The Child walks ahead of me, their small shoulders squared, the Fate’s Mirror shard clutched tight in their fist. It pulses, a slow, sick rhythm, like a second heartbeat. They don’t look back. They can’t afford to. Not now. Not when the whispers have turned to screams. He’s coming. I don’t need the Mirror to know that. I feel him in the ache of my bones, in the hollow space behind my ribs where the Alpha used to sit. A phantom limb, still twitching. Still connected. The forest parts ahead of us, trees leaning away as if repelled by the Child’s presence. Or maybe by mine. I don’t know what I am anymore. A vessel with cracks. A ghost with too much blood still left to spill. Arthur’s voice slithers through the leaves, a rasp of bark and wind. "They’re close." I don’t see him. Not really. Just glimpses—a shadow between the trees, the flicker of moss-covered fingers, eyes like dark water reflecting moonlight. He’s not a man now. Not anymore. The forest took him. Chewed him up and
Whispers. Always whispers. From the walls. From the dark corners where the shadows pool too thickly. From the cracks in my own mind. Fragments drift past, sharp and meaningless. Kieran’s face, younger, holding a knife slick with blood that looks like mine. Arthur’s roar, choked off. The Child’s first cry. Then gone. Slipping through the holes in my memory like water through shattered glass.The Child tugs my hand. Their fingers are cold. Too cold. "This way, Mama. The wards… they itch less here."Itch. That’s one word for it. The asylum’s magic scrapes against my raw spirit. Wards meant to hide, to protect, recoiling from the damage. From the absence the Alpha left. Sometimes, when the Child’s power flares – a panicked spark to push back a creeping shadow or quiet a sudden scream from the walls – the wards shriek. Like metal tearing. The air tastes like burnt hair.I stumble after them. My legs feel like damp sand. Leadership sits wrong on their small shoulders. Too heavy. I see it in
I can’t move. Can’t think. Can’t remember why my skin feels too tight, why my hands won’t stop shaking. Whose hands are these? The Child tugs at my sleeve. Their fingers are small. Warm. Real. "Mama, we have to go." Mama. That’s me. I think. I try to focus. The world tilts, blurs. The forest—our forest—is wrong. The trees stand too still, their bark blackened, leaves curled like dead fingers. No birds. No wind. Just silence. A silence that presses. The ground beneath us is damp. Not with rain. With blood. Oh god. Memories flicker—claws, screaming, Arthur’s body hitting the earth— No. Don’t think. Don’t— The Child’s grip tightens. "Please." I force my legs to move. One step. Another. The earth squelches underfoot. The trees watch. They watch. Something is coming. I can feel it. A pressure in my skull, a whisper at the edges of my thoughts. Not words. Not yet. Just hunger. "Faster," the Child whispers. We stumble through the corpse of the forest. My visi
The First Alpha is a trapped star going supernova inside me, burning white-hot fury, clawing at the walls of my mind, my soul, the very air. Every breath tastes like ash and ozone, scrapes my lungs raw. The air crackles, alive with frantic energy, snapping blue-white sparks off the bone-white bars that glow with the Child’s desperate power.Hold. Just hold.But the Child… gods, the Child. Their small hand grips mine, slick with sweat or tears or both, trembling violently. I feel their terror, a raw, jagged thing sawing through the psychic link we’re clinging to. Feel the immense, crushing weight of anchoring my soul while the Alpha tries to tear it free. It’s too much. Too big for them. Their little whimpers are knives in my heart. I’m hurting them. I’m killing them."Annnchoooorrr…" The Alpha’s voice is a landslide in my head, grinding, immense. He hurls himself against my consciousness. The bone cage shrieks, a high-pitched fracture spiderwebbing up one bar. Outside, the bleeding fo
The First Alpha stretches my limbs, a predator testing its new skin. My fingers trail through a puddle of seawater. It’s warm. Sticky. Leaves streaks like diluted blood on my skin. His skin now."Fitting," he murmurs, my voice warped into something alien, amused. "This place remembers death."Inside, I’m screaming. A raw, silent thing buried under miles of suffocating dark. Drowning. Always drowning.Then a pinprick. A sliver of light tearing through the oil-slick blackness.Mama. Cold. Arthur’s… angry.The child’s voice. Thin. Frayed. Slipping through the cracks in the Alpha’s control like smoke under a door. A hook snagged deep in my ribs, yanking.They’re here. Close.The Alpha snarls, a psychic vibration that makes my bones ache. He claws at the intrusion, shredding the fragile connection. But the echo lingers. Cold. Angry. He forces my head to turn, scanning the ruined street.There.At the end of the broken pier, where the timbers groan under the weight of the bleeding tide.Art
The sea isn’t right. It moves wrongthink, sluggish, like syrup. The waves don’t crash. They slap against the shore, wet and meaty, leaving streaks of crimson behind. The air reeks of salt and iron, clinging to my skin, my hair, the inside of my mouth. Not my mouth. His. The First Alpha stretches my limbs, testing, always testing. My fingers trail through the water. It parts like oil, staining my skin red. "Pretty," he murmurs with my voice. I scream inside my skull. No sound. Just the endless, suffocating dark. Then a flicker. The child’s voice, thin as spider silk, slipping through the cracks. Mama. We’re close. The Alpha snarls, claws at my thoughts, but the words linger. A hook in my ribs. They’re coming. The village is worse than the shore. Houses sag like rotten teeth. Shadows drip from the rooftops, pooling on the ground, twitching. The Alpha’s presence warps everything. Reality itself is unraveling. And in the center of it all Them. Arthur stands