Caelum - Ribbons

The bond between us already feels wrong in ways I don’t fully understand yet. The second my pet crossed beyond the wards I myself wove, the absence of her was a blade sliding between ribs, severing sinew and tendon. Air no longer existed for my lungs, it nearly fucking dropped me to my knees.

That terrified me more than I’ll ever admit aloud. This silence terrifies me even more.

Null are stories, half-decayed myths muttered by creatures old enough to remember when the realms were still being carved apart. Ancient folk lore with little reference no matter how hard I've looked, that seer is now half blind because she tried to look at whatever filth is branded on Val’s soul. 

I have no answers, and the putrid gut deep feeling I am running out of time.

The universe had finally started moving after sleeping for eons and my pet is the catalyst.

Zarek pulls another projection onto the table, grainy surveillance footage flickers to life between us, static hissing across the image. We are looking at the crossroads in front of the estate gate. It’s just an empty road, until 15 seconds in a sudden distortion tears across the screen before the entire feed dies.

“That’s the moment her signature vanished,” he says.

I stare at the frozen image.

Hours.

She’s been gone for hours.

Val, my pet, my property with her foul mouth and bruised defiance. She who fights, and spits and can survive anything. Val standing in the garden with tears in her eyes because some stubborn, broken part of her recognised beauty and didn’t know what to do with it.

Somebody touched her. Their hands defiling her rage filled beauty, that thought is a slow poison blurring my vision.

Mine.

“You think they know what she is?” I ask quietly.

Zarek hesitates.

Tiny mistake, but I catch it all the same.

“I think somebody knows enough,” he says carefully.

A smile pulls at my mouth, frost begins a creep across the nearest console in delicate white veins.

“Then they’d better pray I find them quickly.”

Zarek studies me for a beat before switching the projections again. The realms blur past one after another.

“We’ve got operatives at every major crossing,” he says. “Fade markets and Arterial Gates, trackers are running scent manually since the magical trail’s dead. If she surfaces, we’ll know.”

“When,” I growl. “When she surfaces.”

I barely hear him anymore, my eyes stay fixed on the center of the table where her signature should be pulsing. I inhale slowly, trying to force control back into my body before the room starts coming apart around us.

“She wants peace, that was no lie,” I say eventually.“I fed her, healed her, let her sleep safely in our home.” A rough laugh drags out of me.

Zarek says nothing.

Memory flashes hot behind my ribs. Her curled in the blankets, the way she looked at me like she hated me and needed me in equal measure.

Beautiful, furious little thing.

“And now,” I murmur, “a dead man thinks they can steal my pet from ME.” I roar the last word, the temperature plummets and all the glass in the room trembles.

Shadows stretch unnaturally long across the floor, writhing at the edges alive and eager.

Zarek takes one slow step backward.

“Caelum.”

“Leave.”

His jaw tightens.

“You should calm down before you—”

“Get. Out.”

That does it, he disappears instantly, swallowed by shadow before the last word even fully leaves my mouth.

The door seals behind him.

One second passes.

Then another.

And the control I’ve been strangling finally slips.

Power tears out of me so violently the entire estate quakes with it. The scream rips from my throat, detonates hard enough to split stone. Crystals explode in showers of silver shards, the floating map fractures overhead, realms flickering wildly as shockwaves slam through the system.

The floor cracks beneath my feet.

Windows implode.

The shadows around me multiply until only monstrous silhouettes remain, crowding the walls wearing my shape with too many teeth and glowing eyes.

I don’t stop it.

I can’t.

Because somewhere out there Ash is furious, fighting, terrified of whoever took her with bloody hands and the thought of her screaming while I stand here powerless turns something ancient and murderous inside me completely feral.

Whoever touched her is already flailed to ribbons.

They just don’t know it yet.