Page 82 of Roaring Spell

The clearing around me is unrecognizable. Trees thrown back. The earth torn open in furrows. Valesh’s people—scattered, down, some moving and some not.

The siphon still stands. Damaged. Cracked. Its light is ugly and unstable, the activation sequence stalled somewhere in the middle.

Not finished.

Not finished.

I push myself to my feet. Look for Torin.

He’s not there.

The clearing is empty of him. The wild magic surge must have thrown him—through the trees, back the way we came, somewhere in the dark tangle of the Overgrowth. I can’t see him. Can’t hear him through the ringing.

Can’t feel him.

Torin.

Valesh is still on her feet. She took the position closest to the siphon when it erupted; it shielded her from the worst of the backlash. Her expression has shifted—the cold triumph is gone, replaced by something harder. Calculating.

She reaches into her coat.

I see the knife.

And I understand, a moment too late, that she has more than one way to finish this.

SIXTEEN

TORIN

The Overgrowth tears itself apart. Trees uproot with screams of splintering wood. The ground splits, chasms opening like hungry mouths. Reality bends in ways that make no physical sense—space folding, distances changing, the very air becoming thick and hostile.

A wall of chaotic energy slams between us like a physical barrier.

“Sakura!”

Her name rips from my throat as I’m thrown backward, crashing through undergrowth that scratches and tears at my skin. Branches whip my face. Thorns score my arms. The world becomes a chaos of motion and pain and blinding light.

When I stop moving—when the spinning finally settles and I can breathe again—she’s gone.

Minutes. Maybe five. Maybe ten. Long enough for the wild magic to reshape the forest entirely.

The clearing is gone. The siphon, Valesh, the battle—all swallowed by the wild magic that’s decided to reshape the forest according to its own incomprehensible logic. Where there was open space, now there’s only twisted trees and impenetrable darkness and the eerie silence of a forest holding its breath.

I’m alone.

My bear rises with a fury I’ve never felt. Not anger—terror. He’s lost her in the dark and has exactly one idea what to do about it.

Find her.

The command isn’t a suggestion. It’s not a thought I consciously form. It’s instinct, blood-deep and absolute—the only imperative that exists.

I shift.

The transformation is violent—faster than I’ve ever changed, bones cracking and reforming with brutal efficiency. Pain becomes irrelevant. Time becomes irrelevant. Everything that isn’t finding her becomes irrelevant.

In bear form, I crash through the Overgrowth.

The forest fights me. Branches whip at my face. Roots rise from the earth to trip me. The wild magic twists the paths, sends me in circles, tries to keep me lost in its chaotic embrace.