Thornhill Academy (By Sheridan Hartin) novel Chapter 228

The dark magic sinks into my skin, my blood, my very soul. I can feel it there. The moment it crosses the threshold of my skin, something inside me twists in recognition. The rot doesn’t recoil from my soul; it clings to it. It feeds on it, and I can feel myself feeding back. The pain changes, no longer just agony but hunger, sharp and intoxicating, like something dark has finally found a home. My heart stutters, then pounds harder, faster, drunk on the poison flooding my veins. I can feel the corruption threading through my magic, staining it, whispering promises that scrape along the inside of my skull. Yes. More. Take it all. The wraith arches my back, no longer shrieking in rage but in delight. The sound that tears from it is wrong, high and thrilled, a predator scenting blood after starvation. Shadows coil tighter, caressing my spine, my ribs, my throat. I can feel my sanity fray at the edges, feel the line between grief and ecstasy blur until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. Then-

Cage inhales. It’s shallow, broken… but real. His chest rises under my hand, and the wraith screams again, ecstatic this time, reverent, as if we’ve performed a miracle meant only for monsters. I push myself to my feet slowly, the world tilting, power roaring through me like wildfire soaked in oil. My vision darkens at the edges, veins of shadow creeping into my sight. Cage is alive. And so is the darkness inside

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Emily Good

brilliant! can’t wait for more!

6 days ago

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20:34 Thu, Jan 15

Thornhill Academy

Contain Her

Cassian

:)))

The moment Cage draws breath, the world breaks open. It isn’t gentle. It isn’t quiet. It’s a sharp, ragged inhale that sounds like glass dragged through lungs, and it is immediately drowned out by the scream that rips out of Allison’s wraith as she rises to her feet. The sound is not pain. It’s exhilaration. It’s triumph. It’s hunger finally answered. Cage is alive. Barely. He lies crumpled on the ground where she dropped him, chest rising unevenly, blood and shadow streaking his face in a way that makes my stomach lurch. Half of his features look… wrong. Dark magic has chewed its way through him and left rot behind like a calling card. He doesn’t wake, but his body twitches once, then stills again. Allison does not look at him. She throws her head back and screams, and the wraith screams with her, a sound so thrilled and wrong that the remaining soldiers on the field don’t even try to fight anymore. They run, they beg, and they drop their weapons, while she devours them. Shadow lashes outward in violent arcs, tearing through bodies, swallowing magic mid-cast, ripping the battlefield apart as if the world itself has offended her. Trees splinter. Earth cracks. Soldiers are flung through the air like broken toys, their deaths fast and brutal and utterly indiscriminate. She is not choosing targets anymore. She is choosing sensation. I force myself to

breathe. Once. Twice. Then I reach for her mind.

It is chaos. There is no structure left, no clean pathways, no careful mental architecture the way there used to be. Her thoughts are fractured into violent flashes of sensation, hunger, grief, ecstasy. The dark magic coils through her consciousness like a living thing, whispering, urging, feeding. I nearly lose my footing as the mental backlash hits me.

“Cassian-” someone shouts, but I ignore it.

I push deeper. Allison, I call, not with words but with memory, with presence, with the shape of myself the way she knows it. The wraith snarls. I feel it turn inward, bristling, suspicious, shadows tightening like a fist around something precious. I don’t fight it. I continue to search until I find it there, faint but unmistakable, I find sparks. Tiny fragments of her. Flickers of warmth buried beneath the corruption. Her laugh in the kitchen at Thornhill. The way she curls into Kael’s chest when she’s exhausted. Evander’s hand steady on her back during strategy meetings. The soft hum she makes when she’s half-asleep and safe. I latch onto those sparks like lifelines.