I open my mouth to pull everyone’s attention from my bold,beautiful friend, but only a gasp tears from my throat as something surges through me—a force pressing against the nape of my neck, flooding my body, sinking into my very bones.
I know what it is in an instant: Calista’s magic, pouring into me.
Before I can catch my breath, tendrils of shadow slither into the room, stretching from every darkened corner of the temple. They creep and pool like spilled ink.
Am I calling to them?
No. No, whatever magic is filling me is internal, fluid and viscous, like molten lava. It’s surging in, not reaching out. These shadows are not mine. They’re something else. Someone else’s.
Another pulse of magic snaps through my veins, slamming against my ribs, searing through bone.
Then a voice slithers through the gathering darkness, curling around my spine like a phantom’s breath. Deep and powerful.
“Let’s show them what real darkness looks like.”
Darkness closes in, dense and suffocating, swallowing the room and the air from my lungs. The shock seizes me, but it sharpens into all-consuming horror as I feel something within me awaken. A presence. A force.
It surges through me from the base of my neck, flooding my body. It fills me, overwhelms me, and even when there is no space left inside, it keeps pouring in.
And then it finds release.
Screams.
I don’t know if they are mine or theirs.
My hands tremble violently as the energy erupts outward. I can’t see it, but I feel it—a raw, ravenous force devouring everything in its path. I rub my palms together, desperate to grab hold of it, to stop it, but there’s nothing except the dampness of my own skin.
A sharp, eerie clinking echoes in the void.
“Would you take this ring?” A voice cuts through the darkness, low, sharp, edged with irritation.
I jerk around, breath unsteady. The shadows are absolute, but somehow, I see him. Or maybe I just feel him—his presence, oppressive and vast, as if the darkness itself bends to his will.
A towering figure stands just two feet away, wrapped in black, his hood drawn low. His arm moves and in his open palm, a simple ring gleams. Unadorned. Unremarkable.
“It will help you control your magic,” he says, flat, clipped.
When I don’t move, when my breath rattles too hard for me to answer, his fingers tighten into a fist, and his tone darkens. “Before you rot anyone else.”
Anyone else?
My breath hitches.
I snatch the ring and jam it onto my index finger. Cold bites my skin. I stare at it, waiting, hoping for something—anything—to change.
Nothing.
The horrifying magic still pours from my hands, unstoppable.
The shadows remain, cloaking the destruction, and the hooded man circles me like a beast forced to entertain a fool.
“I can’t control it!” My voice cracks, and I clench my fists tight enough for my bones to ache.
The man stops inches from me, his glowing gray eyes pierce through the darkness, narrowed in scrutiny. His voice is curt, edged with irritation, like he’s dealing with a hopeless case. “How does your magic make you feel?”
Magic. I uncurl my fingers. The blackened tips blend into the surrounding shadows, and I stare at my shaking palms. Thick rot slicks my palms, viscous and alive.
I’m stunned into silence, frozen in the sheer wrongness of it. I’m becoming a monster.
