Silence is a heavy thing when it follows an explosion that should have ended the world.
I didn't feel my body. I didn't feel the weight of my tattered lace or the grit of the cave dust in my throat. I felt... spread out. I was the settling dust. I was the heat radiating from the scorched stones. I was the lingering hum of power that made the air taste like copper and ozone.
Tinkle. Shiver.
A piece of the mountain—now turned to translucent, jagged glass by the heat of my release—fell from a high ledge and shattered into a thousand diamonds. I watched it happen from three different angles at once. My consciousness was a fractured mirror, scattered across the ruins of the gorge.
"Isyra!"
The voice was a jagged blade, cutting through my ethereal haze. I saw him. Kaelen was dragging himself through the rubble, his clothes little more than singed rags clinging to his bruised frame. His hands were raw, the fingernails torn from clawing at the superheated slag.
"Isyra, answer me! Please, goddammit, answer me!"
Beside him, my mother, Elowen, stood like a black pillar against the rising sun. She wasn't digging. She was staring at the center of the crater, where the pillar of light had pierced the heavens. Her iron key was clutched so tightly in her hand that her knuckles had turned a ghostly white.
"She's gone, Scion," Elowen said, her voice devoid of emotion, though I could see the way her shoulders trembled. "You saw the light. No human frame can contain that kind of output. She didn't die; she simply... dispersed."
"Shut the hell up!" Kaelen roared, shoving a massive slab of obsidian aside with a strength born of pure, unadulterated desperation. "She's here. I can feel her. The resonance... the blue in my blood hasn't gone quiet yet. If she were dead, I'd be empty."
I tried to reach out. I tried to pull the scattered pieces of myself together, to form a hand, a voice, a breath.
Vrrrrrrrr.
The silver-gold residue in the air vibrated. A small pile of glass shards began to swirl, hovering a few inches off the ground near Kaelen's feet.
"Look," Kaelen whispered, his breath hitching. He reached out his hand—the one stained with our mingled blood. "Isyra? Is that you?"
Sizzle.
As his fingers brushed the swirling glass, a spark of gold jumped to his skin. He winced but didn't pull away. The contact felt like a needle being threaded through my soul. For a second, I felt a physical tug. The scattered fragments of my mind began to rush toward that single point of contact.
"Don't touch it!" Elowen warned, stepping forward and swinging her iron key like a ward. "That isn't your Isyra anymore, boy. That's the fallout of a god. If you pull her back now, you're pulling back the Catastrophe, not the girl."
"I don't care!" Kaelen snapped, his eyes locking onto the swirling vortex of glass and light. "I'll take the catastrophe. I'll take the fire. Just give me her!"
CRACK-BOOM.
The ground at the center of the crater split open.
It wasn't a cave-in. It was an emergence. From the depths of the pulverized mountain, a shape began to rise. It wasn't me—at least, not the me that had worn lace and pearls. It was a statuesque figure made of fused glass and cooling gold, its face a smooth, featureless mask.
The entity—my shell—stepped out of the smoke.
Clack. Thud.
The sound of its feet on the stone was heavy, resonant. It radiated a heat so intense that the nearby rocks began to glow cherry-red once more.
"Isyra?" Kaelen's voice was small now, trembling.
The glass figure turned its head toward him. I felt myself inside it, trapped behind a wall of frozen light. I was screaming, pounding against the interior of my own manifestation, but no sound came out. I was the pilot of a machine that had no controls.
The figure raised a hand. A blade of pure, solidified gold slid out from its wrist with a metallic shring.
"It's a defensive reflex," Elowen whispered, her eyes wide with terror. "The Source is protecting its core. It sees everything as a threat."
"Isyra, it's me," Kaelen said, taking a step toward the glass giant. He held up his hands, palms open. "Look at the blood, Isyra. Look at the blue. We're synchronized, remember? You chose me."
The entity paused. The gold blade vibrated, the tip glowing with a lethal, concentrated heat. I fought. I threw every ounce of my will against the glass ribs of the creature, trying to force the arm down.
"Kaelen... run..." I tried to project the thought, but it came out as a low-frequency hum that shattered the remaining stones in the gorge.
CRUNCH.
The entity lunged.
It didn't go for Kaelen. It swung the blade in a wide arc, slicing through a shadow that had been creeping up behind them.
Hiss. Screech.
From the darkness of the gorge's edge, more Void-Stitchers emerged. Not three, but dozens. They moved in silence, their silver masks reflecting the dawn light. They weren't using needles this time. They were carrying heavy, lead-lined canisters etched with containment runes.
"The High Council doesn't give up so easily," Elowen snarled, raising her key. Shadows began to boil up from the ground around her, forming a defensive wall. "They've sent a Harvesting Unit."
The glass entity—my body—let out a sound that wasn't a scream, but a roar of pure, harmonic energy. It charged the Stitchers, moving like a lightning strike.
KRA-KOOM.
Every time the gold blade connected with a Stitcher, there was an explosion of blue and gold light. It was a slaughter. My body was an engine of absolute destruction, moving with a mathematical precision that I never possessed.
But I felt every kill. Every time a Stitcher was vaporized, a piece of their cold, clinical mind was added to the silver hollow in my chest. I saw the Guild's headquarters. I saw the rows of "vessels" in the labs—hundreds of girls with gold locks, waiting to be harvested.
"Stop it!" I screamed within the glass. "Stop killing them!"
But the entity didn't listen. It was a program, a failsafe triggered by the breaking of the curtains. It was designed to eliminate any threat to the Valendris line, and right now, the entire world felt like a threat.
"Isyra, you have to regain control!" Kaelen's voice was closer now. He was running alongside the glass giant, dodging the stray bolts of energy that flew from its limbs. "If you don't stop, you're going to burn the whole province! The fire is spreading to the forest!"
He was right. The emerald hunger I'd felt earlier was now a literal forest fire. The trees we had run through were becoming torches, the violet-tinged flames leaping from branch to branch.
"I can't!" I wailed, my consciousness beginning to flicker. The more the entity fought, the more I was being pushed into the dark corners of the mind-palace.
Kaelen didn't stop. He did something insane.
He jumped.
He lunged for the glass giant's back, his arms wrapping around its neck—the place where the silver mercury was the brightest.
Sizzle. Burn.
I heard the sound of his skin searing as he touched the superheated glass. I smelled the smoke of his clothes catching fire.
"Kaelen, no! You'll die!"
"Then we die together!" he yelled, his face pressed against the glowing nape of the entity. "Isyra! Pull the blue! Use my blood as a filter! Don't push the gold out—pull the blue in!"
I saw the blue veins in his arms, glowing with a desperate, frantic light. I reached for them. I used the last of my human strength to grab onto that blue thread and yank it into the heart of the glass.
The reaction was instantaneous.
BOOM.
The gold and blue collided, creating a shockwave that flattened the remaining Stitchers and sent Elowen flying back into the cave mouth. The glass entity stalled, its limbs freezing in mid-motion.
The heat began to recede. The gold blade retracted.
"That's it," Kaelen whispered, his voice weak, his breath rattling in his lungs. "Just... stay with me. Just look at the bird, Isyra."
The glass began to crack. Not the violent cracks of the void, but a soft, rhythmic splintering. A piece of the mask fell away, revealing my human eye—the violet iris now flecked with permanent gold.
I looked at him. He was a mess of burns and blood, his eyes fluttering as he began to lose consciousness from the pain.
"I've got you," I whispered, the glass around my mouth finally dissolving enough for the words to form.
But as I reached out to catch him, the ground beneath us didn't just shake. It opened.
A massive, mechanical claw, ten times the size of a man and forged from black iron, erupted from the floor of the gorge. It clamped around the glass entity's waist—around my waist.
Clang. Screech.
"Asset 01 secured," a voice boomed from the sky—a voice that sounded like thunder and grinding gears.
A massive airship, hidden by a cloaking field until now, lowered itself through the clouds. It was emblazoned with the crest of the High Council—a golden lock over a silver heart.
"Launch the Scion Disposal Protocol," the voice commanded.
From the belly of the ship, a beam of cold, black light shot down, aimed directly at the unconscious Kaelen.
I didn't have time to think. I didn't have time to be a girl.
I threw myself over him as the black light hit, the glass of my form shattering under the pressure. But as the world went dark once more, I felt a familiar, cold sensation on my wrist.
Click.
A new lock. Not gold. Not silver.
Iron.
And this time, it wasn't on my chest. It was on my soul.
To be continued...