* * *
The memory dissolves,leaving only stone and shadows.
An inverted splash of pure blackness erupts from the pool.The shadows peel away from the liquid, a seamless black mass with Seren held inside like something stolen from the world.
They place her gracefully on the edge.Her hair hangs limp; her skin is a ghostly, unmoving white.Her lips are blue.Her chest is still.
Solan blind me.Think Kael, think.
I scramble toward her, my body no longer feeling the cold as adrenaline runs hot in my veins.The rocky ground bites into my palms as fragments of my medical training blur through my mind.With shaking hands, I brush the wet hair from her face and tilt her chin.Her skin feels like marble.
I find the centre of her chest and I begin to push—a desperate, rabid mantra against the silence.My mouth crashes over hers as I blow hard, once, twice.I push past the thought of her cold, soft lips pressed against my own as I desperately wait for the flicker of a response.
Nothing.
Eira whines, licking Seren’s frozen cheek in a desperate attempt to wake her.
The water drips from her tongue onto that pale, still face.I repeat the cycle again and again, the rhythm of my compressions more frantic.
Then, a wet, gurgling sound.She coughs, a stream of black water rushing from her lips onto the stony ground.Relief hits me so hard it feels like grief.
“It’s okay—it’s okay,” I rasp, gulping down air.
Eira licks her cheek once more, and Seren stifles a moan.I roll her onto her side, helping the fluid spill out.It does—thick and inky, slow as tar.
I sit back on my knees to give her space, only realising then that I’m shaking hard enough to rattle my teeth.I drag my tunic back on with numb fingers, as if cloth could make any of this feel real.
The shadows circle beside us, and it’s only then that I notice what they’ve set on the stone.
A spire of blackened metal, its surface scarred with forgotten sigils.It’s longer than Seren herself—the shaft like the spine of some shadowed world.The amethyst eye at its tip catches the light, and I swear it adjusts to me.It isn’t reflecting; it’sseeing.It feels less like an object and more like a captured ghost, watching with a quiet, malicious intent.
A deep, ancient energy hums around it, drawing me in.The mark on my wrist flares with an urgent, burning pulse.The metal dares me to touch its cool, corroded surface, but a moan tears my focus away as Seren begins to stir.
Eira nudges her back, forcing her body to rock as she expels the last of the black fluid.The air in the cavern shifts—the sharp scent of wet earth replaced by the sweet, heavy bloom of lavender.
She gasps, her eyes snapping open as her body claws for air.The sclera is no longer white, it’s tainted with tiny, dark veins.The thin violet ring around her pupils has sharpened, claiming more space than before.
Her gaze darts around, reassembling the world around her.“Wh—Wha—” she rasps.
“It’s okay.Don’t talk.Your throat will be raw—you’ve coughed up a lot.”
Her stare pierces me.A connection fuses between us like an electric current.It isn’t loud; it’s a thought brushing against my own inside my skull.
What happened?
I flinch, the sensation jarring as I jerk back on my hands and knees until the grit from the floor buries itself beneath my finger nails.She doesn’t stir, as if this bridge between our minds is something that we’ve always used.
I clear my throat, wiping my palms on my trousers as I try to regain my composure.“You submerged.I tried to reach you, but I couldn’t.The water…it burned me.”
I wait for a response.Nothing.She stares at the space where the phantom blister burns on my skin, her expression vacant, as if she knew the exact shape of the wound.
“What happened down there?”I ask.
Violet eyes track slowly up my body, burning a trail in their wake until they find my face.Her lips are still blue, her cheeks only just beginning to tint with pink, but her gaze is magnetic.She tilts her head, watching me as if I’m speaking a language she can no longer comprehend.
Nothing happened.I didn’t see anything,she says through that invisible bond.
Without thinking, I reach out and tuck a loose strand of wet hair behind her ear.She winces at the touch.
