Another image. The same hands shaking in the aftermath, trembling so badly I can barely hold them steady. The ache of withdrawal curling through my muscles, clawing at my insides. The memory of needing it. Of almost taking too much. Of wanting to push deeper, heal more, feel that rush again regardless of the cost.
Then another. And another. The addiction pulls through the visions like a thread, weaving through every memory without mercy. Every time I healed someone in the slums. Every time I felt the high and chased it. Every time I promised myself I’d stop and didn’t.
“No,” I whisper, though my mouth doesn’t move under the water.
“It’s the truth. You carry it even when you try to bury it.”
The visions tilt. My father’s sigil overlaps with my own. The Sun flares bright and terrible. The crescent Moon answers, glowing faintly under my skin, silver against gold. Both lights collide, merging and separating, fighting for dominance.
I can’t breathe. The water presses in, heavy and suffocating despite its warmth.
Then something else rises from underneath everything.
Water.
Silver.
A pulse like a tide, steady and inevitable.
The visions quiet. The light softens. A different image comes forward: a circle of women, robed in midnight cloth, their faces shadowed but their presence familiar.
The Daughters of the Moon.
They stand in formation around a pool similar to this one, their hands raised, moonlight streaming between their fingers. One of them lifts her hand and touches the air the same way Lady Nerida did to water earlier. A ripple in the air moves outward, reshaping everything it touches. Reality bends. Paths appear where none existed before.
The water around my real body stirs, currents pulling in directions that defy physics.
“You’re more than the Sun King’s daughter. Your mother didn’t only give you healing. She gave you sight. It’s fractured now, scattered like light through broken glass, but it’s there.”
The visions blur again. Moonlight presses against the edges of the dark, and for a moment I sense pathways, patterns, shifts beneath the labyrinth’s surface. Not clear visions. More like instincts sharpening, awareness expanding to include things I shouldn’t be able to perceive. I can almost see the maze’s structure, the way fear flows through certain corridors, the places where reality thins.
Fear loosens in my chest, replaced by understanding.
Then, a noise in the distance catches my attention. A woman’s voice, laughing – rich and amused and utterly merciless. The sound carries the weight of breaking worlds and dying stars, of civilizations collapsed and suns extinguished. I don’t recognize anything like it, almost as if it’s otherworldly…
Suddenly – as if they sense danger – the visions guide me upward. My face breaks the surface with a rush of air and sound.
I gasp and brace my hands on the pool’s edge. Water drips from my hair, running down my face in cool rivulets. My skin feels too warm, as if the visions lit something under it that’s still burning.
Lady Nerida watches me with a calm I can’t read.
“You saw the root of your fear. Not the maze. Not the team. You fear becominghim. You fear losing yourself to what you need.” She pauses, sea-green eyes holding mine. “But fear isn’t truth. It’s a tide. It washes in. It washes out.”
I steady my breathing, trying to slow my racing heart. The visions still pulse behind my eyes when I blink.
“You saw it all,” I say quietly.
“Yes.”
Her tone doesn’t change. No judgment. No pity. Just knowledge, vast and deep as the ocean her House represents.
She moves closer, water rippling around her legs. “The addiction you carry – it’s a current, not a chain. Currents can be navigated. They can even be harnessed.” She reaches out and touches my wrist, her fingers cool against my overheated skin. “I won’t pretend tounderstand what it feels like, but I know what it looks like when someone fights a tide alone. You don’t have to.”
“I’m trying to control it,” I say. The words come out defensive.
“I know. I saw that too.” Her hand stays on my wrist, steady. “But control isn’t the same as understanding. And understanding isn’t the same as acceptance. You fear the power will consume you the way it consumed your father. That fear makes you grip tighter, which only feeds the need.”
She releases my wrist and steps back slightly. “I can’t fix what’s broken in you. No one can. But I can help you learn to move with it instead of against it. If you want.”
