She turned away from him because she didn't trust her face. She made herself look at the ground. The outskirts ofInti Llaqtalay around her in the late light, the moss-covered stone of her ancestor's seat, the cloud forest rising at the edges, the path to the font visible only because her body knew where it was without being told.
She walked because the woman she'd trained herself to be didn't let pain change her operational tempo. She walked because if she didn't walk, she was going to break. Opening the font alone was the answer, and she had to keep moving toward that answer or admit the answer was wrong.
The air shimmered, a shiver went through her, and she barely held onto her sanity as her ancestor’s world superimposed over this place. Her mouth went dry as she saw her ancestor running, stumbling occasionally across the ground, clutching her side, her breathing harsh and terror-filled. Lechuza gasped, the pain, and the sweaty panic returned, the mortal ache of the wound in her side.Vargas is coming.The name meant nothing to Lechuza. Her ancestor stopped running and turned to her.Run away. Don’t stop running,she shouted.
She backed up, right into Flash, and her body recoiled at the scent of him, the feel of his body, the desire that never abated. His arms came up to steady her, his voice changing to that beautiful Spanish cadence. “What’s the matter?”
She broke into a blind sprint, following her ancestor. The phantom woman’s voice was a war drum in her skull, a desperate, terrified cadence that matched the pounding of her own heart.We have to get to the font before the conquistadors. We must destroy it so that no one will ever be able to open it. Kill anyone who tries to stop us.
The glade opened before her, a sacred space of ancient sorrow. The hunk of rock that had once been the basin sat inert in the center. She skidded to a halt beside it, her lungs burning, her side aching with a wound that wasn't hers but was.
"Destroy it," the woman hissed, its form flickering at the edge of her vision. "Take up the Tumi. Shatter it. End this line before they can use it to end us."
Her hand went to the blade at her belt, but she hesitated.Destroy it?This font, this legacy was the only thing she had left of her people, of herself.
"Now!" she screamed, and a discordant echo threaded through it, cold and sharp as glass. "Or I will make you watch him die again and again, in a thousand ways, until you beg for the end."
A sob broke from her chest. She shoved the blade away and slammed her palms down onto the cold stone of the font. "No!" she cried to the font itself. "Iwillnot!"
She had intended to defy it, to deny her ancestor. But the font didn't register her intent. It registered her touch. It recognized its keyholder in a moment of existential crisis, and it did the only thing it could to survive. It opened, not to the Veil, but to her.
Power, ancient and immense, flooded her system. It was a tidal wave of raw energy. The world dissolved in a blaze ofblue light. A scream tore from her throat, a sound of birth. Bones shifted and reshaped with a gentle shimmer that burst into feathers, white as moonlight and edged in silver, weaving themselves into powerful wings. Her face elongated, her vision sharpening until she could see the frantic heartbeat of a hummingbird a hundred yards away.
The giant wingspan of her owl form beat the air, the predator of the unseen, the threshold creature made flesh. But this was more than just a new shape. It was a fundamental rewriting of her very being. The power didn't just flowtoher, but eruptedfromwithin, a torrent of raw magic singing in her blood. It coursed through her veins like liquid starlight, a physical current that burned away every weakness, every doubt, every trace of mortal limitation.
Her muscles, now woven with supernatural fiber, coiled with a strength that felt immense, as if she could tear stone from stone. Her bones were hollowed, light, infused with an unbreakable resilience. This was the Veil's magic made manifest in her own cells, a violent, ecstatic baptism that remade her into something more. She understood with chilling clarity that this was only a fraction of what the font held, a sip from a cosmic ocean that could shatter worlds or build them anew.
Her phantom ancestor stumbled back, her form wavering in the face of this raw, ancient power. "What is this?" she whispered, her voice losing its authority.
Lechuza turned her feathery head, the rotational gaze of her kind taking in every detail of the abomination before her. She saw the lie now, the discordant energy, the flickering patchwork of stolen forms. This thing was a parasite wearing her ancestor's face. She smelled the individual threads of fear and desperation that Chaos’s assassin had woven into the illusion. Her ears detected the faint, high-frequency hum of the font itself, a deep, ancient thrum of power that resonated in her bones.
With a shriek that tore through the fabric of reality, she launched herself at the illusion.
* * *
The Chesapeake Bay was cold.The spray on North’s face was real, the weight of Mei's body leaving his grasping arms, and slipping beneath the water was a soul-deep agony he would carry forever. Fly was screaming his name, but the sound was distant, muffled by the grief that was swallowing him whole. He was failing. Again.
Something ugly and familiar coiled in his gut. The sour poison he had thought resolved reared up as if it had never been forgiven by Fly. Part of him screamed,You saw the patterns. You read the wind. You were the genius, the Visionary. You should have saved her.The grief was a physical weight, but the resentment was a fire, and for a terrifying, disorienting moment, it burned hotter. It was easier to blame the man who couldn't find the flaw in his perfect math than to live with the fact that the universe simply didn't care about math at all.
He hated himself for it, even as the feeling washed over him. Hated that even here, in this strange hell, he could find a way to be angry at his brother. But that flash of bitter heat was the crack in the illusion, the flaw in the perfect agony. It was sowrong, so out of place, that it made him question the reality of the water itself.
But beneath the cold, beneath the slick, wrong-feeling water, was something else. A faint, distant thrum. The earth. The real earth. The bedrock of the Andes, hundreds of feet below this phantom ocean. It was a thread of truth in a sea of lies.
Focus.
He ignored the phantom water, the phantom grief. He reached for that thread, pouring every ounce of his will, everyscrap of his connection to his tribe, to the land, into it.I am here. This is real.
The world stuttered. The scent of pine and mineral cut through the smell of salt and death. The water beneath him felt…less. He was standing on something solid. He opened his eyes.
He was back in the glade, but Fly was still lost. His friend was on his knees, his eyes wide and vacant, his body shaking as he tried to escape from a memory that was consuming him. North grabbed his arm, his grip like iron.
"Fly!" he yelled, his voice a raw command. "You're here. I'm here. Stay with me!"
He poured the grounding energy of the earth into him, the steady, unyielding truth of stone and soil. Fly's body solidified, his gasp sharp and real as he was dragged back from the brink.
Just then, a wave of pure, unadulterated power washed over the glade. It didn't come from the sky. It came from Lechuza. North watched in stunned awe as she transformed, her body becoming a vessel of ancient energy, a magnificent, terrifying owl.
But the power didn't stop with her.
