And yet, the thought of holding it, of seeing, made my stomach knot. Because if it truly had answers, they couldn’t be taken back.
And if it didn’t?
Then maybe there was nothing to find after all.
I paused, letting my hand drift away from the Eye, reaching instead for the desk drawer. My fingers found the quartz shards.
The difference was immediate.
Lamplight caught their fractured edges like frozen lightning, silver veins pulsing faintly in their depths. I turned them slowly in my palms, the glow shifting into shades of violet and pale gold, like starlight caught in ice. Even apart, they felt aware of each other. Aware of me.
Where the Eye of Nareth sat heavy and inert—its darkness pressing inward like a sealed door—the shards greeted me with a hum I could feel. Cool to the touch, alive in a way the Eye wasn’t.
I traced one jagged edge with my thumb, and that was when it hit me—not a gentle stirring, but a wave crashing hard enough to leave me reeling.
The leviathan. The ship rocking. The crew screaming. Salt in my mouth. My hands gripping both fragments before the attack, the edges angled toward each other like they belonged that way. Not just similar—familiar.
And with that came another image, just as sharp: the journal I’d found in the cave. Its cracked leather cover dusted with centuries of salt, its pages brittle and ghost-scented. Most of the writing had been in a language I couldn’t read, but the drawing… I’d never forgotten the drawing.
A crescent-shaped relic, small, its curve etched with constellations. Smooth in some places, jagged in others, carvedfrom crystal and then shattered. The surface in the sketch shimmered—violet, rose, pale blue—colors shifting like oil on water, bending the light into hues that didn’t exist in this world.
In my palms now were pieces that looked like it—only smaller. Incomplete. Their broken edges glinted where they might have once met.
I couldn’t be sure if the quartz in my hands was part of that same relic. And if it was, there was no telling how many pieces might still exist… or what the artifact truly did.
Except for one thing. One thing was certain. My mark reacts to it—but I don’t know why.
The connection felt instinctive, not learned. Like something recognizing me before I could recognize it.
The thought rooted itself deep in my chest like a second heartbeat. I brought the two fragments closer, hesitating. The air between them seemed to thicken. My skin prickled.
A thought whispered through me—what if I pressed them together?
And then I felt it—faint at first, like the far-off toll of a bell—vibration bleeding from one shard into the other, linking them.
I pressed them close enough for the edges to kiss.
They didn’t fit—not quite. A sliver of emptiness remained between them, jagged and wrong. But the instant they touched,a pulse shot through me—bright and searing, like lightning finding ground. It wasn’t just in my hands; it ripped through my veins, lighting up places inside me I didn’t know existed.
The shards wanted each other. I could feel it. A magnetic pull, aching to be whole.
And in that aching space between them, I felt it too—absence. Not just that there was another piece out there, but exactly how wrong it was for it not to be here. The emptiness was raw and unfinished.
Somewhere, the rest of the pieces were waiting. Somewhere, it was calling back.
The crescent on my brow burned.
Silver light spilled at the edges of my vision, and for a moment it felt as though my mark was pulling, reaching toward the fragments in my hands. My pulse quickened, matching the fragments’ thrum.
Without meaning to, I began to hum. The old song rose like the tide, soft as salt wind.
The melody wasn’t new.
It slipped out of me like a memory—familiar in the way childhood things are, remembered without context or name. I couldn’t recall who had sung it to me, or when.
The melody lingered in the cabin’s air, soft as a whisper and heavy as the deep. My mark pulsed in answer to the rhythm—once, twice—warm against my skin.
If we’d had more time in Shadeau—if the potion hadn’t faded and left him wound so tight, if those beasts hadn’t chased us out—maybe I would’ve left with more than half-truths and unanswered questions. A clue. A lead.
