He lunges.
His hand closes around my throat before I can react, dragging me off balance. The room explodes into motion—my panic, the darkness, his grip—everything colliding at once. I gasp and claw at his wrist, but his hold is like iron.
“You think naming it frees you?” he snarls. “Fear must be beaten.”
He throws me, landing a punch to my jaw.
My back slams into something unseen, and the white-hot pain that flashes takes my breath away. I push off instinctively, dodging just as his boot crashes where my head had been. Splinters of shadowed floor scatter like shards.
I stumble, breath ragged, but Ryder’s training echoes in my muscles whether I want it there or not—how to brace, how to pivot, how to strike. He taught me the shape of violence, no doubt the same violence the General taught him. I use it now.
I duck under his next blow and drive my fist into his ribs. It’s like hitting steel, but he grunts, though only a small sound, it was very real.
Hecanbe hurt.
I move again. Faster and harder. Elbowing his jaw, kneeing his side, and shoving him back with everything I have. He barely staggers, but the darkness stirs behind him, as if reacting to the cracks forming in the image. A sign that it’s working.
“Isn’t it funny that I’m your biggest fear?”he growls, a sick, reverberating laughter, grabbing my arm and wrenching it behind me. Pain tears up my shoulder. His breath is hot against my ear.“Still scared of me even in death.”
Rage ignites through the fear.
“I beat you once,” I hiss. “I’ll beat you again.”
I twist, slamming my heel into his knee and tearing myself free.
He falters. It’s enough.
I seize the advantage, launching at him with a force born from weeks of swallowed nightmares. Blow after blow, I drive him back until he stumbles into the centre of the void.
We collide one final time—his hand reaching for me, mine striking out—
And then he stops.
A jagged crack splits down his face, glowing hot and bright. Another split across his chest. And another. Light pours from him like molten gold.
“No,” he snarls, voice warping, shredding.“This isn’t over.”
“It was over the day I killed you in the mountain,” I say, breath shaking. “Fear isn’t beaten. It’s faced until it breaks.”
The cracks finally erupt, and light floods from his body, bursting outward. He explodes into a cloud of glowing ash that scatters into the darkness, dissolving until there’s nothing left—not a shadow, not a breath, not a whisper of him.
Only silence.
For the first time, it isn’t suffocating. It isn’t watching. It simply… is.
The darkness peels away like wet paint, retreating until the real cottage rushes back around me. The slits seal, and the walls release their breath.
I stand alone in the middle of the room, shaking, lungs burning, heart hammering—but alive.
The cottage shrieks as its walls twist, and floorboards rip apart like the house is being bulldozed. Light floods every crack, bright and blinding.
And then I am thrown backwards, fast and hard, hitting into cold mud.
Arms reach me the moment the world stops spinning. Ryder’s voice is the first thing that cuts through the ringing in my ears—frantic and scraped raw from shouting my name. Nala gets to me next, her arms wrapping around me with such force that I feel her shaking, like she isn’t sure I’m solid. River drops to his knees at my side, breath shuddering, eyes wild and stormy, no longer able to hide whatever he’s been burying all this time.
Ryder’s hands close around my shoulders, firm but trembling as he tilts my face toward his. His eyes race over me,checking, counting, panicking, as if he expects me to vanish the moment he blinks.
“Asha… what did it do to you?” His voice fractures on the last word. “Tell me you’re okay—please—”
