Page 95 of The Blood Rites

I’ve never swum, so I don’t know what to do with my arms and legs. They drift, limp and useless, every flailing movement swallowed by the heaviness of the infinite sea.

There is no end to it. Only the unnerving certainty of being fixed in place, paralysed by the dark.

All at once, I feel as though I’ve always been here.

Like this is all there has ever been.

“What are you?” the Mother Shard finally asks, her voice muffled.

The question repeats, echoing in a distorted chorus of unintelligible murmurs.

I open my mouth to answer, but water rushes in and fills my throat.

I’m sure I am dying, but nothing happens.

I remain. Luceris Navin. Or the drowned hollow that wears his name.

The pulse grows stronger. The ocean around me bubbles with pressure, a frightening force that pushes against my skin, trying to force its way inside. Whatever it is, it wants in. It wants to get beneath my ribs and tear me apart.

A flicker of blue appears in the darkness, at the very edge of my fractured vision. Twin points of light, far away at first, then closer, approaching with a lazy, almost delicate grace. Two blue orbs in the dark.

Watching.

I try to recoil, but the water restrains me.

The blue eyes hang there in the void. Their stare is cold but not cruel. It feels more like curiosity than predation.

“What are you?” the Mother Shard asks again. But now, she is not alone.

The blue eyes echo her words, whispering in a chorus that softens the question. “Do you know what you are?”

The words press against my mind, urging me to answer.

I try, but all I have are questions.

Am I a mistake?

What does she mean by fire in the sea?

Am I a puppet? A flaw?

Or am I nothing at all, just a bystander trapped in a game for a god and her playthings?

“You feel lost,” the blue eyes say, each word falling like a stone into the sea. “But nothing is ever truly lost. Lost things are often guided. Lost things are...soon found.”

My body starts to fray. The water peels me apart, layer by layer. But instead of pain, there is only relief, as though every cell in my body has been waiting to shed the great burden of being alive.

“Are you one of them?” the Mother Shard asks, her voice further away now, as though she has lost interest. “Or are you a shadow? A beast come to kill?”

The blue eyes come closer. I see now that they do not belong to a face. They are windows of blue fire—windows into a world full of black crystal and sparkling midnight-coloured dust. I want to close my eyes, but the blue fire holds them open, forcing me to stare into the abyss within.

“You think you are weak,” the blue eyes say. “That is why you survive. Others mistake it for cowardice. You believe it is all you can be. But you are wrong.”

I sink further.

There is no bottom, but the pressure grows, building and building. I fear I will be compressed into nothing and disappear.

Yet still I remain. Hollow and ruined. But unbroken.