Yorika
The portal spits us out into wrongness.
My knees buckle immediately. The space exists in overlapping dimensions, each one slightly out of phase. My marked skin burns, the silver traceries flaring hot against whatever power holds this place together.
The smell hits next. Apparently crystallized flesh has a specific scent. Burnt sugar mixed with copper and the sharp trill of sustained terror. Hundreds of victims, each one adding their particular note to the assault on my senses.
"Breathe through your mouth," Nezavek says, his hand tightening on mine.
I do, though it barely helps. The taste coats my tongue, sticky and wrong.
The gallery stretches impossibly far in every direction. Walls of living crystal pulse with soft light, each surface reflecting not images but memories. Final moments, last thoughts, the instant of crystallization played on eternal loop. Illusions.
The floor beneath us is black glass. In the reflection, I see myself crystallizing from the inside out. In his, shadow dissipating into nothing.
"Don't look down," he warns, but I've already seen.
The victims are arranged with obscene care.
To our left, fear: a woman frozen mid-run, her crystal legs extended in a sprint that will never end; a man cowering in a corner; a couple clutching each other from whatever approached them last.
To our right, despair. Bodies slumped, hands covering faces, some kneeling. One woman has her hands pressed against her pregnant belly. The expression on her face makes bile rise in my throat. Ahead lie other sections—rage, hope, joy—all twisted by crystallization into permanent horror.
And they're all aware.
Every single one.
Eyes track our movement. Hundreds of crystallized gazes following us through the gallery. Some pupils dilate when we pass close. Others weep tears that crystallized before they could fall, leaving salt trails permanently etched on glass cheeks.
"How many?" I ask.
"Three hundred and twelve," Nezavek says. His voice stays steady but I can feel his anguish. Each number is a failure, a person he couldn't save. "That I know of. There could be more in the deeper galleries."
A child, no more than six, stands near the despair section. She's been posed with a teddy bear, both crystallized together. Her eyes follow me as I pass. Still aware. Still afraid. After who knows how many years.
"Can they feel?"
"Everything. The crystallization preserves all sensation. They feel the temperature changes, the vibrations when someone walks by. They feel their own bodies frozen in crystal, unable to move, unable to scream, unable to die."
My hands form fists. The silver marks on my skin pulse brighter, responding to my rage.
Something pulls at me. Not physically but deeper. A tugging in my chest, insistent and familiar. Sister instinct. I follow it through the gallery's twisted paths.
We find her in the centerpiece display.
The Collector arranged this section to mimic a garden. Victims posed among crystallized flowers, creating a tableau of preserved beauty. Some stand with arms raised like trees. Others kneel like bushes. Children scattered throughout like decorative stones.
Melara stands at the center.
My legs lock. I can't move, can't breathe, can't think. She wears the dress she left in three years ago. The blue one with small flowers that she'd sewn herself. But she’s glass. Trapped. Except for her gaze.
Her eyes find mine immediately.
Recognition flares in them. Joy. Terror. Desperation. Everything she can't say with her crystallized throat floods through her gaze. Her pupils dilate, trying to communicate something urgent.
My hands shake as I reach out, touching the crystal that was once her cheek. It's warm. Body temperature preserved forever. The surface has a slight give, like flesh turned to flexible glass.
The moment my skin makes contact, something else touches my mind. Not Melara exactly, but her consciousness filtered through crystal and time and whatever power keeps her aware.
Yorika. You came. You finally came.
The words aren't sound but impression, feeling, desperate communication through the gallery's twisted connection.
"I'm here," I whisper. "I'm going to get you out."
Other victims near Melara watch us. A man who might have been a merchant, his hands frozen mid-gesture. A young mother, her arms positioned as if cradling an infant that isn't there. An elderly woman whose eyes hold too much wisdom for this fate.
All of them aware. All of them pleading silently.
"How beautiful."
The voice comes from above, below, all around us. The temperature plummets so fast frost forms on his victims. The light changes, becoming sharp and brittle.
The Bone Collector materializes from the gallery itself, stepping out of a wall that parts for him. He's exactly as I remember from his attack on Nezavek's realm. Crystalline perfection in humanoid form, every angle calculated for maximum beauty and wrongness.
"The sister finally arrives," he says, his voice layered with harmonics that shouldn't exist. "I've been waiting so long for this reunion.
I even slowed the process for your sister, waiting for you.
You'll stand beside her, a matched set. The artist who dreamed and the warrior who failed to save her. Perfect symmetry."
He glides closer, each step leaving frost patterns on the black glass floor. His pale blue eyes study us with the detached interest of an artist examining his work.
"And you brought the Shadow Walker. How delightful." His gaze shifts to me, and his perfect lips curve. "Oh, he's marked you thoroughly, hasn't he? I can smell him all over you. Inside you."
His nostrils flare delicately.
"You spent last night rutting. How many times?
Three? Four? Such desperation. Such hunger.
" His laugh sounds wrong, too many frequencies at once.
"Did he tell you what his marking means?
You'll never be free of him now. Even if he dies, you'll carry his essence forever. You'll never be fully human again."
"Good," I say.
That stops him. His perfect features shift to confusion. "Good?"
"I didn't want to be fully human anyway. Humans are prey. I prefer being a predator."
His laugh returns, delighted now. "Oh, you're magnificent. I see why Melara was so proud of you." He gestures to her. "She talked about you constantly in the beginning. Before her throat crystallized. Such faith that her big sister would save her."
My hand goes to my knife. Nezavek catches my wrist, not physically but mentally. Not yet.
"She's exquisite, isn't she?" The Collector continues, moving to stand beside Melara.
"I've preserved her perfectly. The fear, the hope, the moment of acceptance when she realized no one was coming.
It's all there in the crystal. She'll never age, never decay, never lose that perfect expression of suffering. "
"You're sick."
"I'm an artist. There's a difference." He waves his hand. "Would you like to see my art in motion?"
The victims begin to move.
Not freely. Their frozen bodies jerk like marionettes, limbs bending in ways crystal shouldn't bend. The woman captured mid-run starts actually running, her crystal legs pumping in place. The cowering man stands, turns toward us, and begins walking forward with horrible, grinding steps.
They're all moving now. Hundreds of crystallized people turning toward us with jerky, unnatural movements. Their faces don't change, still frozen in their final expressions, but their eyes are alive with terror at what their bodies are being forced to do.
"Stop," I say.
"But this is the best part. They can feel everything, you know. Every crack, every stress fracture as I make them move in ways crystal wasn't meant to bend. Sometimes they shatter completely, and I have to reassemble them. They feel that too."
The child with the teddy bear starts walking toward us. Each step makes a grinding sound. A crack appears in her leg, spreading up toward her knee. Her eyes beg me to help her, to stop this, to do something.
"Stop!" I shout.
"Make me."
The child raises the crystallized teddy bear like a weapon. Other victims close in, hands raised to strike, crystal fingers formed into claws. They don't want to. I see it in their eyes. But they have no choice.
"Don't hurt them," I tell Nezavek.
"I'll try not to."
The first wave reaches us. Nezavek's shadows expand, forming barriers, trying to push them back without damaging them. But crystal is brittle. A man's arm shatters when a shadow tendril pushes too hard. The pieces fall, and I see awareness in each fragment before they dissolve into dust.
I dodge a woman's grasping hands, but I can't bring myself to strike back. These are innocents. Victims. Some have been trapped here for decades.
"Having trouble?" The Collector asks. "They're already dead, you know. The crystallization killed them. I just kept their consciousness alive inside. Breaking them would be a mercy."
A teenager lunges at me, crystal fists swinging. I dodge, but he clips my shoulder. The impact cracks his hand. I see the agony in his eyes. Not from the crack but from being forced to attack at all.
More victims crowd in. Nezavek is forced to shatter three who get too close, his shadows cutting through crystal with surgical precision. Each one that breaks is a mercy, but also a horror. They dissolve into crystal dust, finally free but also finally dead.
"The artifact," I shout. "I need to find it."
"Go. I'll hold them."
I run, weaving between victims. Some try to grab me on the Collector's command. Others seem to resist, their movements slowing as I pass, their eyes begging me to end this.
The Soul-Still sits on a pedestal at the far end of the gallery.
I don't know how I know it's there, but I do.
The pull in my chest leads straight to it.
The artifact is smaller than I expected.
A sphere of impossible crystal that hurts to perceive directly.
It pulses with its own light, and I hear whispers coming from it. Hundreds of voices, all pleading.
The Collector appears in front of me, reality bending to accommodate his movement.
"You can't destroy it," he says. "It's the anchor for this entire space.
Shatter it, and everything here dissolves.
Including your sister." His smile widens.
"But you won't. I've seen your type before.
You'll hesitate at the final moment, unable to truly kill her. And in that hesitation, the crystallization will complete, and then I’ll take you. Two sisters, preserved forever."
"Not happening."
I dodge his grasping hand, but ice forms beneath my feet. I slip, catch myself, keep moving. He's in front of me, then beside me, then behind me. The gallery itself bends to his will.
Nezavek's shadows slam into the Collector from behind, driving him back. "Go!"
I reach the pedestal. The Soul-Still hovers there, wrong and compelling. The moment my fingers touch it, voices flood my mind.
please, broken, help, can't, forever
Most of the voices are shattered, centuries of awareness having broken their minds into fragments. But Melara's voice cuts through, clear and desperate. Three years is long enough to suffer but not long enough to fragment completely.
Her consciousness focuses, sharpens.
Yorika. My brave sister. Free us. Please. It's been so long. So cold. Can't move can't speak can't die just existing forever and ever and ever.
"I will," I promise.
It will kill us.
"I know."
Thank you. Tell your mate... tell him thank you for trying. For finding you. For protecting you.
"Tell him yourself when you see him in whatever comes after."
Through the connection, I feel something that might be her consciousness smiling.
I love you, sister.
"I love you, too."
I raise the Soul-Still above my head. It burns my hands, cold so intense it feels hot. The Collector screams, reality warping as he tries to reach me. Nezavek holds him back, shadows and ice tearing at each other.
I look at Melara one last time. Her crystallized form catches the light, tears frozen on her cheeks creating tiny rainbows. Her eyes are peaceful now. Ready.
I bring the Soul-Still down against the pedestal with all my strength.
The crack is absolute.
For a heartbeat, nothing happens. The Collector laughs. "Did you think it would be that easy."
The Soul-Still explodes. Not outward but inward, pulling everything into itself before reversing. A wave of golden light erupts from the shattered core, carrying with it the screaming release of hundreds of souls.
The gallery's reality begins collapsing, walls folding into themselves, crystal victims dissolving into light.
Through it all, I hear Melara's voice one last time. Thank you.