Shadows Over Arcadia Chapter 70: 69. Welcome Home Wrath

Read chapter 70 of Shadows Over Arcadia by Zacheas on NovelPedia.

I am Ren Drakemore, and I am excited to meet my newest shadow, Wrath. https://shadowsoverarcadia.com/api/storage/objects/uploads/51f2eb33-199c-4126-a5b5-1bea5c8fc16a I don’t remember doing it. I'd been standing at the head of a grand ballroom in Lord Estus’ manor, confidently explaining my plan for his lands to a crowd of his skeptical retainers. I could see the doubt in their eyes—it always started like that. Sure, they’d heard how I’d helped other domains, but they always struggled to take instruction from someone my age. Which was fine. I’d show them like I did the others. Earn their respect, and their debt. I was mid-sentence, asking for their trust, when it hit. “And for those who still doubt me—” I can’t believe those were the last words I said before I lost control. Before I destroyed everything and sent everyone fleeing for their lives. I saw none of it. I only remember the searing pain—like butting heads with a horned rabbit—and then the violent, unrelenting torrent of someone else’s memories surging into my mind. No warning. No preparation. Just Yukiha’s raw, unfiltered pain, anger, and hatred. All of it bypassing my usual mental defenses, exploiting the open connection with my soul fragments. All the chaotic thoughts and experiences of a confused little girl threatened to force my own thoughts out. The world around me blinked away, replaced by unfamiliar places and people flickering past like pages of a book riffling in a spin-storm. Everything sat too low—wrong—and for a strange moment I couldn’t even remember my own name. I had only just managed to recall I was Ren Drakemore, not a traumatized foxkin girl, when I found myself surrounded by foxkin—young and old—furious faces I’d never seen before, and yet all of them felt familiar. They closed in, eyes burning with rage, shouting and cursing in a language I couldn't understand. But I could feel the way they hated me. They wanted me dead. I reacted on blind instinct—terrified, and burning with someone else’s fury—and blasted them away from me with a wall of fire. They slid back only a meter or so, barely held at bay, their flesh burning off to bleached bone as they continued clawing to reach me. Sharp-toothed skulls with hollow pits for eyes screamed on, only more enraged; their screeches haunting. Undaunted by what should have ended them, they surged against the barrier, snapping jaws and razor claws desperate for my flesh. I screamed in pain and exertion. The flames around me burned blue, and with a final push they burst outward from me. The shockwave shattered the rogue aspects and drove the memories they were born from deep into the inner recesses of my mind—locked in a box, secured away where I could control them. By the time I regained control, I found myself breathing hard and sweating profusely in the middle of a flaming crater that had once been the east wing of the lord’s manor. I looked around in horror at the fearful faces of people burned by my flames and gouged by shrapnel that had been launched in the blast. I didn’t mean to! I didn’t want this! I never meant to hurt them. I thought that fight was only in my head. But the devastation around me proved I’d cast it into the real world as well. The face of one maid—bleeding from the head, scrambling back from me with raw terror in her eyes—made my heart drop. I had been reckless. I should have been more careful. No amount of sorries was enough. I rub my temple, frustration rising at the memory of the previous morning. My head is still throbbing as I work through these new memories, like the hammering of a very tiny, very persistent blacksmith on the inside of my skull. Yesterday I was furious with Shadow, Maribel, and Wrath. They could have warned me. They could have helped me avoid destroying a noble’s home and terrifying the retainers of the lord I was trying to win over. I had to work throughout the day and well into the night just to heal those I'd hurt and repair the damage I’d done. In the end, Estu