It grows warm. Then hot. Before it can scald my hand, I launch back my arm and hurl the kernel into the air like a major league pitcher. Despite its small size, the grain shoots into the sky, propelled by something other than the force of my throw.

It grows and grows, brighter and stronger, but farther away.

Even farther.

Not flying, but floating. Rising on some magical helium. Then it explodes in blinding light.

I tear my eyes away. Roaring fills my ears. My skin blisters under the instant heat, but then the heat levels out.

I blink away momentary blindness. A blanket of silence fills the castle. The tar shrinks back and sizzles into nothingness when it crosses the water of the moat. The black forest withers like overcooked asparagus and every last nightbeast lies dead.

Stranna shoves the carcass of the chimera off her. Luc’s stingray lies on the ground like a discarded blanket. Every child and parent stands, shielding their eyes and looking up at something that has been denied us all since the very beginning of this virus. Something that not even nightmares could quench.

Sunlight.

In the sky, bright and golden and with the warmth of summer, shines a perfect golden sun.

Luc bolts. Through the veil of the Nightmare’s edge, across the wheat field, back toward the coliseum.

“Oh no you don’t.”

I sprint down the stairs of the castle wall and leap from the fifth stair onto the back of my rhino. He stands there like he was waiting for this moment. With nothing more than a nudge, he lumbers through the broken gate, over the pile of dead bison, and after Luc.

“Cain, no!” Stranna yells from the wall. “Leave him be!”

I don’t know what I plan to do, but I can’t just let him run back to his place of power—even if the sun did obliterate his nightbeasts. He’ll recover somehow. And then he’ll be back.

I gain on him. He glances over his shoulder, spots me, and pivots to a stop, drawing his gladius.

“You really want to do this, Cain?” he shouts. “Against me?”

Good question.

He’s in the blackened wheat field, but it’s clear that this is his territory. Though he has to try twice, he manages to call up enough nightmist to cover himself in Roman armor and line his belt with fresh weapons.

He throws a single dagger, and it plants itself in the head of my charging rhinoceros. The rhino’s front knees buckle, and I go flying into the blackened stalks of wheat.

Luc darts forward. I gain my feet in time to dodge his first strike. With that single move, I know I’m beat. He’s as good at swordplay and noxior fighting as he is at creating from nightmist. Go figure.

“You think you can defeat me in my own world?” he growls.

“Seems like we did just that,” I return, using snark as my weapon even though that will only incense him. “Not all of it is your father’s creation. God has the last say. You can’t keep Him out.”

“God is a figment of imagination.”

I contradict him. “God is the source of imagination.” I gesture to the wheat field. “Who do you think put this here?”

He grinds his boot into the earth, sending up little puffs of ash. “It doesn’t matter who made it. What matters is who has the power to destroy it.” He lunges. I brace myself, then duck and tackle. I miss, sprawling on the ashy ground.

“Cain!” Stranna’s voice is unexpected and fairly close.

“No!” I want to shout. She followed me, and now she’ll get herself killed.

I flip to my back just as Luc plunges the blade. It pierces the dirt, but he redirects within seconds, swiping at my neck. I throw up my arm, and the blade glances off my forearm with a sharp cut. Blood spills from the wound, but numbed by survival instinct, I hardly feel it.

I scramble for my feet, feeling the threat of his blade at my back and the gaping weakness of being unarmed. Why did I follow him? Did I think we’d stop and have some sort of heart-to-heart?

I manage to stand, but Luc gives me no ground.

Advance. Cut. Advance. Swipe.

Stranna calls my name again, and I vaguely register that she’s not alone. Erik and many of the parents from Ithebego came with her. I pray I can dodge Luc long enough for one of them to cut him down.

But when they reach the veil between Castle Ithebego and the wheat field, it has reformed enough under the sunlight that it doesn’t open to let them pass through. It seals itself, despite the shreds and tears from Luc’s attack.

Stranna pounds against it like glass. I can hear her, but she can’t come through. None of them can.

Something tells me I can’t get back through to them either.

I stop my retreat, tired and gasping for breath. My arm bleeding and stinging more by the minute. Luc’s grin touches on the maniacal. He knows this was a foolish battle, and he’s determined to claim at least one victory.

“This time, you’ll stay dead.” He lifts his sword, and for the first time I see three colors in the blade instead of just metal and nightmist. There’s light in the blade too. Light from the wheat field.

And somehow I know that this blade will truly kill me. There will be no waking up in the Real World.

He swings down and I tense for impact.

Clang. Metal on metal.

An Adelphoi sword. I spin expecting to find Stranna behind me, but she’s still trapped on the other side of the veil. What I do see is a mysterious new sheath at my belt.

This Adelphoi sword is mine. And it blocked the blow.

Luc snorts. “Look at you. Spore to the core.”

I reach for the pommel of my sword, but it evades me, driving Luc back. He swings at it, it parries. He cuts, it blocks. This hardly seems like a fair fight. I’m not even in it.

Then I realize my sword is driving Luc around and toward me. He stumbles a few steps back, getting closer. Closer. I search my belt for a dagger or something to end this, but there’s nothing. I’m relieved. I don’t want to stab anyone in the back.

But the magical Adelphoi sword is making it easy for me. I waver briefly. If it’s driving Luc right into my grasp, is that a sign? Some sort of divine permission to take his life?

Luc angles his body, trying to distance himself from me, but the Adelphoi sword is too efficient. Two more steps, and Luc’s life will be in my hands.

He draws another dagger from his belt and swipes it at me. The Adelphoi sword knocks it from his fingers, and there it sits, at my feet.

I bend to pick it up, but the airborne Adelphoi sword swoops down and places its own hilt in my outstretched hand. This time, it doesn’t burn.