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“You broke,” he says, without looking back. “Now decide what you’re going to be with the pieces.”

No slam, no storm. Just leaves—the door clicking shut behind him soft as a coffin lid.

I press my palm to the tile, feel the sting pulse under my skin. Proof I exist. Proof I’m not gone yet.

I twist the water hotter, scalding, until the pain blooms bright enough to drown him out. Steam fogs the glass. My lungs seize, starved of air, but I breathe through the fire and hold on to the ache like it’s the only tether I have left.

For a moment, it works. The heat drowns the chaos. The silence feels almost clean.

I stare at the blood drying on my knuckles, the steam ghosting around me, and something settles in my chest. This is what becoming feels like. Ugly. Burning. Real.

The taste of copper lingers in the room after he leaves.

Rumors always clung to Malek Vane like smoke—mercenary, ghost soldier, killer for hire. Some said he’d erased families, toppled cartels, buried bodies where the world forgot to look. Maybe none of it was true. Maybe all of it was. He didn’t need the stories. One look, and you knew—violence lived in his bones.

Carter used to laugh at those whispers. “Malek’s not a monster,” he’d say. “He’s just a man who survived the kind of hell most people never crawl out of.”

And when the Reckoning came—when the skies dimmed and the Hollowborn rose—Malek didn’t break. He just kept moving, the end of the world nothing more than another battlefield.

But Carter…Carter was different. My first love, my first everything. Where Malek was iron and ruin, Carter was warmth and light—his laughter chasing shadows into corners, making me believe we were more than the ash closing in.

I know better now. Carter only got to live that way because Malek carried the weight for him. Fought the fights he never saw. Just like Scarlett and Cass did for me. Protecting. Sheltering. Keeping the world at bay while it sharpened its teeth.

I scrub until my skin feels raw and new. When I dress, the clothes hang heavy, seams pressing down like gravity has finally found me again.

At the door, my fingers hover on the handle. My knuckles flare, a pulse thrumming beneath the healing split—proof the world hasn’t finished with me yet.

For a second, I want to lock it. Hide. Pretend Scarlett isn’t in the ground. Pretend Cassie didn’t walk away. Pretend I didn’t just break something I can’t take back.

But pretending won’t change a damn thing. The emptiness will still be waiting. The grief will still be here—sharp, merciless.

So I make myself a promise.

I won’t break again. I won’t freeze. I won’t be the girl who hesitates, who hopes, who needs saving. Not anymore.

Next time the world comes for me, it’s going to fucking bleed for it.

Part Two

When the Hymn Bit Down

X

Let her Sing

Marrow Ridge

The double-wide on the hill stands like a sanctuary long abandoned by God, its swollen siding bowed outward as if something divine and monstrous still claws to be born from within. The roof sags in a posture of forced reverence—like a neck bent under a commandment it never wanted to hear. Rusted angel statues kneel in the yard in a broken choir, their melted faces contorted into infant screams. Barbed-wire crosses jut from the ground like failed resurrections, each one a lesson carved in steel.

I inhale deeply.

It smells the same.

Heat. Sweat. Old offerings clinging to the walls like a second skin. The house itself remembers every prayer whispered through broken teeth. Every confession scrubbed into the floorboards. Every hymn Malek once bled for.

I stand at the open window frame, posture rigid, listening—always listening—for the hymn only I’m worthy to hear. My robe hangs heavy around me, stiff with layered gore, dried sacrifice hardened into holy vestment.

Behind me, a follower crawls on his knees. Scripture carved into his skin tears open again with each movement, fresh blood threading down his arms like living verses desperate to be read.