The light changes first. Not darker, just ... wrong. Like the sun forgot what color it’s supposed to be. Trees cast shadows that lean too far east. Birds fall quiet mid-song.
I check the knife strapped to my thigh. The silver vial of protective herbs Lyanna pressed into my hand yesterday. The small charm Rafe left on my doorstep without explanation.
I should have told them. Maybe. Probably.
No. This is mine. My risk. My call.
Silverwood appears ahead like it’s always been waiting, the main street empty under twilight.
The cobblestones under my feet pulse once. Twice. A rhythm like breathing.
“I hear you,” I whisper, not out loud. The words stay trapped behind my teeth.
I reach The Imaginarium—still and silent as a tomb. The book I touched sits displayed in the window, its spine cracked, pages slightly fanned. Like someone opened it after I left.
Beneath the pavement, tether lines of energy flex and twist. Reconnecting. Rebuilding. The convergence isn’t just waking up—it’sreorganizing.
My throat tightens. Every instinct screams to back away, return to the compound, tell Dane what I’ve found.
Dane. The name sparks guilt, then immediate anger at myself. Since when do I consult anyone? Since when does Nova, the perpetual outsider, need permission?
Since you kissed him beside the treeline. Since his hands left marks on your skin you can still feel. Since his cock—
No. Focus.
I draw the blade at my thigh. The metal gleams dully, absorbing rather than reflecting the strange half-light. I press the edge to my palm, clinical and precise. Blood wells dark against my skin.
This is the catalyst. This is the key.
I kneel and press my bleeding hand to the cobblestones. For a heartbeat, nothing happens. Then the blood seeps downward—too fast, too hungry. The stone drinks it in, like its parched earth.
The pavement shudders. A sound vibrates through the street, too low to hear, but I feel it in my bones. My magic answers, rising up from my core, electric and raw.
The world pulls tight around me like a held breath. Then the sidewalk cracks. And the Fade opens its mouth.
The pavement unravels. Stone peels back like skin, revealing not earth but a pulsing membrane of silver-black energy. My blood disappears into it, and something reaches back.
I don’t fall in. I sink. First my ankles, then my calves. Cold spreads up my legs, not painful but invasive, like ice water flooding my veins.
“Shit.” My voice sounds flat, dimensionless. A single syllable that doesn’t travel.
The street around me warps. Buildings stretch upward, storefronts melting like wax. The Imaginarium’s windows turn liquid, books inside floating free of shelves. I brace myself against nothing, my hands grasping empty air.
My knife is still in my hand, but the metal feels wrong—humming at a frequency that makes my teeth ache. I grip it tighter anyway.
Then gravity shifts. Not disappearing, but changing direction. My body pulls sideways, then backward, then down again—but “down” isn’t the street anymore. Down is ... everywhere.
I close my eyes. Bad mistake. The darkness behind my lids swirls with fractured images, each one cutting like glass:
—A child with violet eyes running through silver trees—
—Faelan’s voice, a whispered command I can almost understand—
—Dane’s hands on my skin—
I force my eyes open. The world has transformed completely.
I stand in a vast space that isn’t a room, isn’t a field, isn’t anything with definable boundaries. The “floor” beneath my feet glimmers like black water but remains solid. Above, where sky should be, sheets of color ripple and fold—deep purples, midnight blues, flashes of silver that might be stars.
