“Ezekial…” Julien warns, but he doesn’t say no.
No one does.
A fresh start. That’s what I can give her. I’ll erase all of her memories and give her a new life far, far from this. From them. From whatever hell my father’s followers inflicted upon her.
“She won’t remember,” I whisper. “Not this. Not us, or them. She’ll get to start over.”
Prospero stiffens. “Ezekial—”
I cup her shuddering face in my bloody palms, and without hesitation, without listening, I step into her mind.
Blockades. Walls. Endless mazes. I can’t access anything.
Her memories are buried so deep, tightly locked away in a chasm of shimmering webs and shadowed stone. Light pulses through the cracks like veins of molten gold, winding through the dark.
Just like mine.
Because we are the same, her and me. She and I. Light and dark entwined.
The further I push, the more I see it, the way her mind flickers between opposing forces: warm glows of silvery white clashing against oily swirls of ink and shadow.
It’s beautiful chaos.
Powerful.
She wasn’t built to belong to either realm. She shouldn’t exist.
And yet, here she is.
Just. Like. Me.
I wish I had more time, I wish I could just speak with her—
But she’s dying, still convulsing in my arms. There is no time. I need to erase the compulsion and with it, everything attached to it.
Everything.
I push deeper and deeper until I feel something pull. A thread unravelling—
Outside of her mind, I can still hear and feel. Sai gasps, his markings explode, the heat grazing my skin, then they dim, snuffed out like a dying flame deprived of oxygen.
Julien mutters something in another tongue, gripping my shoulder tensely.
But I keep pushing, and the thread keeps unwinding.
“Ezekial—”Kane’s voice, distant yet urgent. “Stop… don’t…”
His fingers wrap around mine. He’s trying to pull me back, away from her, but I can’t. I can’t let her die!
Then I feel it, that thread, taut and invisible, the one winding through her and…us.Not just me, but the five of us—binding us together.
I still.
There.
I should’ve noticed it before.
She’s there.
