“Is he – is he – “ she stuttered.
“He’s dead.”
I shook my head. “No that wasn’t her. That was me.”
I stood up. K took a breath. “Ash – “
“It’s my responsibility. She had nothing to do with it!”
She reached out and tugged on my clothes. “It’s ok, Ash. You don’t have to – I know you saw it.”
“Seph,” I whimpered.
She took a deep breath. “So everyone knows here now. That’s good. I don’t have to lie anymore.”
“What is it?” I asked her. “What did you do?”
“She is a void,” Sy said finally.
Seph looked at him. “A what?”
“A void. An absence. Over the centuries, a void is only born when the balance is unsettled. When the scales are tipped unfairly.”
K entered the cave and sat by the fire. “A void?”
“Look upon the world as it was first wrought—light and shadow bound as one.”
Sy’s voice rolled through the cave, each word heavy with age and power. He moved with the calm authority of something older than stone.
“Neither may stand alone. The light burns with brilliance, yet in excess it scorches and blinds. The darkness shelters and conceals, yet in its depths lie sorrow… suffering… the forgotten. From the beginning, they were fashioned to dwell together—twin forces in eternal accord. A balance. A reckoning.”
“Was I born like this?” Seph asked, her voice thin but steady. “Or did my father…”
Sy’s expression softened, a gentle sorrow threaded through his smile.
“It was woven into you, little one. This force has lived in your marrow since the first breath you ever drew. From the beginning, it waited.”
“And Gideon?” K asked, stepping closer, his voice low as a storm building at the horizon.
“Through his machinations, he only awoke that which was already there. With his medicines and tests.”
“Whatisa void?” Dev asked.
Sy’s smile held sorrow, the kind born of centuries. He lowered himself beside Seph, movements slow and deliberate.
“A void,” he murmured, “is a pathway between forces. A tunnel… a bridge… a sacred hollow where corrupted power is drawn in and made clean once more.”
Seph shook her head. “But why? I can’t hold it. Not for long. I have to expel it.”
“As all living things must,” Sy inclined his head. “No mortal vessel was forged to bear such vastness. Yet it is this very nature that makes you… most perilous.”
“Because if I can take power—”
“The power does not choose, little one,” Sy said quietly. “It does not see friend or foe. You may draw fromanyone. Unmake anyone. Which is why—”
“My father locked me away.” Her voice broke, her head sinking into her hands. “So then… all those years… was he trying to protect me? To keep me safe?”
For the barest moment, a fragile thread of hope entered her voice.
