Chapter 9: Revenant's Justice

Chapter 9: Revenant's Justice

The cage of golden light erupted around Lyra, searingly hot even to her spectral form. It was holy, pure magic, twisted into a prison by a corrupt will. Above, the spectral musicians warped into shrieking phantoms, their ethereal melodies turning into a cacophonous wail as they dove towards her. The floating security spheres, Jenna’s ever-present eyes, now glowed with crimson intent, their internal mechanisms whirring as they charged energy blasts. The town square of Port Blossom had become Jenna's personal kill box, and Lyra was the only target.

Jenna stood on the grandstand, a queen in her fortress, her face a mask of cold triumph. She had confessed, and in doing so, had seized absolute control. The crowd was a screaming, panicked mob, but they were irrelevant. This was between the builder and the foundation she was trying to destroy.

Lyra braced herself for the impact, for the pain of discorporation. But the first strike didn't come from Jenna's constructs. It came from the side.

A silver-tipped bolt, trailing a whisper of smoke, streaked through the air and slammed into the nearest security sphere. The sphere convulsed, its red light flickering violently before it exploded in a shower of sparks and corrupted magic. A second bolt took out a swooping phantom, which dissolved with a final, agonized screech.

Kaelen Vance dropped from the roof of a nearby bakery, landing in a crouch at the edge of the chaos. His silver tattoos pulsed with a fierce, steady light, and the rune-etched crossbow in his hands was already aimed at the next target. His face was a grim, unreadable mask, but his actions were clear.

“Warden!” Jenna shrieked from the stage, her composure finally cracking with disbelief. “What is the meaning of this? That thing is a necrotic anomaly! Your duty is to decommission it!”

“My duty is to protect the Veil,” Kael called back, his voice cutting through the din as he fired another bolt, shattering a tendril of golden light that was lashing towards Lyra. He sidestepped a blast from another sphere, the energy scorching the cobblestones where he’d just stood. “My mission is to contain the greatest threat to the natural order. Right now, Mayor, that’s you. You’ve turned this entire town into a paracausal time bomb.”

Jenna’s face twisted in fury. “You fool! This is my town! My power!” She thrust her hand forward, and a new threat emerged. From the shadows of the alleyways surrounding the square, dozens of the thorny, chittering Fae creatures poured forth—the same kind that had attacked Lyra and Marcus. They were no longer wild predators; they moved with a directed purpose, their red eyes fixed on Kael. They were Jenna's enforcers, the hired muscle of the Fae pact.

The battle for Port Blossom began. Kael was a whirlwind of deadly efficiency, a silver-and-steel storm against the tide of magic and monsters. He moved with a hunter’s grace, his bolts finding their marks with unerring accuracy. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed small, silver discs to the ground, which flared to life as runic wards, momentarily repelling the skittering Fae. He was one man against an army, but he was an army of one.

His intervention bought Lyra the opening she needed. She slammed her hands against the inside of her magical cage. The pure, holy energy recoiled from her necrotic touch, the golden bars flickering. It was like pushing against a wall of fire, the pain intense, but she focused the cold rage that had been building since she clawed her way out of her grave. With a scream that was part memory and part raw energy, she shattered the cage, sending a shockwave of blue, spectral light pulsing across the square.

She was free, but she was weakening. The effort had cost her dearly. Her form flickered, her edges growing translucent. The pull from the other side, the promise of the Ferryman’s grey shore, was a constant, nagging ache. She could feel her borrowed time, her finite pool of soul energy, draining away like sand through a sieve.

She and Kael fell into a desperate rhythm. He handled the physical threats—the spheres, the Fae—while she battled the purely magical. She became a conduit for her own grief, her spectral blasts tearing through the phantom musicians, her very presence disrupting the flow of energy Jenna was trying to command. They were an impossible alliance: the hunter and the heretic, the Warden and the anomaly, fighting back-to-back to stop a monster they had both, in their own ways, underestimated.

But they were losing. For every Fae Kael decommissioned, two more scurried out of the shadows. For every phantom Lyra dispersed, Jenna’s raw power simply reformed it. The ley lines of the town were a bottomless wellspring, and Jenna held the tap.

“It’s her!” Kael yelled, reloading his crossbow as he kicked a thorny creature away. “The pact focuses the power through her! We can’t win a battle of attrition!”

He was right. Lyra could feel it. The entire town's magical network was a web, and Jenna was the spider at its center. But the web itself… it was anchored by her. Her soul. Her sacrifice. A connection that Jenna was exploiting, but one that might just run both ways.

Her power was Echocognition. She could read the memories and emotions left on things. And right now, she was standing in the middle of a city-wide amplifier, a place supercharged with the raw emotions of thousands of people—first joy, then terror, confusion, and betrayal. All of it conducted through the magical grid that was, fundamentally, a part of her.

She stopped fighting.

She closed her eyes, ignoring Kael’s shouted warning. She let the chaos of the square wash over her. Instead of pushing her energy out, she pulled the town’s energy in. She reached out, not with her hands, but with her soul, grabbing onto the web of power that connected every glowing sigil, every floating lantern, every terrified citizen. And then, through that connection, she pushed the one memory that mattered.

Her final memory.

The entire square went silent. The fighting stopped. The shrieking phantoms froze mid-air. The charging Fae halted, their heads cocked in confusion. Every source of light in the square—the lanterns, the sigils, Jenna’s amulet—flickered and dimmed, then flared with a ghostly, silver-blue light.

And then the show began.

A spectral stage formed in the center of the square. Ghostly images, made of moonlight and memory, flickered to life for all to see. They saw Blackwood Cove, not as it was now, but as it was twenty years ago. They saw a younger, living Lyra, waiting for her friends. They saw Jenna arrive, alone, her face a mask of cold resolve.

The crowd watched, mesmerized and horrified, as the spectral play unfolded. They heard Jenna’s chilling words echo through the square, not in her voice, but in the ghostly whisper of a memory made manifest. “A pact is a pact, Ly… You are the perfect price.”

They saw the obsidian knife. They saw the flash of pain in Lyra’s eyes, the confusion, the ultimate betrayal. They watched as Jenna Thorne, their celebrated mayor, their saviour, drove the blade into her best friend’s back and left her to die on the sand to power their prosperity. The vision ended with the image of Jenna looking down at Lyra’s body, her expression not of regret, but of grim, terrible satisfaction.

The projection faded, leaving a stunned, profound silence. Every citizen in the square turned, their faces filled with horror and revulsion, to stare at the woman on the stage. Her power over them, built on a lie, was shattered.

Jenna’s face was ashen, her mouth agape in a silent scream of disbelief. “No… NO!”

But it was not the judgment of the crowd, or the silver bolt of the Warden, that sealed her fate.

The air in the square grew impossibly cold. The rain, which had been a light drizzle, stopped. Every light, magical and mundane, extinguished, plunging the square into a profound, unnatural darkness, broken only by the faint glow of Kael’s tattoos and Lyra’s flickering form. A presence descended upon them, ancient and vast, smelling of wet earth, decaying leaves, and broken stone.

A shadow detached itself from the deeper shadows, coalescing near the grandstand. It was a form of moonlight and shifting branches, its voice a thought that crushed itself into every mind in the square.

The bargain was for prosperity, quietly bought. You have turned it into a spectacle. You have exposed the hand that feeds. You have attempted to destroy the anchor of the agreement.

Jenna stared at the Fae entity, the patron she had served, her ambition finally crumbling into pure, primal terror. “I… I upheld my end! I paid the price!”

You broke the spirit of the contract, the presence corrected, its thought-voice resonating with the finality of a closing tomb. A debt is now owed.

The shadow surged forward, enveloping the grandstand. It did not touch Lyra or Kael or any of the townsfolk. It had come only for its partner. Jenna Thorne let out one, final, terrified shriek as the darkness took her, a shriek that was cut abruptly short.

When the shadow receded, the grandstand was empty. The amulet Jenna had worn clattered to the wooden planks, its light extinguished. The Fae enforcers dissolved into dust. The magic of the town, its source brutally severed from its wielder, died with a final, mournful sigh.

The price of prosperity had finally been collected.