The world lurches—blurs—and the forest melts away.
Stone walls close in. Chains rattle somewhere in the dark. My mother lies there, sprawled on a bed caked in grime and blood, her body exposed, shattered in every way. A strangled sob rips through me before I can stop it, shaking me from the inside out.
Then she’s gone.
The dungeon dissolves, the stench replaced by smoke and blood once more. I’m back in the ritual, but the memory lingers, clinging to my senses like ash—hard to wash away. Seeing my mother like that… it was something I never wanted burned into my mind. I’d heard the story—well, pieces of it—but witnessing even a flicker of the hell she endured was horrific.
Daleyzas' power must be accessing all the memories connected to my family.
Now, back before me, Vespera's lips glistened red. The monster at her side tilted the bowl to his mouth. The sound of him swallowing made bile rise in my throat.
I scrub at my eyes, desperate to drive out the stabbing pain already building again. When my vision clears, they’re standing side by side, faces tipped toward the night sky, their voices a low, unholy harmony.
“Shadows that linger beyond the veil,
Take the lifeblood of the fallen,
Take the marrow of our souls.
We bleed not in sacrifice, but in promise,
To walk in your darkness and make it ours.”
Everything feels wrong. The air itself shifts—colder, heavier—like it's pressing on my skin. The fire before them twists unnaturally, its flames collapsing in on themselves until they bleed into black, devouring their own light. The sound it makes isn’t a crackle anymore—it’s a whisper, speaking in a tongue my mind recoils from.
The blackness slithers upwards, a tendril of darkness stretching toward the stars… and one by one they blink out, swallowed whole by the void. Each vanished light leaves a hollow ache in my body, a gnawing reminder that even the brightest sparks can be claimed by shadow.
“The dagger is the answer.”
The words brush against my mind, and I can’t tell if they’re meant for me or for them. My breath catches, but I can’t move—can’t do anything but watch.
More shadows rise from the bowl, writhing before plunging into their open mouths. Their throats work as they swallow greedily, the darkness branding them from the inside out—black veins spidering across their skin, pulsing in time with the fire's low hiss.
“The blade is the answer.”
The whisper comes again, stronger this time as the ground shudders beneath me, a low tremor rattling through my bones, and I stumble. Around me, the trees sway, and the sky fractures into light.
I blink—once, twice—and an ache blooms inside me. My mother is there again. Not broken this time. Not bloodied. She’s lying in a bed, cradling a tiny, squalling baby in her arms. Her smile… gods, it's so soft, so beautiful, it hurts to look at.
A figure bends over her, hair like liquid fire cascading down one shoulder. For a moment, she's unfamiliar—but then it clicks. It's her. The shifter who took me in when I fled Velmore all those years ago. The one who taught me how to fight, who offered me a sliver of kindness when the world had none to spare.
Esme. She was my mother’s friend all those years ago.
The image fractures. Another intense pain tears up my leg, and I scream, the sound ringing in my ears, and then I find myself back in the forest.
“The blood of the heritage, bound and broken… a life taken with the blade that carved its name. The darkness is undone only by the one it calls.”
My hands press into the dirt as I drop to my knees, nails digging into the earth like I can anchor myself against the whispers. They wind in my skull, the darkness pressing in from every side, greedy and suffocating.
Flashes rip through me, my mother’s face in pieces of memory.
We’re stretched out on a blanket beneath a sky littered with stars, mugs of hot chocolate warming our hands. Moonlight drapes over us, soft and silver, casting everything in a quiet glow. Her laugh drifts through the air—light, unguarded, and entirely hers—and I can almost feel the weight of her arm across me, tethering me to this fragile, perfect moment.
The next one hits harder. I’m older now, terror ripping through me as a vampire pins me to the ground, its fangs inches from my throat. Then she bursts through the trees, a wildfire of rage, eyes blazing with something untameable. In a heartbeat, she tears the creature off me, and I can still see, still feel everything that happened that day.
Then we’re fighting in the next. I had slipped away into the forest without telling her. She hated when I vanished. I told myself she was overprotective. Now I know it was fear.
And then the one that tears me apart—me on the floor, holding her in my arms as her blood seeps through my clothes, warm and sticky against my skin. My mother… lifeless. That was the night everything shattered. The night I lost the only person who loved me fiercely, who sacrificed everything for me. The woman who taught me to be brave, to find peace in the stars, who was my anchor and only constant—the only person I truly relied on.
