Sadness fills her eyes.
It's so profound, somotherly, that something in my chest flickers despite the void. The incantations on my skin pulse inresponse, their glow intensifying as if they recognize something I don't.
Her hands rise slowly, telegraphing the movement as if she's afraid of startling me. Cool fingers cup my translucent cheeks, her touch somehow solid against my insubstantial flesh. The contact sends ripples through my ghost-form, incantations flaring where her skin meets mine.
She examines me with eyes that see more than they should.
Her gaze lingers on my neck first—tracing something there that I can't see but she clearly can. Something that makes her expression shift with recognition, with approval, with an edge of protective fierceness that doesn't match her otherwise gentle demeanor.
Then her eyes move to my chest, finding something else. Another mark. Another invisible claim that she reads like text on a page.
My shoulder comes next. Then my wrist. Then my rib—a location that makes her smile softly, sadly, as if the mark there carries particular significance.
Finally, her gaze drops to my stomach.
She pauses there longer than anywhere else, those impossible eyes narrowing with intrigue that bleeds into something almost likehope. Whatever she sees—or doesn't see—makes her draw a slow breath before looking back at my face.
"Six out of seven," she whispers.
The words are tinged with awe, with reverence, with the particular wonder of someone witnessing something they'd only ever hoped was possible.
"What do you mean?" The question escapes before I can consider whether I want to know the answer. "Six of what?"
"Bond marks."
The phrase triggers nothing. No recognition, no understanding, no convenient flood of memories explainingwhat she's talking about. I look down at my translucent body, searching for marks, for anything beyond the pulsing incantations that fight to keep me coherent.
All I see is void made vaguely person-shaped, glowing with magic that refuses to let me fade.
"Why would I need seven marks?" I ask, the concept feeling simultaneously foreign and essential. "Or bond marks, or whatever they are?"
The woman—mother, something whispers, but I can't trust whispering things I don't remember learning—takes my translucent hands in her solid ones. The contact grounds me in ways I don't fully understand, the incantations calming their frantic pulsing to something slower, steadier.
"The Seven were but pawns," she begins, her voice taking on the cadence of prophecy, of ancient knowledge passed down through bloodlines, "placed in positions destined for the seven who will bond to the destined heir of wickedness."
Riddles.
The word surfaces with irritation that's almost genuine. She's speaking in riddles, beautiful phrases that mean nothing to someone who can't remember enough to decode them.
"One would be deemed worthy of two," she continues, eyes distant as if reading words carved into air only she can see, "woven on opposite spectrums. One destined to rule the surface, one destined to rule the underlying."
"I don't understand."
The admission comes out small, hollow, a ghost admitting ignorance about her own existence. It feels wrong to not understand, deeply and fundamentally wrong, as if understanding used to be something I was good at.
The woman's smile turns sad in ways that make my chest ache despite the void.
"I know, sweetheart."
Sweetheart.
The endearment cracks something I didn't know was frozen. The word is simple, common, the kind of thing parents say to children without thinking. But it lands in my hollow chest like a stone in still water, sending ripples through the void that make my incantations flare with desperate brilliance.
When was the last time someone called me sweetheart?
The question carries no answer, only the ache of absence, of something needed and never received.
She pulls me into her arms.
