A child, no more than six, stands near the despair section. She's been posed with a teddy bear, both crystallized together. Her eyes follow me as I pass. Still aware. Still afraid. After who knows how many years.
"Can they feel?"
"Everything. The crystallization preserves all sensation. They feel the temperature changes, the vibrations when someone walks by. They feel their own bodies frozen in crystal, unable to move, unable to scream, unable to die."
My hands form fists. The silver marks on my skin pulse brighter, responding to my rage.
Something pulls at me. Not physically but deeper. A tugging in my chest, insistent and familiar. Sister instinct. I follow it through the gallery's twisted paths.
We find her in the centerpiece display.
The Collector arranged this section to mimic a garden. Victims posed among crystallized flowers, creating a tableau of preserved beauty. Some stand with arms raised like trees. Others kneel like bushes. Children scattered throughout like decorative stones.
Melara stands at the center.
My legs lock. I can't move, can't breathe, can't think. She wears the dress she left in three years ago. The blue one with small flowers that she'd sewn herself. But she’s glass. Trapped. Except for her gaze.
Her eyes find mine immediately.
Recognition flares in them. Joy. Terror. Desperation. Everything she can't say with her crystallized throat floods through her gaze. Her pupils dilate, trying to communicate something urgent.
My hands shake as I reach out, touching the crystal that was once her cheek. It's warm. Body temperature preserved forever. The surface has a slight give, like flesh turned to flexible glass.
The moment my skin makes contact, something else touches my mind. Not Melara exactly, but her consciousness filtered through crystal and time and whatever power keeps her aware.
Yorika. You came. You finally came.
The words aren't sound but impression, feeling, desperate communication through the gallery's twisted connection.
"I'm here," I whisper. "I'm going to get you out."
Other victims near Melara watch us. A man who might have been a merchant, his hands frozen mid-gesture. A young mother, her arms positioned as if cradling an infant that isn'tthere. An elderly woman whose eyes hold too much wisdom for this fate.
All of them aware. All of them pleading silently.
"How beautiful."
The voice comes from above, below, all around us. The temperature plummets so fast frost forms on his victims. The light changes, becoming sharp and brittle.
The Bone Collector materializes from the gallery itself, stepping out of a wall that parts for him. He's exactly as I remember from his attack on Nezavek's realm. Crystalline perfection in humanoid form, every angle calculated for maximum beauty and wrongness.
"The sister finally arrives," he says, his voice layered with harmonics that shouldn't exist. "I've been waiting so long for this reunion. I even slowed the process for your sister, waiting for you. You'll stand beside her, a matched set. The artist who dreamed and the warrior who failed to save her. Perfect symmetry."
He glides closer, each step leaving frost patterns on the black glass floor. His pale blue eyes study us with the detached interest of an artist examining his work.
"And you brought the Shadow Walker. How delightful." His gaze shifts to me, and his perfect lips curve. "Oh, he's marked you thoroughly, hasn't he? I can smell him all over you. Inside you."
His nostrils flare delicately.
"You spent last night rutting. How many times? Three? Four? Such desperation. Such hunger." His laugh sounds wrong, too many frequencies at once. "Did he tell you what his marking means? You'll never be free of him now. Even if he dies, you'll carry his essence forever. You'll never be fully human again."
"Good," I say.
That stops him. His perfect features shift to confusion. "Good?"
"I didn't want to be fully human anyway. Humans are prey. I prefer being a predator."
His laugh returns, delighted now. "Oh, you're magnificent. I see why Melara was so proud of you." He gestures to her. "She talked about you constantly in the beginning. Before her throat crystallized. Such faith that her big sister would save her."
