I…I think I…died.
The words echo in the silent space between us.
Questions flood my mind, but I deny them a voice.I let the quiet envelop us like a shroud.
“I’m not sure how I’m here,” she says aloud, her voice gravelly and raw.Her shadows wrap around her, hoisting her into a seated position.She coughs hard, spitting thick, black saliva onto the stone.
A shaky hand strokes a snake-like tendril coiling around her shoulders.She leans into the shadows touch as Eira rests her large, furry head in her lap.
The Seren I first saw in the Hollow is gone.Her features are no longer tainted by fear or doubt.She exudes a power unlike anything I have ever experienced in all my years of hunting.I find myself captivated, and deeply alarmed.She is dangerous now, and I am beginning to question my role by her side.
“I don’t know,” I finally say, answering a gaze that seems to demand a truth I don’t possess.“But you brought something up with you.”I nod toward the staff lying behind her.
She stares at it for a long time.Finally, she strokes the silver crescent, her fingertip finding the sharp point.Blood trickles down, but she doesn’t wince.She doesn’t even gasp.Instead, she licks the life from her finger and smiles.
I swallow the fear rising in my throat.
“Nyx’s staff,” I whisper.“How…why?”
“I don’t know why it’s here,” she rasps.“I wasn’t shown.”
I remove my spectacles and wipe away the dust before settling them back onto the bridge of my nose.I rub the bristles on my chin, searching my memory for the years of scripture I’ve devoured.In every text depicting Nyx, she is never without her staff.No one knows its true function, only that its power is reserved for the gods.
“Maybe when Nyx was destroyed, the Triarch hid it here, thinking no one would ever find it.The magical wards in the water are likely why I couldn’t enter.Maybe it’s been waiting for the right person to retrieve it.”
The Lightborne speaks the truth.
The voice isn’t Seren’s.It sounds older, a relic of a time long passed.Heat prickles my scar.Seren doesn’t respond; she simply sits there, those violet eyes burning through me as if she heard the words, too.
“I think—” My voice is shaky, nervous.“I think we should rest.We should be safe here.”
A silent nod.
Her eyes flutter shut, and I find myself staring.She is a sight to behold.Leaning against the jagged rock with shadows draped around her neck, Eira’s head on her lap, and her staff by her side, she looks regal.Powerful.A true goddess, not the scared girl I followed in the Hollow.
Soft hands trace idle lines inside my skull as the ancient voice returns:She has been reborn, Lightborne.You must guide her on her journey to freedom.
I roll up my sleeve, exposing my mark to the stagnant air.The scar is wrong—darker, sharper, spreading like ink beneath skin.My stomach drops.Pain erupts behind my ears, as her voice echoes.
You are marked, son of the Light.A time will come when you must choose which side you reside; in the light of day, or the depths of night.
“What is happening to me?”I whisper.
Only time will tell who you will become.
Silence follows.I stare at the mark, pondering the inevitable.A furious beat thrums within me, knots forming in my gut.My palms are slick with sweat as I roll my sleeve back down and remove my spectacles, rubbing the bridge of my nose where the weight of my old life still sits.
My thoughts race, clawing for any record of the Marked from my studies, but my mind is blank.A black emptiness as if the thoughts have been surgically removed from my memory.
Seren is a picture of preternatural calm, while my own insides churn into a storm.
My inquisitive mind—and the magnetic pull I feel towards her—is the only thing driving me to seek the answers I crave.I shouldn’t care for her.I shouldn’t care what happens.But I do.And thewhyof it is a knot I cannot untie.
To free us both from these shadows, I must journey with her—into an unknown that will force me to question every brick of my foundation.
What scares me the most isn’t where this path leads.It is who I will be when I reach the end.
35
