Contents
Fed on Death
Overview
Imprisoned by Lark’s restraints, Isla endures days underground and realizes her true power feeds on death, absorbing others’ flairs. Accepting that she likely killed her parents and Aurora, she draws on Ferrar’s stolen craft to break her bracelets and erupts from her pit, escaping with overwhelming force.
This revelation reframes Isla’s past and arms her with a formidable, integrated power set that directly counters Lark’s control.
Summary
Isla, bound by Lark’s custom bracelets, bleeds and weakens in an underground cavern while bloodless guards force food and water on her. Cut off from Grim and Oro by the restraints and depth, she repeatedly fails to signal them and fears what Lark plans as storm season wanes.
Alone with her thoughts, Isla revisits prophecies, past kills, and the growing surge she has felt after taking lives. She deduces that her true power is to feed on death—absorbing the flairs of those she kills—explaining her escalating strength and suggesting she, not her guardians’ enemies, killed her parents and Aurora.
Seizing on Ferrar’s last words, Isla realizes she carries his craft as well. She focuses on the blacksmith’s failsafes and technique, channeling every ability she has taken through the skyre. The metal at her wrists fractures as the cavern begins to collapse.
Unleashing fully, Isla tears the earth open. The ground splits to daylight, debris rains down, and the bracelets fall as twisted scraps. Standing at the center of a mile-deep crater, she vows that Lark will regret not burying her deeper and emerges empowered and free.
Who Appears
- IslaCaptive protagonist; realizes she feeds on death and has stolen flairs; breaks Lark’s bracelets and escapes.
- LarkOffstage captor; had Isla bound with custom bracelets and uses bloodless guards to control her.
- FerrarDead blacksmith whose power Isla has taken; his failsafes and craft let her shatter the restraints.
- Bloodless guardMindless resurrected soldier who force-feeds Isla; demonstrates Lark’s weakened resurrections here.
- GrimAbsent ally Isla tries to reach via bond; cannot sense her due to restraints and depth.
- OroAbsent ally Isla worries about; also unreachable while she is imprisoned underground.