“A containment spell,” Wye told me and I could tell with the way he said it that something far more dangerous had begun to surface beneath it.
“She isn’t just infected… she’s carrying it.” Silence followed and it was one that pressed in from all sides. But then his head snapped to the side as if he had just detected something… something important.
“The scent… I recognize the signature… but from where…” he murmured, almost to himself now, frustration threading through his tone before lifting his gaze to Torin.
I should have stayed where I was, every instinct in me warning me not to move, not to step any closer to whatever had taken hold of her. And yet something pulled at me all the same. A feeling low in my chest that was sharp enough to steal the breath from my lungs. An insistent force that refused to be ignored no matter how much I tried to resist it.
Which meant that before I even realized what I was doing, my feet had begun to move. Slow, unsteady steps carrying me closer to the bed as though something unseen had taken hold and was guiding me forward.
No one stopped me, not Wye, not Torin, both of them too focused, too consumed by what was happening in front of them to notice how close I had gotten. It was only when I was afew steps from the edge of the bed that something finally broke through. A hand catching mine mid-movement, warm and solid enough to ground me, even if only for a second.
“Hey… what are you doing?” Bo’s voice cut in, quieter now, edged with confusion as his fingers tightened slightly around my wrist.
I blinked, my gaze dropping to where our hands touched, only then noticing what he meant as he nodded to my other hand. One that was reaching out toward Iridessa, before I even realized what I was doing. The movement slow and unsteady, as though it no longer belonged to me.
“I…” The word left me weakly, but I had no explanation, no understanding, because something else had already taken hold…something stronger than my own will.
“Eliza?” Wye’s voice cut through then, sharper this time, edged with warning.
“What are you doing?”
But it was already too late as I lunged for her. And the moment my fingers made contact with her skin, everything shattered at once, the fragile stillness in the room breaking apart as a scream tore through it.
Only it wasn’t mine.
It was hers.
The sound ripped free from Iridessa’s body as the violet sickness erupted violently outward. Now pouring from her in thick, writhing tendrils that lashed through the air before slamming into me like a living storm.
It wrapped around me instantly, cold and burning all at once. It was consuming me before I had the chance to react, locking my body in place as the air was torn from my lungs. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even think beyond the force of it as it coiled tighter, dragging me deeper. Into something Ididn’t understand, and I didn’t realize, not then, not until it was far too late, that it had wrapped itself around Bo as well.
The world twisted violently around me, the room collapsing, tearing apart at the edges as the force of it dragged me under. It swallowed everything whole until there was nothing left but darkness and the sound of my own pulse roaring in my ears.
And then…
Silence.
I hit the ground hard, my knees buckling beneath me as the weight of it vanished all at once, leaving me gasping, my head spinning as I struggled to catch my breath.
The air felt different.
Wrong.
I lifted my head slowly.
“This place…” I whispered, my voice unsteady as I looked around at the endless, desolate stretch of land that surrounded us.
“What happened? What… what is this place?”
The world around me was barren, a wasteland of cracked earth and ash. The sky above a swirling mass of dull, suffocating grey that seemed to press downward rather than stretch upward. As though there was no true horizon, no escape, only an endless expanse of ruin.
No life.
No sound.
Only the distant echo of something unseen shifting beneath the surface. And the distinct sound of Bo’s panic, as he started to chant,
“No, no, no, no, no!” So, I raced over to him where he kneeled in the ash covered ground, slumped over with his head in his hands.
