Sera's POV
How do I know what you feel is real?
The words hang in the air between us. Caspian looks like I just stabbed him through the heart.
Sera he starts.
The monastery alarms explode with sound.
Red light flashes across the walls. Lyric curses. Mortal signatures. Lots of them. Webb's team is here!
We don't have time to finish this conversation. Don't have time for me to take back the horrible thing I just said. Caspian's face closes off professional, cold and he's running toward the armory.
Can you fight? Lyric asks me, clutching her wounded shoulder.
I don't have a choice, I say.
We race to the monastery courtyard. Through the gates, I see them coming at least fifteen men in tactical gear, carrying weapons that glow with unnatural light. Not divine light like mine. Something darker. Corrupted.
The lead man raises a megaphone. Seraphine! Marcus Webb sends his regards! Surrender now and we'll make this painless!
How about you leave and keep your lives? I shout back.
He laughs. The hard way it is. Boys, take her alive if possible. Dead if necessary.
They attack.
The gates explode inward. Mercenaries pour through the opening like ants. Bullets fly regular ones and glowing ones that hiss with magic.
Instinct takes over. I throw my hands up and a barrier of solid light materializes. The bullets hit it and bounce off harmlessly, tinkling to the ground like rain.
Nice! Lyric yells. Keep that up!
Caspian appears with weapons a sword for himself, a staff crackling with magic for Lyric. He doesn't look at me. The distance between us feels like miles.
Three mercenaries break through on the left. Caspian engages them immediately, his sword moving in precise strikes. He's trained for this. Every movement is controlled, lethal.
Lyric takes two more on the right, using her staff to create illusions copies of herself that confuse the attackers.
That leaves five charging straight at me.
Come on, goddess, one taunts. Show us what you've got!
I let the barrier drop and release the power I've been holding. Light explodes from my hands in a concentrated beam. It hits the first mercenary square in the chest and sends him flying twenty feet backward. He crashes into the monastery wall and doesn't move.
The second one fires an energy weapon. Some kind of plasma gun that shoots purple fire. I dodge left barely and the blast scorches the ground where I was standing.
I grab the energy with my bare hands.
It burns. Hurts like touching fire. But I remember Caspian's training: You can absorb energy. Transform it. Send it back.
I pull the plasma into myself, feel it mixing with my light, and throw it back doubled.
The mercenary screams as his own weapon's energy slams into him. He goes down hard.
Three left charging me.
The third pulls out a net I see the divine symbols woven into it and panic. Those symbols suppress power. If that net touches me, I'm helpless.
He throws it. The net expands in midair like a living thing, reaching for me
I blast it with pure light before it can make contact. The symbols burn away and the net disintegrates.
She's too strong! one mercenary yells into his radio. Send backup!
The fourth rushes me with a glowing blade. Divine metal. The kind that can cut through magic like butter.
I create a sword of solid light in my hand. Our blades clash with a sound like breaking glass. He's strong, trained, but I have something he doesn't desperation.
I push power into my light-sword and it flares brighter, hotter. His blade melts. He drops it with a yelp and I hit him with a blast of force that knocks him unconscious.
The fifth mercenary the smart one doesn't attack directly. He pulls out a device and presses a button.
What's that? I demand.
He grins. Tracker. Webb knows exactly where you are now. He's coming with the real army. This was just the test run.
Then he bites down on something in his mouth a suicide pill? And collapses.
No! I run to him but he's already dead. Foam at his lips. Eyes blank.
Caspian appears beside me, breathing hard, covered in cuts. What happened?
He activated a tracker, I say, horrified. Then killed himself.
Caspian curses viciously. He looks around the courtyard. Bodies everywhere some unconscious, some dead, all wearing Webb's insignia.
Lyric limps over, her illusions faded. We won. But it's a hollow victory.
This was a scouting mission, Caspian says grimly. They tested our defenses. Measured our power. And now Webb knows exactly what we can do.
How long before he comes back? I ask.
Caspian checks the dead mercenary's equipment. This tracker is military grade. Webb will have received detailed combat data our positions, our abilities, our weaknesses. He stands, face pale. We have hours. Maybe less.
Then we run, Lyric says. We leave now, find somewhere new
There is nowhere, Caspian interrupts. Webb has resources. Technology. He'll track us wherever we go. And the gods... He looks at me. After what happened with Selene, they'll be watching every move we make. We're trapped.
The weight of it crashes down on me. Trapped between mortal greed and divine vengeance. No escape. No safe haven.
Then we fight, I say. We stay here and fight.
Against an army? Caspian looks at me like I'm crazy. Sera, we barely survived fifteen mercenaries. Webb will bring a hundred. With better weapons. Better training.
Then we get better too, I say fiercely. We prepare. We set traps. We use every advantage we have.
We have maybe six hours! Caspian argues.
Then we work fast!
We stare at each other. The unfinished conversation hangs between us like a ghost.
Fine, Caspian says finally. We prepare for war. But Sera, if this goes bad if Webb breaches our defenses you run. Promise me.
I'm not leaving you to die, I say.
Promise me! His voice cracks. I can't watch another person I care about sacrifice themselves for me. Please.
The pain in his eyes breaks me. Okay, I whisper. I promise.
It's a lie. We both know it.
The next four hours are chaos. Caspian and Lyric set magical traps around the monastery perimeter. I practice channeling maximum power without losing control. We fortify the walls, create emergency escape routes, and stockpile weapons.
As dawn approaches, Caspian pulls me aside.
About what you said earlier, he begins quietly. About not knowing if my feelings are real.
Caspian, I'm sorry
No. You deserved an answer. He takes my hands. I've asked myself that question a thousand times. Is this Konstantin's magic? Am I just a puppet dancing to a dead man's strings? And honestly, I don't know. Maybe there's magic influencing me. Maybe not.
Then how can you be sure? I ask.
Because, Caspian says simply, magic can make you obsessed. It can make you loyal. But it can't make you understand someone. It can't make you laugh at their jokes or appreciate the way they scrunch their nose when they're thinking. It can't make you proud when they succeed or terrified when they're hurt. Those things they're mine. Real. Whatever else is true, what I feel for you is real.
Tears burn my eyes. I shouldn't have doubted you.
Yes, you should, Caspian says. You should question everything. That's what makes you. He touches my face gently. When this is over if we survive ask me again. I'll spend the rest of my life proving it's real.
Before I can respond, Lyric's voice cuts through: They're here!
We run to the walls and look down.
An army of mercenaries surrounds the monastery. Fifty. Maybe sixty. All armed with advanced weapons and divine-suppressing technology.
And at the front, in an expensive suit, stands Marcus Webb. He raises a megaphone.
Final chance, goddess! he calls. Surrender now or we tear this place apart stone by stone!
I look at Caspian. At Lyric. At the impossible odds.
What do we do? Lyric whispers.
Before anyone can answer, the ground beneath us shakes. Not from the mercenaries. From something else.
The monastery floor cracks. Light pours through the cracks not my light. Something older. Ancient.
What's happening? I gasp.
Caspian's eyes widen in horror. The monastery. It's built on a divine nexus. All this fighting, all this power we've been using we've been feeding energy into it. Waking it up.
Waking what up? I demand.
The cracks spread. The light grows brighter.
And from deep beneath the monastery, something massive starts to rise.
A voice booms from underground ancient, powerful, furious:
WHO DARES DISTURB MY SLUMBER?
Webb's mercenaries scatter in panic.
We stare in horror as the monastery floor splits completely open.
And something emerges. Something that was sealed here thousands of years ago by gods who hoped it would never wake.
Lyric's face goes white. Oh no. Oh no, no, no. That's
What? I scream. What is it?
A Titan, Lyric breathes. We just woke up a Titan.
The creature that rises from the ground is massive thirty feet tall, made of living stone and ancient fury. Its eyes glow with power that makes even my goddess-light look like a candle.
It looks at us. At Webb's army. At the monastery.
And roars loud enough to shake the mountains.
RUN, Caspian gasps.
But there's nowhere to run.
The Titan has woken.
And it's very, very angry.