Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,162

cold at the sight of them. Their eyes were not black, and yet…

What’s happening here? She tried to block out the echoes of screams tumbling down the road. What is this place?

My sight through your mind is dim just now, but if I see correctly, it is a world called Sath, the Prophet said, their voice so distant that it frightened Eliana. I recognize it. I have seen it myself. When your mother died, the shock resounded through the Deep. Holes opened into many worlds. Some angels lost faith in Kalmaroth long ago and have no desire to return to Avitas. They are making homes elsewhere.

Eliana’s bile rose. Why would any of them wait in the Deep to return to Avitas, then? When they could go to other worlds and escape the Deep’s torment?

The Prophet’s voice came quietly. Because Corien is a force unmatched, and has ingrained in so many angels a thirst for vengeance that cannot be slaked. Because some angels would endure a thousand more years of torment if it meant they could someday come home. A pause. Others despair at the devastating futility of war and want to protect humans from extermination. There are many reasons.

Eliana felt trapped between a great sorrow and an anger pure as ice. Is there no end to the ruin my mother has wrought?

Eliana, you must hurry. Do not allow the Deep to distract you. Remember what you must do.

She obeyed. A dim blue-white glow on the horizon caught her eye. She fixed on it and ran, her feet slamming hard against the road that wasn’t there. As the world of distant Sath sped by, darkness flashed and fluttered at the corners of her eyes: the true Deep, cold and endless, choked with beasts and raw power. The sky was teeming with cruciata, close enough now that Eliana’s tongue tingled with the hot rank stench of their massive bodies. Wings fluttered against her skin; something sharp and thin cut her upper arm. As she ran, she felt the air surge behind her. If she looked back, she knew she would see horrors swarming fast on her heels.

The beasts had been waiting for her. They were ready.

So was she.

Ignoring the dark brimming sky, she kept her gaze on Ostia, its light growing brighter and nearer as she ran, until at last she reached the fissure she had made—a jagged glowing cut through the Deep, and into Avitas.

Eliana went to its sizzling edge and sank carefully to her knees. Her original small cut had expanded to an area some sixty yards square. Shocks of light and color bloomed across it. Beyond and below rippled the faint shapes of Elysium.

Eliana’s pulse beat fast in her throat. She unfocused her eyes and let the empirium wash over her. Waves of gold, surging at her fingers. She could see how thin the fabric of the Deep had become within Ostia’s jagged ring. Only a thin membrane of power remained. A brittle pane of glass, ready to be shattered.

She pressed her toes against the hard road beneath her and believed it was real. She said a silent prayer that this would be enough. She gathered her power into her mind, imagined it as spears, sharp and ready.

Then she plunged her hands into Ostia’s bright edge and let her power explode across it. White light crackled against her fingers and snaked up her arms, as if she were elbow-deep in frothing water. Her castings blazed so hot that her instinct was to rip them off, but she gritted her teeth and kept pushing her hands outward, the pain shooting up her arms so specific and supple that it approached pleasure. Her vision lost all colors but gold.

Then, at last, the fabric of the Deep stretching thinly across Ostia’s mouth gave way.

There was a great hot shudder beneath her hands as of a beast heaving its last breath. A bolt of energy shot up through Eliana’s arms, and she fell back onto the road, gasping. Quickly, she braced her palms against the illusion of stone. She had to keep hold of the lie, for the thing happening before her eyes was so unthinkable that her head spun in protest.

Ostia had been opened. Angry light crackled across its mouth. It had at last become what Eliana had hoped for from that first moment when she awoke in her white rooms and thought of carving a door in the sky.

Her mother had opened the Gate.

And she had opened Ostia. A hole in