He took everything she knew.
Stole every secret route.
Every hidden path.
And left her trapped in a body that remembers how to breathe but not how to live.
He raped her mind.
Left her like this to die slow and painfully.
Her lips move.
For one wild, desperate moment, I think she might be coming back.
“Da…gan?” she whispers.
It’s not her voice.
It’s Idris, echoing through borrowed flesh.
My vision goes red.
“Enough,” I snarl, power surging. Stone around us trembles, lines fracturing outward from my boots. “You will not use her mouth to speak to me.”
She twitches. Her gaze skitters past my shoulder, unfocused, catching on things that aren’t there.
A laugh bubbles out of her that is not hers.
“Too late,” the voice croons. “I already have what I need. The paths. The patterns. The cracks between the worlds. The marrow of the forges and the bones of your precious Nightfall?—”
Fire flares.
Thorne’s flames lick across my vision as he steps in close, eyes blazing.
“You have signed your death warrant,” he growls. “I swear it on the Ember Vein.”
Water slams down a heartbeat later.
Kael’s tides crash up from the cistern beneath the village, flooding the ruined courtyard, dousing phantom embers and washing away traces of Idris’ magic.
Masielle shudders.
The presence recedes.
For a heartbeat, she is herself again.
Her eyes, milky with age yet clear with something else, lock on mine.
“Please,” she rasps. “Don’t let him keep me.”
My throat closes.
The ground under her body whispers memories—years of walking these paths, tending small dreams for small people, weaving gentle hopes into the fabric of the multiverse.
I bow my head.
“Forgive me,” I murmur, placing my hand over her heart. “For being too late.”
