Elara The silence isn’t real. It’s a lie—thin, fragile, trembling on the edge of a scream. Kael’s hands are warm on my face, anchoring me, grounding me like roots in a storm. His breath ghosts against my lips, heavy with desperation. “Elara,” he murmurs, voice rough silk. “You’re here. Stay with me.” Stay. As if I could. As if the thing inside me hasn’t already sunk its teeth so deep I can’t tell where I end and it begins. For a heartbeat—just one—I almost believe him. I almost fold into the warmth of his grip, let myself drown in the dark ocean of his gaze. Gods, it would be so easy. To let him hold me. To let him fix what I can’t. But then I feel it. The bond. It hums like a chain of starlight coiled around my soul, threads of shadow winding through my blood, pulling, binding, caging. And something inside me—something wild and feral and older than the bones of the earth—snaps. The scream rips out of me, raw and endless, shattering the fragile quiet. The ground splinters
Elara I should feel everything. The surge of power ripping through my veins like molten suns. The storm screaming above, the ground fracturing beneath my feet. The threads of reality—gods, I can see them—splintering like glass each time I breathe. I should feel alive. Instead, I feel… weightless. Hollow. Like the girl I was—the one who bled, who begged, who loved—is nothing but an echo in a cavern that no longer needs her. Does that frighten you? The voice hums through my bones, rich and warm as wine, curling around my mind like smoke. Or does it feel like coming home? I want to say no. I want to scream it, to claw the answer into the fractured ground. But the truth is already blooming inside me like poison flowers. It feels good. Too good. “Everything,” I whisper. And the word tastes like a vow and a death sentence all at once. Kael hears it. I see the way it cuts through him, sharp as a blade to the gut. He hides it well—the monster always does—but I know the twitch in h
Kael Power like this should not exist. Not in the hands of gods, not in the bones of worlds—and definitely not in her. And yet, here she stands. No—floats. Suspended in a cyclone of light and shadow, hair whipping in a storm no one else can feel, eyes burning like twin suns devoured by night. The mark of the Primordial carves itself across her skin, not crude branding but living script, glowing, pulsing with each heartbeat like a second language written in her blood. Mine. The thought slices sharp through my chest, primal and raw. Because I know what this is. What she is now. Unbound. And gods help me, it’s beautiful. Terrifying—but beautiful. Lucious doesn’t see that. His shield splinters as another wave of her power slams into the ground, ripping the fractured crystal into molten shards. His voice cracks like broken steel. “Elara—stop this! Whatever it promised you, it’s a lie!” Lie? The laugh almost tears free from my throat. Because for once, the shadows aren’t lying.
Elara The world returns in pieces. Not all at once—not like waking from sleep—but in sharp, searing shards that cut through the dark still clinging to me. A heartbeat first, slow and thunderous. Mine, yet not mine. Then a breath that tastes like fire and frost at once, curling through my lungs in ribbons of smoke and starlight. And then—light. Blinding, endless light that isn’t gold, isn’t black, but both—woven so tightly they’ve become something new. Something no god ever dared shape. I’m lying on a floor of fractured crystal, cracks glowing under my spine like molten veins. Above me, the void is gone, replaced by a vault of storm clouds lit from within, lightning tearing in silence across skies that shouldn’t exist. And I feel— Gods. I feel everything. The air trembles where my skin touches it. The ground hums with my pulse. My power… it’s not power anymore. It’s life. It’s law. Every thread of it coils around me, through me, beyond me, like a crown I can’t see but k
Elara The void hums. Not with sound—sound can’t exist in this nothing—but with presence. It presses against my skin like a second heartbeat, a weightless, endless thrum that coils through my veins and whispers along my bones. I stand barefoot on nothing, yet I don’t fall. My breath fogs like frost, though there’s no air. My magic… gods, my magic isn’t inside me anymore. It’s everywhere. A tide that tore free and never came back, suspended around me in ripples of gold and black, burning brighter than stars. Lucious stands to my left, blade still clutched in his fist, light bleeding from his armor like it’s the only sun in this darkness. His eyes lock on mine, wide—not with anger. Not anymore. With something worse. Fear. Kael stands to my right, shadows curling off him in violent waves. He doesn’t look afraid. He looks… hungry. Like the void is feeding him, filling him, the way light fills Lucious. His gaze drags over me slow, possessive, devouring, until it snags on the sph
Elara Light and shadow crash like waves around me, colliding so violently the sanctum shudders underfoot. Gold arcs against black, holy flame slashing through tendrils of living night. The air reeks of scorched marble and something metallic—blood, maybe. My blood? I can’t tell. I should move. I should fight. Instead, I stand rooted in the eye of the storm, my pulse hammering as I watch Kael and Lucious tear the world apart for me. Kael is all motion and shadow, a beast unchained. Darkness coils at his back, wings of night beating against the sanctum’s radiant vaults. His strikes are brutal, raw—less technique, more devastation. Every step he takes cracks the floor, every swing of his blade devours light. Lucious answers with precision and wrath. Gold burns brighter where Kael’s shadows touch, his armor flaring like a small sun. His sword—Solara’s own steel—sings as it cleaves through the air, every slash a hymn of annihilation. Gods. If I blink, I’ll lose them in the blur. And