No, something in me insisted. Hold on. Remember who you are.
But who was I? The question felt impossible to answer. I was fire-consciousness. I was dying-phoenix. I was corruption-burning-away. I was transformation-in-progress. The boundaries between Sidney and phoenix had dissolved so completely that separating them felt like trying to unburn ash.
I tried to list facts about myself, hoping that would help me hold on to my identity. Sidney Lowell. Twenty-seven years old. Guardian of Silver Hollow. Owner of a pet shop that had been in the family for decades. Daughter of Josie Lowell. Granddaughter of —
But those facts were just words now, data points without emotional content. I knew these things were true, but they didn’t feel true. They didn’t connect to any sense of self I could access.
Seventy-three percent.
Distantly, I heard voices, human words that my fragmenting consciousness struggled to parse.
“ — vitals are dropping — ”
“ — how long can she survive this — ”
“ — Rosenthal, she’s dying — ”
Ben’s voice, sharp with fear. I recognized the pattern of his electromagnetic signature even if I couldn’t quite remember why it mattered. The warmth-pattern was agitated, spiking with emotion that my phoenix-consciousness couldn’t fully interpret.
I tried to focus on his words, to understand what he was saying. But language was becoming foreign to me. They were sounds that supposedly had meaning but which I couldn’t translate into concepts my fire-consciousness understood.
Partner distressed, I managed to interpret. Anchor failing.
If Ben was failing as an anchor, if his fear disrupted our connection, I would lose the last thread tying me to humanity. I’d dissolve completely into phoenix-consciousness with nothing left to re-form around.
I tried to send reassurance through our connection. Still here. Still fighting.
But the message came out as fire-patterns, as heat and light that only the phoenix understood. I was losing the ability to communicate in human ways. Losing Sidney faster than I’d feared.
The realization sent a surge of something through our merged consciousness. The phoenix didn’t understand panic. Disturbance, though — a recognition that I was approaching the point of no return.
Seventy-two percent.
The pain intensified as I pushed deeper into the phoenix’s corrupted core. Shadow veins clustered thickly here, wrapped around the creature’s essence like a cage. Each one I touched sent shockwaves through our merged consciousness that rewrote my sense of self.
This was where the corruption had taken root first, where Rosenthal’s interference had poisoned the phoenix’s natural rebirth cycle. The shadow energy was old here, embedded deeply, fighting dissolution with desperate strength.
I could feel the history of it through the phoenix’s memories. The first interference six months ago — subtle, not enough to truly disrupt the creature. Then it increased as DAPI installed more equipment and generated more electromagnetic disruption. The phoenix tried to complete its rebirth cycle but found the process corrupted each time.
Weeks of suffering, of being trapped between death and life, unable to complete the transformation, unable to die cleanly. The corruption spread with each failed attempt until the creature was ninety-three percent shadow-tainted and dying.
All because Rosenthal wanted a weapon. Because she’d seen the phoenix as a resource to exploit rather than a living being to protect.
Burning it away required everything I had…and everything I was willing to sacrifice.
Seventy-one percent. Seventy.
My family existed as a concept now rather than a feeling. I knew I had a mother and grandmother trapped on the other side of the portal. I knew I’d been trying to save them. But the emotional urgency was gone, burned away in phoenix fire. They were facts in my consciousness rather than people I loved.
Josie Lowell. My mother. I could recall her face from photographs, could remember the sound of her voice — a little throaty, just like mine. But the feeling of being her daughter was gone. The love I’d felt for her, the grief at her disappearance, the desperate determination to rescue her — all of it had been reduced to abstract knowledge.
And my grandmother, whose journals I’d read so carefully, whose legacy I’d tried to uphold. I knew she mattered. I knew she was important. But the emotional connection was ash.
The realization should have devastated me. Instead, it just registered as another data point in the dissolution of Sidney Lowell.
This is wrong, the part of me that was still human whispered. This isn’t who I’m supposed to be.
But I couldn’t remember who I was supposed to be. Couldn’t hold on to the image of Sidney Lowell, guardian and pet shop owner and woman who loved Ben Sanders. Those things were burning away, replaced by phoenix-knowledge that understood fire and transformation but not human identity.
