“Who’s next?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer because the answer is already walking up to the door.
“Hey!” Dread suddenly appears in the doorway, letting the weight of him fill the space before he steps through it, and the weight of him is a real thing, not a metaphor, a pressure that arrives in the room ahead of his body and presses against the edges of my awareness. My stomach tightens automatically, and my breathing shifts. Every animal layer of my new existence registers his presence the way prey registers a predator, even though I know, intellectually, that the fear is his ability rather than my reality.
Knowing doesn’t help.
“Fear is a teacher,” he says, and his voice is low and carries the kind of weight that makes it difficult to look away from him. His eyes are steady. There’s nothing cruel in them, nothing that takes pleasure in the reaction I’m clearly having, but there’s no apology either.
“I can make you afraid of hurting humans. Not as a punishment…” He pauses, and something moves behind his expression, something that might be the shadow of old guilt. “As a conditioning. Pair the instinct to feed with the fear of what it costs. It won’t stop the hunger, but it can redirect it.”
My hands are trembling slightly, which is irritating, because I know it’s his power and not a genuine threat response, yet knowing still doesn’t stop my body from doing it.
“You’re doing that on purpose right now,” I say.
“Showing you what it feels like at a low level,” he says. “So, you understand what a full application means before you agree to it.”
That is a deeply unsettling form of consent negotiation, and I find myself thinking that he takes it seriously rather than just going ahead and doing it. I give myself a moment to process it, count to four, then answer, “I’ll think about it,” I say.
“Some of us in this club did things, in our first years of being what we are, that we still pay for. The fear I can give you is cheaper than what you’ll pay without it. I’m not selling you anything, Charlotte. I’m telling you what the alternative costs.” He steps back, and the pressure in the room recedes.
“Think about it. Whatever you decide, no judgment from any of us here. We’ve all had to choose once.” The pressure in the room recedes by degrees as he goes, and Oracle steps into his place like pure sunlight.
There is no other way to describe it. The warmth that precedes him is golden, gentle, and entirely without demand. He looks older than the others, lines around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth that speak of centuries of expression rather than age, and his gaze carries a quiet light that isn’t quite human but isn’t threatening either. It is the kind of presence that feels safe enough to lower your guard, which makes me wary of it immediately.
He doesn’t sit, crouch, or posture. He simply stands and studies me, the way someone watches a flame to see what shape it will choose.
“The Phoenix burns…” he says, voice low and layered, “… and is reborn from what’s left.” His eyes hold mine, that golden light pulsing faintly. “Perhaps your humanity can be too. Not recovered, not restored to what it was…” The silence after is intentional. “Reborn. Something new built from the ash of what the turning took.”
The word‘reborn’lands wrong.
Not hopeful.
Final.
Something cold slips through my chest, quieter than the Null Pulse but sharper. Because rebirth means something had to end.
Something had to stay dead.
Charlotte Harris.
The name echoes through me like a ghost trying to remember its shape. My fingers curl slowly against my palms, nails biting in as I hold his gaze a fraction longer than I want to. For five days, I’ve fought to keep pieces of myself intact and clung to my memories. And now he stands here speaking like those pieces aren’t meant to survive.
“You’re saying she’s gone,” I say, voice flat enough to hide the fracture running beneath it.
Oracle doesn’t flinch, and he doesn’t soften the truth. “I’m saying she changed,” he replies gently. “And pretending otherwise will keep you trapped between two lives that cannot exist at the same time.”
“That’s not—”
“I know.”
“You don’t.”
“I know you feel that I don’t. I also know that every person in this cabin who wasn’t born what they are has stood where you’re standing, and said those same two words.” The warmth around him presses closer, not comforting, just present, and it makes the air feel heavier.
I look away first, my jaw tight.
For a split second, I want to argue. I want to insist that Charlotte Harris is still here, still fighting, still human somewhere beneath the hunger, the power, and the fire.
