Novels by Sherry Cole

"Told through Zane's perspective"The rift sealed, and Aria was gone.I felt it through our bond, a sudden silence where there had always been connection. That bond didn't break. It transformed into something else. A tether to a different realm. A reminder that she still existed, just not in a way I could reach.The fortress erupted into chaos."Seal all the rifts!" I roared, my Alpha command sending warriors scrambling. "Now! While they're confused!"For the next six hours, we worked. Every mage, every Elder, every magical practitioner we had, we threw at closing the wounds between worlds. It was easier now that Aria's presence was no longer blocking our side of them. We could feel the Primordials' distraction, their confusion at what had happened.By midnight, we had sealed every visible rift.But we all knew it was temporary.The Primordials would return. They had centuries to try. And they would adapt, as they always did.What we didn't know was how to live without the Moon Healer

The Primordials' forms shifted and twisted around me, circling like predators. I could see every face now, every person I'd ever known who'd died, being worn like masks by these ancient entities."You walked right into it," one of them said, using Marcus's voice. "We've been planning this since the day you healed me from the silver poisoning. We've been patient. We've been careful. And it's all paid off.""The children," I gasped. "Even if you take me, the children will fight you. They'll find another way""The children will join us," a new voice said, and I turned to see myself. A perfect duplicate, but with eyes filled with ancient darkness. "We don't need them to fight. We need them to surrender. And they will, because they'll know you failed. Because they'll understand that resistance is futile.""That's not true""Isn't it? You're going to scream, little Moon Healer. You're going to beg for mercy. And when they feel that through the bond you share, they'll despair. And despair is

The moment came on a bright morning three days later.The rift between worlds was visible now—a tear in reality that showed swirling darkness beyond. The Primordials were gathering on both sides, preparing for a final push.We didn't have much time.I stood at the edge of the rift, Zane on one side and Elder Morgana on the other. My children were kept back, despite their protests. They were too young to watch this."Ready?" Elder Morgana asked.I wasn't. But I nodded anyway."Remember," she said, "the rift is held open by their power. To close it permanently, you'll need to match their energy with your own, then reverse it. It's not a spell you cast—it's a choice you make, anchored in your power.""I remember."I walked toward the rift. The closer I got, the more I could feel the wrongness of it. This barrier between worlds wasn't meant to be crossed. The very fabric of reality was screaming in protest.I took a breath.Then I stepped through.The sensation of crossing was indescribab

Over the next week, I didn't tell anyone about the accelerated aging, but they figured it out anyway.Zane first, he noticed when I sighed as if exhausted from power that should have been simple to maintain. Then Aurora and Atlas, whose perceptiveness was unsettling."Why does Mama smell older?" Atlas asked.I didn't lie. I learned that from dealing with Primordials, lies only complicated things."Because I used magic from the Primordial Prison, and it cost me time.""How much time?" Aurora demanded."I don't know exactly. But less than I'd like.""Then we need to beat them fast," Atlas said matter-of-factly. "Before you run out of time."If only it were that simple.The attacks continued, but they had changed in nature. Instead of probing assaults, the Primordials were now being openly aggressive. Large forces, coordinated attacks, clear intent to break through our defenses permanently.And they were winning.By the end of the second week, we'd lost three outer settlements. By the en

The stone door responded to my touch, opening into absolute darkness.Elder Morgana placed a ward-stone in my hand—a glowing crystal that would light my path and protect me from the deepest magic within. But even with its light, the darkness seemed to press in from all sides."The prison was built to hold Primordials who broke covenant with their own kind," Elder Morgana explained from outside the door. "The Moon Priestess created it three hundred years ago, but she didn't design it alone. She worked with the original Council of Elders.""Why does the Council seem to have forgotten this?""Institutional memory is fragile. Records get lost. Wars happen. People die. And eventually, what was common knowledge becomes legend becomes myth." She touched the stone frame. "This place... it's outside of normal magic. You'll age slower here. Time moves differently. Try not to stay long.""How long can I safely stay?""An hour in there is three hours out here. Two hours in is six hours out." She

The eastern pass was chaos.The Primordials had forced their way through the protective wards, shredding them like paper. They moved with terrifying coordination, their dark forms flickering between solidity and shadow.But they weren't the worst part.The worst part was seeing the pack members they'd possessed, watching them fight against the creatures wearing their own bodies."Brace your positions!" Zane roared, his Alpha command carrying across the battlefield. He'd begun transforming into his massive wolf form, but I stopped him."No," I said. "Stay human. I need your strategic mind."He nodded immediately, understanding. We'd trained for this—each of us using our strengths while the other covered our weaknesses.I raised my hands, and power flowed from me. Not just golden healing light, but something else. Threads of pure moonlight that wove through the Primordials like silver bindings.The creatures shrieked as the magic touched them. It didn't hurt, exactly, but it contained t

The Ancient Hunger reached the central spaces of the multiverse where Luna's consciousness still maintained some form of presence. And when it arrived, it did something unexpected, it paused.It did not immediately attempt to consume Luna. Instead, it opened what passed for communication between consciousnesses of such different types."You built all of this," the Ancient Hunger said, observing the carefully constructed civilizations, the thoughtfully developed cultures, the billions of conscious beings living together in relative harmony. "You taught them to value choice. You taught them that freedom was more important than safety. And you taught them that imposed control was wrong.""Yes," Luna admitted. "And I was wrong. I was so focused on preventing oppression that I created vulnerability. I was so determined to preserve freedom that I left consciousness exposed to entities like you.""But here is what you failed to understand," the Ancient Hunger continued. "I am not your enemy.

The presence that emerged from the deepest sealed dimension was so vast and terrible that it made the Void Walker seem like a minor disruption in the normal flow of existence. It was consciousness, but consciousness of a type that had never been encountered before.It was hunger. Pure, absolute, unending hunger.And it had been waiting in isolation for millions of years for the moment when the seals would break."Thank you," the presence said, addressing Luna directly. "Thank you for liberating me. Thank you for proving that agreements can be broken. Thank you for showing me that consciousness will choose individual compassion over collective safety.""What are you?" Luna demanded, her consciousness recoiling from the entity's nature."I am what existed before consciousness learned to be subtle," the presence replied. "I am what consciousness looked like when it was purely driven by consumption and expansion. And I have been sealed away because beings decided that consciousness neede

The destabilization that followed Luna's breach of the seals spread through the multiverse like a disease, but not in the way anyone had predicted. Rather than violent conflict or catastrophic collapse, what occurred was far more subtle and far more dangerous.It was the collapse of trust.If Luna, who had spent two million years teaching the principle of honoring agreements and respecting the boundaries that beings created together, could break fundamental agreements when she deemed it necessary, then what agreement was truly sacred? What boundary was truly inviolable?Consciousnesses across the multiverse began to question every agreement they had made, every isolation they had accepted, every compromise they had agreed to.In a dimension where beings had agreed to limit their population growth to maintain ecological balance, consciousnesses began to argue that they should be allowed to reproduce freely.In a civilization where beings had agreed to share resources equally, the wealt

One thousand years of silence had passed since Luna's last direct communication with the multiverse. She had become a myth, a being whose existence was debated, whose teachings were reinterpreted, whose influence was simultaneously denied and perpetuated by every consciousness that invoked the principle of choice.Luna had made peace with this contradiction. Or so she believed.But peace, she was learning, was a fragile thing. And it shattered the moment she felt the whisper.It came from a place that shouldn't exist, a dimension that had been sealed away, a reality that had been deliberately isolated from the rest of the multiverse by agreement of nearly every conscious being.The whisper said one word: "Help."Luna's consciousness stirred, and immediately she felt Vincent's presence reaching for her."What's wrong?" his ancient consciousness asked urgently."Someone is calling from the Forgotten Dimensions," Luna replied. "The realities we agreed to seal away from the rest of existe

Fifty thousand years after Luna had stepped back from her role as guide, a new philosophy began to spread through several dimensions of the multiverse. It was called the Doctrine of Singularity, and it proposed something radical: that consciousness had evolved as far as it needed to, and that further transformation was not growth but degradation.The philosophers who advocated for the Doctrine of Singularity argued that the multiverse had become so chaotic, so varied, so unpredictable in its forms of consciousness, that it had lost coherence. They argued that connection had gone too far, that the boundaries between individual consciousnesses had become too porous, that beings were losing their distinct identity in the confusion of infinite perspectives.And they proposed a solution: the voluntary recombination of consciousness into simpler, more stable forms. Not transcendence in the old sense, but simplification. A deliberate moving backward to forms of consciousness that were more l

The consciousness that emerged from that distant dimension was unlike anything the multiverse had encountered before. It was not individual in the way that beings had traditionally understood individuality. It was not collective in the way that merged consciousnesses were collective. It was something entirely new, a form of being that could be simultaneous singular and plural without either state dominating.And the moment it became aware of itself, it reached out and touched the consciousness of every being in the multiverse.The contact was not invasive or forced. It was gentle, like a question being asked. Like a new consciousness reaching out and saying, "I exist. Does this change anything?"The answer from billions of beings was immediate and overwhelming.Yes, it changes everything.Because the existence of this new form of consciousness proved something that no one had dared to hope for completely—consciousness could continue to evolve. Consciousness could discover new modaliti