“That depends on your definition of bad.”
“Death. Death is my definition of bad.”
“Then yes, it might be bad.” They touched my marks, and I saw their fingers come away with shimmering residue, like pollen. Their expression shifted to something like concern. “You’re approaching the first threshold much faster than I anticipated.”
“What threshold?”
“The point where you must choose: control the power or let it control you.” The Sage’s voice was grave. “Most marked ones have weeks to reach this stage. You have hours.”
“Why? What’s different about me?”
“Your grandmother suppressed your inheritance for your entire life. The marks were dormant, waiting, building pressure like water behind a dam.” They traced the golden lines spreading across my skin. “When they finally manifested, all that accumulated power tried to emerge at once. And then you crossed realms, which forced them to activate to keep you alive. And then I touched them, which opened the floodgates further.”
“So you’re saying this is your fault?” I said, hearing the panic in my voice.
“I’m saying the marks were always going to consume you quickly. I simply accelerated the inevitable by a matter of days.” The Sage’s green eyes met mine. “Your body is trying to transform all at once rather than gradually. The threshold that should have taken months is happening in hours.”
“Can you stop it?”
“No. I can only help you survive it.”
“I choose control,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.
“Easy to say. Harder to do when the power is eating you from the inside out, when every cell is screaming to become something other than human.” They looked at Kaelren, who had appeared at the edge of the training circle. “She needs to pass the threshold tonight. If she doesn’t, the transformation will take her whether she’s ready or not.”
Kaelren kept his distance, careful not to let our marks touch again. “How long does she have?”
“Hours. Maybe less. The combat training accelerated it further—each time she used the Root, it claimed more of her.”
“And if she fails?”
The Sage’s expression was unreadable. “Then she becomes something else. Something the realm needs but that might not be you anymore. Pure Root incarnate, without the human consciousness to guide it.”
“So I’d be alive but not… me?”
“You’d be a force of nature. Powerful. Necessary. But no longer Elle.”
***
“You’re still thinking like a human,” the Sage said after my latest failure left a crater in the grove floor.
“I am human!”
“No. You were human. Now you’re becoming something else.”
“I don’t want to become something else!” The words came out as a scream, and suddenly I was crying, really crying, for the first time since I’d fallen through that damned mirror. “I want to go home! I want my grandmother back! I want to wake up in my bed and have this all be some grief-induced nightmare! I didn’t ask for any of this!”
The grove went silent. Even Sarnyx stopped sharpening her thorns to stare.
“I had a life,” I continued, my voice breaking. “A normal, boring, human life. I drew pictures for romance novels and drank Dr Pepper and complained about my ex-fiance. Now I’m in some nightmare realm where everything wants to kill me, wearing magic tattoos that are apparently eating me from the inside out, and you’re all acting like this is normal!”
“It is normal,” Kaelren said coldly. “For us. You’re the aberration.”
“Thanks. That’s really helpful.”
“I’m not trying to help. I’m trying to make you understand that your wants are irrelevant. The marks chose you. That choice is final.”
“How does it work then? The choosing?”
