Her body lifted, suspended by the light pouring out of her and circling her, wrapping her in a blinding halo as her hair and dressbleached from black to pure white. She glowed so fiercely that the cave walls turned to mirrors of brilliance, every surface drenched in her radiance.
I tore my gaze from her to Thrax, expecting to see terror, awe or anything, but he wasn’t looking at her at all. His gaze remained fixed on the patch of stone where her body had lain, lifeless and empty, as though the sight of her rising only deepened his ruin.
A strange current swept across my skin, prickling every hair, crawling into my bones until my entire body vibrated with the force of it. The moon’s offspring was growing brighter—too bright to look at. I raised an arm to shield my eyes, but the glare pierced through, searing into me.
It was then I realised...
She wasn’t dying.
She was combusting.
That was why the cave’s walls gleamed like crystal in that photograph. The reason wasn’t age or trick of the stone—it was her. She had caused it. Her light had seeped into the stone of the cave, transforming it the day she perished here, making it shine, preserving her brilliance in its core.
This was where the Soulless Man had ‘killed’ her.
She is going to combust. Right now.
My stomach dropped. I stumbled back a step, dizzy with dread, knowing her kind of brilliance could only end in destruction.
The space seemed to feel it too. The top of the cave groaned, the ground shaking as stone cracked overhead, making way for her ascent. Dust rained down in fine showers, pebbles broke loose, tumbling to the floor.
And Thrax still didn’t move. He sat directly beneath the cave top that was a minute from breaking down, as if waiting and willing the rocks to collapse and bury him. His eyes were vacant and dead, trapped in the hollow of his loss.
I looked up just as she reached her breaking point.
The flare of light erupted from her body, and I screamed, my eyes blinded as my cry tangled with Thrax’s growl. I peeled my eyes open just enough to watch through my fingers as a violent beam shot from her chest and straight into his, striking him down. Thrax collapsed, his body hitting the ground with the force of the light.
I stopped breathing as I stared at him.
The top of the cave finally gave way, chunks of rock splitting free, tumbling around her and burying Thrax in a shower of stone as her light tore upward through the cracked space, climbing and clawing its way into the sky.
“Thrax...” I whispered, panic bolting through me as I moved towards him.
Stopping halfway, my head snapped up.
Through the broken roof of the cave, the sky revealed itself. And for the first time in all existence… it was darkening.
Before that moment, the world had known only daylight. But now, before my eyes, the sky’s light dimmed.
I was witnessing the first time the world experienced darkness.
Her body—no longer flesh but radiance incarnate—continued to rise, a burning star lifting higher, her brilliance staining the black canvas of the newborn sky. She grew brighter still, unbearably so, and suddenly, everywhere went quiet. In that breathless moment, shedetonated.
Her radiance burst open, a tidal wave of blinding power ripping through the skies, tearing the fabric between light and dark. The collision was violent, but in that cataclysmic instant, a star was born.
Nova.
That was the only word I had for her.
She became a living nova, the last flare of a celestial being burning herself out to gift the sky a new name. Her light scattered, and then...she was gone.
Vanished.
Thrax hadn’t killed her—
A sound split the world in half.
It was a wail, sharp and shrieking, like the tearing of the cosmos itself. It pierced so high, so furious, the air shuddered with it.
