The sense of not being alone in my own mind. The echo recoiled.That was weakness, it warned.That was why I fractured.
But the feeling lingered, stubborn and gentle, refusing to be erased. I frowned, an expression that felt unfamiliar in this place of extremes. There was a word for it. I knew there was.
It hovered just beyond reach, resting on the tip of my consciousness like a sound I almost remembered how to make. Not peace. Not surrender. Something quieter. Something that did not require me to fight at all. The effort of reaching for the word exhausted me.
I was so tired.
The realization sank into my bones. Tired in a way that went beyond physical strain, tired of holding everything back, of maintaining control through force alone. Tired of being the last wall standing against collapse. Tired of being alone. The fury flared again in response, violent and indignant.
Sleep, the echo urged.Let go. Let me carry it.
That was new.
Suspicion cut through the haze. Sleep had never been an option. Sleep meant vulnerability. Sleep meant… her voice came again, clearer this time.You don't have to do this alone.
The words arrived not as sound, but asunderstanding. As if they had always been there, waiting for me to notice. My breath caught.Who are you? The question was not directed at the echo. It was not even directed at the voice. It was directed inward, toward the part of me that remembered gold light instead of red and black. Toward the memory of calm that had once settled over me without force.
The echo hissed, its coherence fraying at the edges.She was trying to change you.The accusation rang hollow.Change.
The word no longer felt like an insult. I turned inward, away from the urge to wake, to kill, to end. Away from the certainty of destruction. The dampeners hummed, steady and patient. Somewhere beyond them, I sensed movement. Time resumingits proper shape. Decisions being made. Threaded through it all, faint but persistent, wasthatvoice.
Not pleading.
Not commanding.
Waiting.
The strange calm spread, fragile but real, wrapped around the fury without extinguishing it. For the first time since arriving on Cronack, the anger did not feel like the only thing holding me together. I let myself rest against it. Just for a moment. The echo retreated, unsettled. In the quiet that followed, the almost-word brushed my consciousness once more—closer now, clearer.
Balance.
I did not know how I knew.
Only that if I could hold on to that feeling—if I could remember the sound of her voice, the way it anchored me—I might wake for a different reason. And when I did, I would know what to fight.
I layawake in the dark, staring at a ceiling that wasn't familiar enough to comfort me and wasn't strange enough to distract me. The room was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that pressed in on your ears until you started listening for things that weren't there.
I hadn't slept. Not really. Every time I closed my eyes, I sawhimthe way he'd looked on Cronack: the black eyes, his aura all wrong, and his hands around my throat. God, those hands. I blinked to replace that image with the image of before. Golden. Calm. Almost amused by the universe.
I turned onto my side and curled inward, pulling the blanket tighter around myself like it could hold me together. I missed him so much it hurt. The ache wasn't sharp anymore. It was deep. Constant. Like grief had hollowed out a place in my chestand refused to leave. I could still feel the bond—faint, stretched, trembling—but there. I wasn't sure if that made it better or worse. If he were gone, truly gone, maybe my mind could start accepting it.
But he wasn't. He was just… out of reach.
"Dravok," I whispered into the dark. My voice sounded small. Pathetic. I swallowed and tried again, softer this time, like he might be asleep somewhere nearby, and I didn't want to wake him.
"Stay." Tears slid down my temples and into my hair. I didn't wipe them away. I didn't have the energy to pretend I wasn't breaking. "Please," I breathed. "Stay with me. Come back to me."
I pressed my hand to my chest, right over my heart, right over where the bond used to feel warm and steady instead of thin and frayed. I could feel the faintest whisper of his presence. Just enough to know he wasn't gone. Just enough to make the absence unbearable.
I don't know when the room changed. There was no sound. No shift in the air. No warning. One moment I was alone with my grief, and the next—the darknessthickened. It wasn't the absence of light. It was weight. Pressure. A presence so vast and cold that my breath caught instantly, my lungs refused to draw in air.
I tried to move.
I couldn't.
Panic flared white-hot, immediate and absolute. My mind was awake—tooawake—but my body didn't respond. My fingers wouldn't twitch. My legs wouldn't kick. My throat wouldn't even tighten around a scream.
Sleep paralysis.
