive crystal vein the width of a tree trunk tears free from the ceiling with a deafening crack. Kelaros jerks his head up, realization striking a heartbeat before the crystal does. His scream cuts short as it crushes him, his body disappearing beneath an avalanche of shimmering debris.

No satisfaction comes with his death. His betrayals and cruelty seem insignificant now, swallowed by the magnitude of what unfolds around me.

My blood tattoo burns, the sigil flaring with purple light as it struggles to repel the other magics raging through me.

I sense Elionn, Caelan, and Theron. My berry-sweet Silver Fae. The moment of regret burns away. There will be no escaping this destruction.