The ghost-touch of the shadows leaves a lingering warmth as I withdraw my hand to reach for Yara’s bag.The moth-eaten fabric rasps against my skin as I unfasten the clasp.A cloud of smoke and lavender spills out, veiling the cavern’s cold, musty scent; for a heartbeat, the howl of my guilt is quiet.
I search the bag blindly, my fingers hunting through the contents.Crisp, dry leaves tickle my skin—dried thyme and nettle bound tight with twine are held delicately in my hand, before I bring them up to my nose, savouring their scent.My lips tremble at the thought of a small, shattered piece of Yara here in the dark with me.
Carefully placing the bundle on the floor so I don’t crush it, I reach back in.Glass clinks as I pull out two jars of a viscous green powder I’ve never seen before.They land with a dull clunk beside the herbs as I continue my search.
After removing a small pot of salve, my hand digs deep at the bottom, until my fingers snag against a piece of parchment.The paper is thick and ancient, unlike anything in my sketchbook.The edges shiver and crumble as I unfold it gently, a hissed curse escaping me at the clot of darkness hiding the page.
The ink has faded, but the elegant, fluid strokes remain.My fingers trace the lines, imitating the grace of the hand that wrote them.
My mind scrambles to decipher the language, but the meaning slips through me like water.Instead, my attention turns to the tiny crescent symbol at the margin—its ink is black as pitch, a haunting twin to the mark that bled into my drawing of Sylas.
Written in a hand I almost recognise is a single, harrowing word:
Vessel.
What does it mean?
The parchment trembles in my grip as that familiar, leaden anchor drops through my chest and settles in my gut.
I place it back inside the bag with aching care, but as I release it, my hand strikes something else.A small pouch tied with twine, sits perfectly on the inside of my palm, as if it were made for me.
Curiosity gnaws deep, and I surrender to the temptation.A lock of black, coarse hair slips free from the fabric.My skin crawls; the wiry threads feel intimately, impossibly similar to my own.With one hand on the lock of hair, the other reaches for the hair hanging limp at my face—the texture is the same.The colour is an exact match.My mind screamscoincidence, but the knot in my belly only tightens.Why would Yara have this?
The shadows swarm my lap.A wisp of smoke entwines around the lock of hair, then stops—turning to me like a cobra entranced by its master.
The shadow pounces.Black fingers lunge for my face as an icy void consumes me, dissolving the cavern into blackness.
It begins as a whisper, curling higher like smoke.The shadows coil around my ankles—tighter, tighter—until the breath snags in my throat.I try to fight, but the tendril invades, boring into my mouth with a frozen tide that quenches the fire in my lungs.The floor isn’t solid anymore; it ripples like dark water.
“Stop,” I try to choke, but it's no use.The world fractures and peels away until the Hollow is gone.The cave, the moss, even the sound of my own pulse—extinguished.
* * *
I’m suspendedwithin a blackness that drinks all light.Not asleep, not waking, but hollowed out in the space between.A space whispered only in children’s fables, a space where only the Divine Mother’s most devout believers aspire to reach; the dream world.
Pockets of light swarm my vision, settling above me like a ceiling of stolen stars.The ground beneath my feet hums, a gentle, rhythmic pulse that beats in time with my own heart.
Shapes begin to coalesce in the faint light cast by the sky of glass.A womanly figure waits in the distance, her pale, golden hair drifting around her face, riding the jagged spine of silence.
She doesn’t move; she doesn’t have to.I can feel her presence pressing against me, saturating my mind as if she has already made a home inside.
Seren.
My name bleeds from the air like a drop of inky black in water.
I try to speak, to scream the questions my mind can’t quite grasp, but my mouth is sealed.The shadows snare the words, smothering them back down my throat.
The floor vanishes, the sudden weightlessness heaving my stomach into my chest.The stars wither into mere prickles of light, until like all life, they dissolve into nothing.
I fall into something that has no end.
11
SEREN
Prickles of panic pierce my skin, a thousand needles driving into my flesh, forcing me to wake.
My lungs seize, desperate for a ration of air.I clutch at my chest, fingernails biting through the fabric, carving tiny crescents into my palm.
