As the mountainside grows closer, so do the trembles beneath our feet. The umbra are closing in. I swear I feel their icy breath at my back, smell the stench of blood and rotting earth. The first time I saw an umbra, it had broken into our barn to slaughter the cows. I thought the commotion was a thief, desperate for food during such trying times. I was foolish enough to grab a pitchfork and make way for the barn, only to meet a creature of nightmares. My father, brave and selfless, came running when he heard my screams. It should have been me that died that night. Perhaps they’ve finally come to finish the job.

When we reach the castle, the remains are a sad skeleton of what once must have been great. The castle is in shambles, broken archways, caved in steps, and withered vines. Doorways and walls are shattered, prompting us into a maze. Someone screams. I look behind, realizing we are missing one. Then a claw comes from the ceiling, grabbing another to disappear among the shadows. They’re picking us off one by one.

Our group of once eighteen has dwindled to twelve, then eleven when I watch in horror as a spear-like tail impales Byles’ gut. I reach for his hand that slips away when he’s dragged above to a hole in the ceiling where an umbra catches him in its jaws.

There is no time to mourn. We fight and we move. That is the only way to survive the apocalypse.

Briny shifts through her books while calling orders. She speaks of a doorway, of old, unreadable magical text. Another umbra breaks through the wall, dragging a screaming ally away, leaving a bloody trail in his wake.

“There!” Meesha points to the top of a doorway, withered from the elements, but there is strange text barely discernible among the stone. With umbra skittering above and behind, we have little else to do but run for it.

“Aster, bring the ceiling down!” Elion commands.

I lag behind, waiting for everyone to pass through the doorway before I send a bolt of lightning above. The ceiling groans, debris falling over my head then collapsing in front of the entrance, bathing us in darkness. Meesha casts fire in her open palm, revealing a cramped tunnel that leads further below. Briny keeps ahead, with Elion and I carrying the rear. But then Briny screams. Ahead of her, barring the staircase, are at least five umbra. They wait, as if daring us to step forward. Behind us, I hear the clatter of rubble. They’ve broken through, or they’re about to.

“This tunnel is too narrow. We could bring the whole thing down on top of us,” Elion whispers when he sees the mana growing in my fists.

“If we do nothing, we die anyway. I rather go out fighting, what about you?”

Elion’s gaze drifts to Briny, shivering at the front with a protective hand resting over her stomach. He nods, then rushes forward.

The next moments are of chaos and blood, waves of fire, shocks of lightning, howling beasts, and taloned claws. My nerves fire off like kindling in a fire pit. Then my arms twitch and spasm in the same manner, burning with the mana coursing through me, turning my vision blurry, causing my hands to ache, making it hard to breathe. I taste blood on my lips, copper mixed with rot. Umbra fall into crumbled heaps of broken bone, but they take even more of us with them.

Meesha lies dead at my feet, mouth agape in a silent scream. There are too many umbra, more than I’ve ever seen together at once. Were they always waiting here, expecting some idiots that would make a delightful meal? We’re easy picking, fish in a barrel.

“Elion! No, no, no, Elion!” Briny screams.

She lays over Elion’s corpse, his face unrecognizable. Her side drips red from a gash clear across her torso. I rush for her, dodging swiping claws and falling wreckage, to drag her away. There’s only the two of us tumbling down the ruined steps in the dark. Screams continue behind, the last of our companions being torn to shreds.

“Leave me,” Briny wheezes. Her warm blood is sticky on my hand.

“Not a chance,” I grunt. “We’re almost there. We’re going to finish what we started.”

She gives a cold laugh. “I envy humans.”

“Why?”

“You can lie,” she whispers, her breathing slow against the nape of my neck. “Lie to me, Aster. Tell me Elion is alive, that we’ll be ok, and that I didn’t lead everyone to their deaths.”

I hesitate, capable of lying but not wanting to.

“Tell me,” she croaks. I see nothing in the dark, but I hear the blood filling her throat, gurgled with every breath.

“Elion is alive. We’ll be ok. This isn’t your fault,” I whisper.

Briny goes limp, gone with a slow sigh. Dead. All of them. The umbra feast on their flesh, the sounds reverberating in the tunnel, as are their footsteps growing closer. One is here to take me too. The pain within me is not dull, it screams and itches. I wish to sleep, to lie and forget this pain, to disappear.

But I can’t. I won’t. This mission isn’t over so long as one of us is still breathing. One person ended the world, so why can’t one person save it?

I twist on my heel, lightning crackling in my open palms. The umbra behind me growls. Lightning shoots through the corridor, bringing down the tunnel. The flurry of wind from the impact sends me falling down more steps that crack at least one of my ribs. But I get up. I walk until I reach a wide cavern of ankle high water, black as the evening sky. At the center of the room there is a hovering somber purple light, a weak flame; the Glimmer. Nothing like what Briny described, much like the castle itself, the Glimmer is the skeletal remains of what once was.

The atmosphere here is like nothing I’ve ever felt. Magic is pure, so why does this leave my skin crawling, as if it taints the very air? The Glimmer hums like a quiet heartbeat, fluttering above in a chasm the size of a city.

“I have little to give,” I say as I approach the foreboding light with no idea what to do now that I am alone. “I can only offer all that I am, all that I have. Take my life, take my soul, whatever you want, whatever you need. Take it all. Give everyone another chance, please.”

When I reach for the Glimmer, the flames do not burn. They are cold like I’ve never believed, creeping under my skin. My veins glow violent purple beneath skin that cracks like parched earth. The mana within me is ripped away. The Glimmer brightens until it’s blinding. The pain comes over me in waves, each worse than the last. I wish to scream, to cry, to claw out of my skin, but I’m frozen in place, watching as the Glimmer grows until it overwhelms me.

If there is a chance my death can restore the world, then for the first time I welcome it with open arms.