Page 23 of The Blood Rites

Not the warmth or the brightness.

But the pressure.

It presses against me now. Filling my eyes, my lungs. Blanketing my skin. The world stretches thin around me, pale and endless, like glass blown too wide. It shatters, leaving only white. Only humming. As I walk, the ground beneath my feet is smooth and reflective, mirroring the Light Dominion sky. Too bright.

I’m not alone.

Footsteps fall beside mine, soft and familiar.

I turn, and Marissa walks at my side.

Her copper hair sways. She looks calm. Almost amused.

“You always look frightened,” she says.

Her voice echoes oddly, as if it’s being spoken through water.

“I’m not,” I lie.

She smiles wider than I’ve ever seen.

“You are.”

The sky flickers. A flame extinguished for but a moment.

Her face shifts—not grotesque, but unfinished somehow. The line of her jaw blurs and her eyes lose their colour.

Her shape stretches suddenly—taller, broader—and when I look again, Callen walks beside me instead.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he says.

“I didn’t choose this.”

“Didn't you"?”

The words fracture in the air. Didn’t you didn’t you didn't you.

The ground vibrates beneath me, a slow vibration working its way into my bones.

Callen stops walking and turns towards me. His eyes are wrong now—far too bright, white instead of blue—and light spills from them in thin cracks like the ones I made on the floor.

“What are you?” he asks, but it isn’t his voice.

It’s layered and ancient. Straining and garbled.

I take a step back and the sky ripples.

His shape shudders—folding inwards, collapsing like parchment being crumpled into a ball.

When it settles again, it’s him.

The Shadowborn boy.

He is still, watching me the way he did in the corridor.

I don’t know his name. Only the weight of his stare.

He tilts his head slightly.