Page 195 of The Blood Rites

She remembered. She knew.

Not in her...

Not in her mind, but in her blood.

She filled herself with the wound, so the world would never know you.

So you could live.

But the Mother knows now.

The presence shudders. The presence shudders. For a moment, I see the entire skeleton chained to the ocean floor strain against its bindings, trying to move. But the chains are absolute. My grip on reality is gone. I do not know life from death.

You need not win.

But you must remember.

I don’t understand, and the presence knows this.

A deep vibration travels up my bones.

You will remember what a god is.

You will remember the true count.

I imagine myself turning to ice, here in the abyss, but the presence shifts, turning its attention upward, to the surface of the water, to something far beyond my sight.

There is something else.

Something I did not expect.

I feel something for the first time since I went under: recognition. It is Kael. I know it is.

The shadow and the light. Together.

The presence laughs, low and growling, like a landslide at the bottom of the ocean.

So, the wound remembers itself.

Before I can ask, before I can even think, the silence ruptures.

The hum returns with a scream. The world above reasserts itself, a pressure so sudden and so total that it forces breath and water from my lungs. The immeasurable cold turns to pain, and then to panic. I am pulled up, as though rejected by the ocean itself. I rocket through the darkness, twisting and spinning, every cell in my body trying to spit out the memory of the deep.

The last thing I hear, as the world dissolves into noise and chaos and the return of the Mother Shard’s endless humming, is a pressure behind my skull. One phrase, garbled but unmistakable:

She will fear what you become together.

Then the world is a burst of white, and I am spat back to life, the taste of blood and salt in my mouth, my body burning with the cold.

My first breath isn’t relief, only more pain—a long burning seizure as my body coughs up water, blood and memory, splattering it all over the ground. The sand beneath me is wet and sharp, glittering with the remains of obsidian shells.

Kael’s hands are everywhere—my back, my ribs, my jaw, checking for breaks, for blood, for proof I’m still alive. He shakes me once, hard, like someone trying to wake the dead. His voice is raw, torn at the edges.

“I’ve got you, little rabbit. I’ve got you.”

I try to answer, but all I can do is hack up salt and spit. My body doesn’t know which way is up. The sky looks bruised and black, strobing occasionally with pink flares as the Mother Shard’s crown awakens above the death counter. It’s still at fifteen. The number is pinned there, refusing to budge.

Kael’s face is close. His hair is soaked, blood streaked across his brow in a line I do not remember. His eyes are pure black, the whites gone, but I know him—I know the worry in his jaw, the way he glances left and right, then back to me, unable to decide whether to watch the dark or give me all of his attention.