Page 205 of The Blood Rites

“Do you think we’re going to die?” I ask, but I don’t want an answer.

He grins, all teeth and no comfort. “Maybe we’re already dead.”

He tips his head up to the sky. Rain beads in the hollows of his cheeks and on his lips. “You made her cry,” he says, quiet.

He says it with reverence, but there’s a bitter edge, like maybe he hoped it would be him.

I look down at my hands. They’re raw and bloody, the skin under my fingernails black with grit and sand. I want to feel proud, but all I feel is the relentless ache of having lost too much.

“Why did you come back?” I ask.

His face goes still, and he blinks, like he doesn’t remember making the choice. “I only gave you space to fight, little rabbit,” he says. “I was always coming back for you.”

His voice cracks on the last word. He tries to laugh, but it comes out wrong.

I want to touch him, to prove he is real, but my hands feel like they might break.

We sit in the rain until the world slows down, and the death counter above us dims just a little, as if it’s watching too.

The Mother Shard’s weeping quiets, becoming a tremor instead.

Lightning splits the sky and the colours in the tower shift, slowly bleeding from white-pink to deep violet. Inside, there is a woman-shaped blur, impossibly tall, her head tipped back as if howling, her outline pulsing.

Kael turns to face me, inches away. His hair is wet and plastered to his skull, shadow leaking from his eyelashes. He cups my chin in his hand, thumb careful along the line of my jaw.

He studies my face, the cuts and burns that won’t heal, the blood crusting at the corners of my mouth. He doesn’t say a word, just watches me with those black eyes, searching for proof I’m not a dream.

His hand slides down to my collarbone, past Atheron’s burning handprint, and finds the place where the Overseer’s fingers left marks. He winces for me.

“What are you?” he whispers, like it’s a joke only we share, but it isn’t.

I laugh, but the sound is brittle. “I don’t know,” I say. “Something that shouldn’t be touched.”

He laughs, for real this time. “That’s never stopped me.”

He pulls me close, pressing our foreheads together, and I let myself collapse into him, letting his body take my weight. His chest shudders with every breath, but it doesn’t feel like fear. It feels like victory. Or something near enough.

Above us, the death counter flickers, then steadies. The light from the crystal tower deepens.

Kael’s voice is muffled against my skin. “Don’t leave me.”

I close my eyes. “I’m still here.”

The storm picks up again, lightning arcing across the sky, not white but the deep purple of bruises blooming under the skin. The beach is alive with afterimages, and the air turns sharp as the hairs on my arms stand on end.

The sand in front of us bubbles and liquefies. Not in a physical way, but in a way that feels wrong. An absence forms, a blur my eyes refuse to focus on. The air warps, the rain stuttering around the effect. A presence gathers, not a shape but the implication of one. It stands just a few metres away, flickering in and out of existence. Every time it returns, it has a new size, a new configuration of limbs and face.

The storm recoils from it. Even the death counter dims in response.

Kael shoves me behind him, using his own body as a shield. I don’t think it will matter.

The thing turns its head, and for a moment I see a woman. Then a man. Then a child. Then all three at once.

My eyes refuse the sight.

The world around it cannot decide what shape it should be.

It laughs, but the sound is not a sound. It is the memory of one, like hearing your own laugh through a locked door.