A woman with flaming red hair standing in a glass castle with a vial of blood and a venomous smile.
“Behold your past, for it is the key to your future,” Atropos warned.
“You are the only hope to right the wrongs. You are the hope that her sacrifice left behind. Our world started in your hands, and it is in your hands that we will be saved.” Lachesis’ voice was still gentle but growing more urgent.
Brooks nodded frantically, still unsure but eager to find her. To save her. Toclaimher.
“You must embrace your darkness, for you are one. Chaos resides within– all you must do is let go.”
Violent flashbacks rocketed behind his eyelids as his hand flew to his chest, rubbing the fabric that covered the bandages still wrapped around his torso. The bandages that held his skin together from when he’d nearly carved himself to pieces. When his passenger tried to remind him of who he was. Whotheywere.
“Chaos,” he mumbled. “Embrace my Chaos.”
With a thumb to his forehead and a whispered breath across his lips, Lachesis pushed her magic against his own and threw him from the Fates field of asphodels.
“Igavemyselftoyou so that you may wake and fix what he has broken,” Lytta’s soft alto filtered through his waking thoughts.
He didn’t know how long it took to come back, but when his racing heart pushed blood and awareness through him, Brooks knew that he was not the same as when he’d gone under.
A familiar presence pressed against his consciousness and, rather than shut it out, he took a breath and embraced it.
His passenger, Brooks realized, was no less an intruder in his mind than he was. It was a part of him that he kept locked away. A broken fragment of a power he used to wield with ease until part of it was stolen and used against him.
“Welcome home,” he spoke aloud.
Lytta sacrificed her life at an altar of worship to heal some of his broken pieces. It was a bold move. She couldn’t have known how much of his essence she contained within her fractured mind, but it was the risk of a desperate, tired goddess.
Brooks opened his azure eyes and found himself standing amongst the stars. No longer did he gaze from a rooftop as a broken man. His place had been here all along, he’d just been unwilling to face it.
The darkness flowed through his fingertips and rubbed against his leg like a purring cat welcoming him home.He swirled it, letting it go in between his fingers and around his arms, happy to be entangled in his space again. It feltright.
Black stained his fingertips and climbed through the veins of his hands. A certain familiarity wound its way through his mind, like puzzle pieces locking into place.
Chaos.
Chaos so powerful that it blackened his blood and bled into his hands where the shadows lay in waiting.
Pandora knelt before him, her head bowed subserviently at his feet.
“Stand,” he said simply.
She did as he asked but did not raise her eyes from the floor.
Brooks placed a black stained finger under her jaw and urged her empty, petaled eyes up to meet his gaze.
“What do you wish me to call you?’
“Whatever you please, Prince.”
He frowned, displeased by her lack of self-worth and identity, even though she had been brave enough to make the ultimate sacrifice.
“You don’t have to be afraid of him anymore. You are at peace.”
Starlight highlighted her face as black tears wetted her cheeks.
“What do you wish to be called so that I may honor your sacrifice?”
A sob escaped her lips as lines creased her forehead. She took a moment to breathe and pull herself together before she spoke.
