Chapter Nineteen: Eclipse

The sky was breaking. Not just cracking—not just splintering like fractured glass—but shattering, wide and violent, as if some monstrous hand had torn open the seams of the world and let the apocalypse pour through. Red lightning veined across the heavens. Black storm clouds churned, boiling like living smoke. Ash fell in thick sheets, sticking to my skin, burning my throat with every breath. The air tasted like iron and fire—like the inside of a furnace that had been fed corpses and nightmares. Flaming fragments of the sky—literal shards of it—fell around us in blistering streaks, hissing as they hit the ground and smoking like dying stars. The forest trembled under every impact, trees bending, earth shuddering beneath my knees.

And through that chaos, through the roaring of the storm and the cracking of reality itself, the only thing I could focus on was the boy kneeling in front of me.

Charlie.

His silhouette flickered with the glow of the burning sky above us. Ash clung to his curls, streaking them gray, as though the world had aged him in seconds. His cheek was smeared with blood—my doing. My stomach twisted at the sight of it. At the sight of him. Bruised. Hurt. Terrified. Because of me.

Every cut on his arms. Every mark on his skin. Every tremble in his voice.

Me.

The Wicked’s poison burned through my veins, crawling across my nerves like molten wire. My thoughts slammed into each other—one moment a command, dark and violent:

Tear him apart. Finish the bond. Break him.

The next, a whisper—my voice, my real voice—broken and desperate:

Run. Save him. Get him away. Before you lose yourself.

The two instincts collided violently, a war waging inside my skull. I pressed a shaking hand to my temple. It felt like my head might split in half, like some creature inside me was trying to claw its way out. A low groan escaped my throat as I doubled forward, clutching my arm. The dark veins across it throbbed in time with my pulse, each beat a jolt of pain sharp enough to blur my vision. Charlie lurched closer.

Even when he should’ve run. Even when I felt the darkness in me reach for him, hungry and feral, he still came closer.

“Carter,” he said—my name breaking on his tongue, fragile and rough. His voice was trembling, but steady enough that it might’ve held together the whole forest. “Look at me.”

I forced my gaze up.

His blue eyes locked onto mine—not with the fear he should’ve felt, not with the disgust that I feared—but with something far worse: worry. Hope. Stubborn, stupid, relentless hope.

Hope I didn’t deserve.

Ash drifted between us, glowing orange in the firelight. Behind him, a shard of the sky slammed into the ground, sending a shockwave of hot wind washing over us, blowing his hair back but he didn’t flinch. He was focused only on me. Only on the monster in front of him.

And it broke something in me.

He looked like this because of me. The bruises mottling his jaw.  The cut trailing down his cheekbone. The faint limp in his step. The panic he tried so hard to hide. All of it—

Me.

I felt sick. I felt hollow. I felt human for half a second—and that single moment of clarity hit harder than any pain the Wicked had ever inflicted.

“Charlie…” My voice cracked, the syllables scraping raw through my throat. I reached out, though my hand shook violently. “You need to leave. If you stay—if you stay with me—you’ll die.”

There was no drama in the words. No bluff. No fear tactic. Just the truth. I was losing myself. Losing control.

Losing the battle inside me.

And if the darkness fully took over—if the Wicked’s voice drowned out what little of me was left—Charlie would be the first thing I destroyed.

His breath hitched—but he didn’t pull away. He didn’t move at all. Instead, he reached out, gripping my hand as though he planned to anchor me to the world by sheer force. His fingers tightened around mine, and even though his touch burned against the fever raging in my skin, I clung to it like dying men cling to life.

“I’m not leaving you,” Charlie said. His voice cracked, but his eyes didn’t waver. “I’d rather die with you than leave you to die alone.”

If the sky had crashed entirely to the earth in that moment, I would’ve felt it less than I felt those words. A hot, ripping pain tore through my chest—so powerful it stole the breath right out of my lungs. Something behind my ribs bowed inward, then outward, like a breach waiting to happen. Tears welled in my eyes—unbidden, unstoppable. The heat of them burned worse than the curse in my veins. Charlie’s light—his presence, his voice—pressed against the darkness swelling inside me like sunlight pushing into a cave. For the first time since the Wicked had touched me, I felt something break through the haze. Something clean. Something that was mine.

A memory. A faint, distant echo of who I used to be. Laughing with him in the gym.

Tackling him on the football field. Him shoving a Gatorade bottle at me after practice, saying I smelled like a diseased raccoon. Him rolling his eyes when I ate three donuts for breakfast. Him cheering so loud when I made varsity that the coach told him to shut up.

Him. Always him.

It crushed me. It revived me. It destroyed me. And it made the truth unbearable.

Because I knew what had to come next.

And it would kill him. And it would destroy me. He squeezed my hand again, desperate, grounding, shaking.

“Carter,” he whispered, leaning closer even though the ground trembled beneath him, even though the firestorm rained around us. “Stay with me. Fight it.”

I wanted to. God, I wanted to more than anything. But the dark veins in my arm pulsed again—harder, harsher.

My breath hitched as another surge of power rippled under my skin. The Wicked’s voice rose like a tide:

Finish him. Take him. Complete the binding.

My nails dug into Charlie’s hand. He didn’t pull away.

“Carter,” he said again, eyes shining. “Come back to me.”

The words twisted inside me—both a lifeline and a dagger. Because I knew I couldn’t.

Because I knew what was coming next. Because the darkness inside me was beginning to peak, pressure building like a storm about to split the horizon open. My pulse pounded violently.

My vision swam. The firelight blurred into streaks of red and black. Charlie kept talking—pleading, pushing against my unraveling mind—but the Wicked was louder.

Its power surged through me, ripping at the edges of my sanity. Every thought fractured, breaking apart like splintered ice. Pain shot through my chest, my spine, my skull, forcing a strangled gasp from my throat.

I doubled over again, clutching my ribs.

Charlie reached for me—

—and a jolt of dark lightning exploded from my skin, knocking him backward into the dirt.

He hit the ground hard, sliding across dead leaves and soot. My heart lurched. Not with the Wicked. Not with the curse. With fear. Real fear.

“Charlie—” I choked out, holding out a hand toward him, fingers trembling violently. “Don’t—don’t get close. I can’t—control—”

But he ignored me. Of course he did. He pushed himself up, coughing, stumbling to his knees, then his feet. His eyes were bright with terror—but not of me. Of losing me. And that was somehow worse.

He took a step forward.

My entire body convulsed. The curse surged. My breath ripped out of me in a broken, strangled sound. The Wicked roared in my skull, clawing at my mind.

Take him. Bind him. Kill him.

“STOP!” I shouted, voice splitting. “Charlie, stop—please—don’t—”

But he kept moving. Even as the ground cracked beneath me. Even as flames spiraled around my arms. Even as my veins darkened, crawling up my neck, reaching toward my face.

Even as the Wicked swelled within me, hungry, powerful, unstoppable. He reached me anyway. He grabbed my face between his shaking hands. And for a split second—just one, fragile heartbeat—the world went quiet.

The sky. The storm. The fire. The destruction. The Wicked.

All of it—

Silenced.

Because Charlie touched me. Because he still believed in me. Because he saw me.

And in that single moment of stillness, with ash drifting like snow between us, I knew—

The only way I could save him was to make sure he never touched me again.

Even if it broke him. Even if it destroyed me. Even if it killed us both.

I swallowed hard, tears burning down my face.

“Charlie,” I whispered, voice shaking with the enormity of what I was about to do. “…I know what I have to do.”

His eyes widened. “Carter—don’t.”

But it was too late.

Because the sky above us cracked again—its largest piece yet—falling straight toward where we knelt.

And everything inside me surged with a terrifying, inevitable certainty.

I was going to lose myself.And the only thing I could do before that happened—

was save him.