Or might not.
I felt Ben’s electromagnetic signature spike with sudden decision. He was moving, putting himself between me and Rosenthal’s forces.
No, I tried to say. Stay safe.
But the words came out as fire, as patterns of heat that only the phoenix understood. I was losing language. Losing the ability to communicate in human ways.
Losing Sidney.
Eighty-one percent. Eighty. Seventy-nine.
The corruption was burning faster now, my merged consciousness learning how to target the shadow veins more efficiently. But the cost for each percentage point kept increasing. More humanity lost. More phoenix gained. More of something new that was neither.
I needed to slow down, needed to give myself time to hold on to my identity.
But the phoenix wouldn’t let me. It was dying, corruption eating through its heart, and it needed the cleansing to happen now, or it would fail completely.
Together, it sent through our merged awareness. Die and be reborn together. Only way.
So I kept burning, kept consuming myself in dimensional fire. Kept hoping that when I finally separated — if I separated — there would be enough of Sidney Lowell left to matter.
Because right now, with my consciousness more phoenix than human, with my memories fading and my identity fragmenting, I honestly didn’t know if I’d survive this as myself.
Chapter Fourteen
Seventy-eight percent.
The number existed somewhere in the fire-consciousness that used to be Sidney Lowell. A marker of progress…a measure of how much corruption still needed to burn away before the phoenix could complete its rebirth.
And a reminder that I was losing myself with every percentage point.
The pain had transcended physical sensation. My body was still kneeling in the portal clearing with my hands pressed to the phoenix’s chest, but it didn’t seem to be mine anymore. I couldn’t feel the dimensional burns on my arms or the blood that must have been streaming from my nose. Those sensations belonged to Sidney, and I was becoming less Sidney with every passing moment.
Part of me remained tenuously connected to my physical form, aware of the clearing and the ancient stones and the afternoon sun filtering through the trees. But most of my consciousness had dissolved into the phoenix’s fire, experiencing existence as patterns of heat and light and dimensional energy.
Time worked differently here. Seconds stretched into eternities, and moments compressed into instants. I was burning away corruption that felt like it had existed forever while simultaneously experiencing the process as a single continuous present.
The corruption fought me at seventy-seven percent. Shadow veins wrapped around the phoenix’s essence like chains and pulled tight whenever I tried to burn them away. Each one I touched sent shockwaves through our merged consciousness, pain that rewrote itself as I experienced it because human neurology couldn’t process agony this fundamental.
My memories fragmented further. Childhood experiences that should have been vivid now felt like stories someone had told me. I could recall facts about my past but not the emotional content. The pet shop I owned existed as a concept rather than a lived experience. I knew I’d worked there, knew I’d cared for animals, but the connection was gone, burned away in phoenix fire.
I remembered being ten years old and my mother sitting me down at the dining room table of our old house to tell me that my father hadn’t just gone away on business — that he was gone forever. But the memory felt distant, like watching a film of someone else’s life. I knew it had happened to me. I just couldn’t connect to the girl in that memory anymore, couldn’t feel the sorrow and loss and betrayal she’d experienced.
I remembered opening the pet shop after my grandmother and mother disappeared through the portal. The determination I’d felt, the need to stay busy, to maintain normality while my world fell apart and I tried to answer questions that had no answers. But the emotions were hollow now, echoes without substance.
Ben’s electromagnetic signature pulsed nearby, and part of me recognized it as important. An anchor, something that was supposed to matter. But the feeling of why it mattered was slipping away, replaced by phoenix-knowledge that understood electromagnetic patterns but not love.
That terrified the part of me that was still human enough to feel terror.
Remember, I told myself desperately. Ben is your partner. Your anchor. The reason you’re fighting to stay yourself.
But the words felt hollow, almost abstract. I knew they were true the way I knew facts from a textbook, but the lived experience of loving Ben was burning away. Becoming memory-of-memory. Something that had happened to someone named Sidney, who I used to be.
I tried to hold on to specific moments. The first time he’d kissed me in the living room after we’d fought the shadow stalkers together. The way his electromagnetic signature had resonated with mine, creating that golden glow that made everything feel possible. The look in his eyes when he’d promised to stay with me no matter what I became.
The memories were fading even as I grasped for them. Like trying to hold water in cupped hands, they slipped through my fingers and dissolved into fire.
Seventy-six percent.
