The explosion didn't sound like a bomb. It sounded like a gasp.
A white shockwave of raw mana and pulverised bone burst outwards from the point of impact. It wasn't hot. It was cold, the particular cold of something leaving its body.
I was thrown backwards. The blast snapped both my forearms and flung me across the sky like a rag doll, tumbling end over end through grey cloud, black dreadnoughts, purple haze.
I slammed into the thick upper air and skidded to a stop kilometres away.
My hands were empty.
No. Not empty.
I looked down. My fingers were still locked, a dead man's grip, around a hilt wrapped in burnt bone. Above the guard there was nothing. No edge. No body. Just a jagged, molten stump that glowed a dying orange.
"Valeria," I said. It tasted like ash.
The air in front of me shimmered.
