Chapter 25 Vessel Unleashed

• We emerged from the ritual chamber into a stronghold transformed by fire.
• The courtyard beyond the main hall had become a battleground entirely its own, coven witches and shadow constructs pressing hard against the last organized resistance Blackthorn had left to offer. Riven moved beside me now with a speed that hadn't existed in him before the ritual, silver-white light threading faint beneath his skin every time he struck, and I understood we'd become something neither of us fully recognized yet.
• "Together," he said, voice carrying an authority that had always been there but now seemed to hum with something more. "However this ends."