The field of roses didn't smell like flowers. It smelled like the attic of Valendris Manor—dry, stagnant, and choked with the dust of things forgotten. Every time I took a step, the brittle, calcified petals crunched under my boots like bone.
Crunch. Snap.
The girl standing across from me—the one with my face and eyes like molten coins—didn't move. She just watched me with a terrifying, predatory patience.
"You look horrified," she said, her voice echoing not in my ears, but directly in the hollow of my chest where the silver mercury pulsed. "Why? Is it the roses? They died the day they forged that first lock onto us. They've been waiting a long time for you to come back and water them with the blood of your enemies."
"I don't want to water anything with blood," I spat, my hands curling into fists. The silver light on my skin felt cold here, dimming against the oppressive violet glow of the three moons. "I want to go back. I want to save Kaelen."
The entity laughed—a sharp, melodic sound that made the dead roses shiver.
"Kaelen?" She stepped closer, her silk dress—a liquid gold version of my own tattered gown—shimmering. "The boy who was literally manufactured to be your leash? You're still clinging to that? Isyra, look at where 'human' feelings have gotten you. You're bleeding, you're hunted, and your own mother just tried to trade your soul for a hole in the ground."
"He's not a leash," I whispered, though the doubt Vane had planted felt like a parasite in my brain.
"He is a dampener. A void where your power goes to die so the little people can feel safe," she countered, her gold eyes flaring. She was inches from me now. I could see the fine pores of her skin, the way her silver teeth caught the moonlight. "Those curtains weren't meant to protect you from the world, Isyra; they were meant to protect the world from me. I am the catastrophe your mother was too cowardly to unleash. Your mother kept those curtains closed because she knew that once you looked at me, you'd never want to be human again."
Thump. Thump. Thump.
A vibration shook the white field. It wasn't coming from the moons. It was coming from the cave—from the world I'd left behind.
"Isyra! Fight it!"
Kaelen's voice. It was distant, muffled by layers of psychic static, but I felt the blue resonance of his blood tugging at the silver in my chest.
"Shut him out," the entity hissed, her face contorting into a mask of sudden, sharp rage. "He is the lock, Isyra! Every time he touches you, he steals a piece of your divinity!"
"He's the only one who didn't want anything from me!" I roared. I lunged at her, my fingers clawing for her throat.
Whoosh.
My hands passed through her like smoke. I stumbled, falling onto the carpet of dead roses.
Crackle. Shiver.
"You can't kill me," she whispered, appearing behind me instantly. She leaned down, her lips brushing my ear. "I am the Source. I am the fire that burns in the marrow of the world. You broke the gold, Isyra. You broke the silver. There is nothing left to hold me back but your own pathetic, flickering will."
Suddenly, the sky above us cracked. A jagged bolt of blue lightning tore through the violet moons, and for a second, I saw the cave. I saw Kaelen on his knees, his hands glowing with a frantic blue light as he pressed them against my unconscious body's forehead. I saw my mother, Elowen, lashing out with her iron key at the Void-Stitchers, her face a mask of grief and fury.
"She's slipping!" Kaelen's voice screamed, clearer now. "The Stitchers... they're trying to anchor the entity! They're trying to use Isyra's body as a conduit for the Void!"
"I won't let them!" Elowen's voice was a jagged blade of sound. "If I have to bury this whole mountain to stop them, I will!"
I looked back at the Golden-Eyed me. She was fading, her form flickering as the physical world bled into our mental sanctuary.
"They're going to kill you, Isyra," she said, her voice no longer intimate, but cold and clinical. "The Stitchers don't want a girl. They want a doorway. If you don't merge with me, if you don't let the 'Catastrophe' out, they will sew your eyes shut and turn you into a screaming puppet for the Council."
"I'm not a doorway," I growled, pushing myself up from the thorns.
"Then prove it," she challenged, extending her hand. Her fingers were long, tipped with silver claws. "Take the fire. Burn the Stitchers. Burn the mother who lied. Burn the boy who was born to be your cage. Be the god you were born to be."
I looked at her hand. I looked at the blue cracks in the sky. I could feel the golden needles of the Stitchers in the real world, hovering just millimeters from my eyes, ready to thread my consciousness into eternal servitude.
"Fuck your divinity," I said, my voice low and vibrating with a new kind of power.
I didn't take her hand. I grabbed her wrist and pulled.
Snap. Fizzle.
She looked surprised for the first time. "What are you doing?"
"I'm not merging with you," I said, the silver mercury in my chest beginning to swirl with the blue of Kaelen's resonance. "I'm consuming you. You said I was the engine? Well, I'm taking back the fuel."
I slammed my forehead against hers.
BOOM.
The field of roses exploded into white flame. The violet moons shattered. The entity screamed—a sound of grinding metal and dying stars—as I dragged her into the hollow of my chest. I felt the gold and the silver and the blue all collide in a singular, violent point of existence.
My eyes snapped open in the cave.
Gasp.
The world was a blur of blue and silver. I saw the three Void-Stitchers, their needles poised, their silver masks reflecting the monstrous light pouring out of my eyes.
"Recalibration failed!" one of them shouted, his voice cracking with terror. "The asset has... she's absorbed the anomaly!"
I didn't wait for them to finish. I stood up, the movement fluid and terrifyingly fast. I didn't feel the weight of my dress. I didn't feel the pain in my ribs. I felt like I was made of nothing but suns.
"Get away from him," I said.
I raised my hand, and a wave of pure, white-gold energy erupted from my palm.
VROOOOM.
The Void-Stitchers didn't even have time to scream. Their armored robes, their silver masks, their golden needles—it all vanished, erased from existence as if they had never been. The blue threads of their magic snapped, dissipating into the damp air like smoke.
I turned to Kaelen. He was staring at me, his hands still raised, his eyes wide with a mixture of relief and absolute horror.
"Isyra?" he whispered.
I looked at my hands. They were glowing. Not with silver, but with a liquid, molten gold that seemed to be eating away at the very air around me. I looked at my mother, who had dropped her iron key. She was backing away, her face pale.
"What have you done?" Elowen whispered. "That... that isn't the Source. That's the end of everything."
"It's whatever I want it to be," I said, but as I spoke, the cave walls began to glow. The stones began to melt, turning into liquid glass where my shadow touched them.
I took a step toward Kaelen, wanting to touch him, to tell him I was still me.
Sizzle.
The ground beneath my boot turned to slag. Kaelen flinched, his skin blistering just from the proximity of my presence.
"Isyra, stop," he gasped, shielding his face. "You're... you're burning the world."
I froze. I looked at him—the boy who loved the girl through the window—and I realized that the entity hadn't lied. I had opened the curtains, and the light was too much. I was a catastrophe.
Rumble. Crack.
The mountain groaned. The Echoing Gorge was reacting to the sheer density of the power I was holding. Boulders began to rain down from the ceiling, and the ground split open, revealing the white void I had escaped from.
"Go," I commanded, looking at Kaelen and my mother. "Get out of here before the mountain collapses."
"I'm not leaving you!" Kaelen yelled over the roar of the falling stone.
"You have to!" I screamed, the gold light in my eyes blinding even me. "I can't shut it off, Kaelen! I'm going to take the whole mountain down!"
I thrust my hand toward the entrance of the cave, creating a bridge of solid light that bypassed the crumbling ledge.
"Move!"
Elowen grabbed Kaelen, her strength surprising for a woman who looked like a ghost. She dragged him toward the light-bridge as a massive section of the ceiling came crashing down between us.
"Isyra!" Kaelen's voice was the last thing I heard before the cave vanished into a cloud of dust and golden fire.
I stood alone in the heart of the collapsing mountain. The power was rising, a tidal wave of gold that wanted to consume the sky. I closed my eyes, reaching deep into the hollow of my chest, trying to find the girl who liked birds and lace.
But all I found was the sound of a key turning in a lock that no longer existed.
The mountain didn't just fall. It disintegrated.
From the outside, the Echoing Gorge was silenced by a pillar of white light that reached the stars. And then, there was only the wind.
To be continued...