Chapter fifty two: she's my beginning or my end

Finnick's POV 

The voice from the sky had vanished, but the air still blew with its lurking power. Freya and I stood frozen for a long time, watching the scar in the cloud slowly colliding as though it were some unseen hand trying to bring the world back together. The sun hadn't fully risen but the sky above was already garnished with crimson.

"Did you hear that?" Freya questioned, her voice quiet,calm and uncertain. She still hadn’t let go of my finger, as if the sound from above had somehow stolen the ground from under her feet.

I nodded slowly. "I heard it."

"I thought it was…" She paused, moving her head as if trying to make sense of it. "That wasn’t Veyrix, was it?"

"No," I said firmly. "This is something else, old."

"Old," she retorted. her voice drifted. "What if it’s... one of the ones we were never meant to face?"

I reached out, pulling a strand of hair from her face, then cupping her cheek. Her skin was still warm from sleep, but there was an unspoken weariness in her eyes. A shadow I couldn’t banish.

"It doesn’t matter," I said. "We’ll face it together. Like we always do."

She didn’t argue with me, though I could see the doubt pulling at her. It wasn’t just the voice or the rift in the sky or even the chilling words we had heard, it was the weight of everything that had happened, the pieces that didn’t fit. The boy and the prophecy. The strange bond between us that now felt more like a curse than a blessing.

"I don’t know how much more I can take," she whispered, more to herself than to me.

I stepped closer pulling her against me, holding her as though I could absorb some of the burden she carried. "You’re not alone in this, Freya."

She inhaled deeply and when she pulled back slightly, I saw the hint of something new in her eyes. Something fierce and determined. It was the same fire I had first seen in her when she stood against the rogue wolves, when she had fought for her people, when she had chosen to live after everything had torn her apart.

"Where do we start?" she asked, her voice steadier now, though it still trembled with an edge of uncertainty.

I didn’t have all the answers but I had one instinct. One direction. "We head east, to the Hollow Glen."

"The Glen?" Her brow furrowed but her lips twisted into a small, tired smile. "We just came from there, Finnick. What more can we learn?"

"I don’t know," I said honestly. "But the words that oracle spoke still echo in my mind. 'The mate you cherish is your end or your salvation.' We need to understand what that means."

Freya didn’t speak for a long moment, her gaze drifting back to the distant horizon. The sky still shimmered with the remaining of those impossible rift but there was no sign of the voice that had spoken.

"I’ve always known there was something more to my fate," she finally said, so softly I almost couldn’t hear her over the wind. "Something I wasn’t meant to understand. But now...it’s as if the universe itself is forcing me to see the truth."

"You don’t have to see it all, Freya" I said, my thumb brushing her jawline. "You only have to take the next step and I’ll be right beside you. Whatever it is."

Her eyes locked onto mine and for a moment, it was as though the world outside didn’t exist. There was only us and our tangled fates, our shared history, the bond we could never quite escape. And in that silence, I realized just how much I feared losing her. How much I feared that whatever was coming might tear us apart, just like the rift in the sky was slowly ripping the world itself.

"I love you," she whispered, her voice too cold, too fragile it made my chest ache.

I didn’t need to utter it back, though I did. But words were useless in the face of the wind. I pressed my lips to her forehead, breathing in the scent of her, steadying myself in the only thing that felt certain anymore.

"I love you too," I murmured.

We raced quickly, following the tough way toward the Hollow Glen. Neither of us said much along the way. The air moved with an unspoken tension that neither of us could escape. Every now and then, I would stare at Freya, her figure dark against the growing light, her mind clearly elsewhere. The farther we move, the more distant she seemed.

I knew she was still pushing, Striving hard with the memory of the boy she had protected only to see him vanish into the wind. The boy who had called her Mother for the first time and now being taken away from her, leaving nothing but that whisper alone, the cruel sting of alot.

She didn’t ask about him as we walked. She didn’t need to.

But I would be deceiving myself if I said that grief wasn’t eating at me too hard. It wasn’t just the boy, it was everything about The prophecy, the mark on her chest. The voice hung in the sky, all of it pulled together in some knot, unknowable one that I couldn’t untie, no matter how hard I tried.

And then, as if the universe itself had decided to add another last, final test, the sky creeped open again. But this time, it wasn’t a gentle tear. It was violent like a thunderstorm, the very fabric of reality as if the world itself was holding its breath.

Freya halted in her tracks, her hand instinctively reaching for mine. "It’s happening again," she screamed.

I nodded, my palms gripping tight on her fingers. "We need to hurry. The Glen is almost close now."

When we neared the corners of the Hollow Glen, it felt different. The ancient trees gnarled, seemed to lean, as if watching us. The wind was thick and blew with magic, heavy like the smell of rain dust before a storm. Freya stared at me but all I could read was the fear in her eyes.

"Do you feel that?" she asked.

I nodded, pulling her closer to me "Whatever we’re about to face right now, we do it together freya."

We tracked deeper into the glen, where the trees grew heavy and thick, their branches rough and turning like long, bony fingers. I could feel the magic, the power lurking in the air, the weight of all ancient spirits, the murmurings of forgotten gods. But there was something darker,sense that we weren’t alone.

I didn’t like the feeling in my pride, the feeling that we were being watched. The wind paused and everything grew silent.

And then, from the clearing between the trees, a figure emerged and stepped forward.

She was an old woman, her skin dull and cracked, hair was white, braided into a crown around her head and her eyes gleamed black like an eerie amber, fixed on Freya with an energy that sent a cold shiver down my spine.

The woman’s voice was low and deep like the earth itself had spoken.

"You came for answers," she shut back, her glance flickered to me for a second "But... you already know the truth."

Freya froze, her hand slipped away from mine as she matched forward, her stare never leaving the woman’s eyes.

"What truth?" she demanded.

The woman smiled, but it wasn’t a kind smile. It was cold.

"The truth you are unwilling to face," she said. "That the child was never meant to be yours. And that your love for him, your bond is the curse of this world."

I reached for Freya but she shifted away, her eyes widened with the force, pull of the revelation.

"Your love is the breaking point," the woman continued, her voice raw and tough. "It will either save or destroy all that you hold in and around you my little one."

The woman’s eyes hardened and the world around us spinning, trembling. “Time is running out. The route you're taking will only lead to a beginning or an end but only you can choose the right one.”