Chapter 11 Harbinger
The Voices were screaming tonight.
I pressed my palms harder against my temples, as if I could crush the sound, as if pressure alone could drown out the chorus of agony that had been building since we left the war room.
Phoenix’s desperate plea echoed loudest. ‘I don’t want to die!
I don’t want to die!’ But hundreds of other souls wailed beneath it, an endless loop of their final moments.
Some nights were worse than others. Tonight ranked among the worst I’d endured in months. Every voice demanded justice, recognition, peace I couldn’t give them.
And it was Conin’s voice that cut deepest. “Brother! Brother, where are you? I can’t find you in the dark!”
The same words he’d cried during childhood thunderstorms, when he’d crawl into my bed begging me to chase away the monsters in his dreams. The Shepherd had been peeling away at his consciousness for years, mining deeper into his memory center. Stealing him from me day by day.
Now Conin was the monster, and I was the one lost in the dark.
I’d fled to the balcony when my room’s walls started closing in.
The sun had dipped below the horizon, leaving shadows in every corner I looked.
Woodsmoke drifted up from the fire pit Terra had lit last night to burn the trash.
Just a few more minutes and full darkness would swallow what remained of the day.
“Brother, I’m scared. The darkness is so cold.”
“Shut up,” I muttered, digging my fingers into my hair. “Just shut the fuck up.”
But the Voices never listened. They couldn’t. Trapped in their death loops, they replayed the same terror, the same desperate pleas for salvation that would never come.
Phoenix’s voice rose again. “I don’t want to die!”
Then Rosebud. “Ma, I want to go home. Please, I just want to go home.”
Mandrake. “The fire burns. Oh gods, the fire burns so much.”
Three decades of this torment, and it never got easier.
If anything, it grew worse as more souls joined the hive.
I could hear every Souleater within hundreds of miles, predict their movements, warn my guild of approaching danger.
But I couldn’t silence the one voice that mattered most. Couldn’t reach through the darkness to comfort my little brother one last time.
“Big brother, you promised you’d take me with you. You promised.”
Those words shattered what was left of my composure.
I knew it wasn’t really Conin—just the thing wearing his conscience, using his memories as weapons.
But hearing my brother’s voice from when he was eight, disappointed because I’d broken another promise to take him on my expeditions, cut like a dagger between my ribs.
I ran a hand over my face and pinched the bridge of my nose. The Shepherd knew exactly which memories would hurt most, unearthed decades of childhood moments to find the perfect blade.
It wasn’t him. But it sounded exactly like him.
“Radu.”
The softest voice penetrated the chaos in my head.
I jerked upright, shocked to find Aurora emerging from my room.
Her scent—vanilla and peaches with copper underneath—wrapped around me like silk.
Those crimson eyes that always undid me held depths I’d never fully plumb.
Tonight she wore simple clothes. Dark pants and a long-sleeved top that hugged her curves.
Nothing fancy, but on her it looked like armor.
A weapon disguised as a woman.
“You should go inside,” I told her, though that was the last thing I wanted. “It’s not safe yet. Still too much light.”
“Neither is it for you.” Those penetrating eyes studied my face so intently I felt exposed. She saw too much, understood too much.
The silence stretched between us. A nightjar called in the distance, as wind moved through the dense leaves. Aurora didn’t press for explanations. Just waited with the patience of someone who’d lived long enough to know some wounds couldn’t be rushed.
“The Voices are worse tonight, aren’t they?” she asked, settling beside me on the cold stone.
I nodded. How could I explain that some nights the dead refused to rest? That their anguish fed on itself until it threatened to tear me apart?
Fatigue seeped into my voice. “They’re restless,” I said. “More desperate than usual. Phoenix keeps repeating the same words.”
Pain flickered across her features. Since Phoenix’s death, I’d watched guilt eat away at her. She blamed herself for not being fast enough, strong enough. It was a familiar weight—one I’d carried far longer.
“I don’t want to die,” Aurora murmured. “I heard her, too.” She touched her nape, referring to Brasov when the harmonization linked her to the Voices. I’d been so focused on severing the connection to save her that I hadn’t considered what else she might have absorbed in those terrible seconds.
“I’m sorry you went through that,” I said. “Wish I could take it back.”
Aurora shifted closer until our arms touched. I felt the chill of her skin through the thin fabric of her top. “You saved me. Without your quick thinking, who knows what the Nexus would have done to me.”
“I love you, Brother. If there’s someone I want to be when I grow up, it’s you.”
I flinched as Conin’s words bled into our conversation. Words from our last trip to the Republic, before the Council ordered my parents’ assassination. Before they sent him to the camps and I inherited Dad’s Chronoportal.
Aurora noticed immediately. She was too observant not to.
“It’s your brother, isn’t it?” she asked. “He’s the one you heard just now.”
Most people looked at me and saw the Harbinger—captain of Black Guild, the outlier who survived decades against Souleaters. They saw strength, leadership, control, because that’s what I let them see.
Aurora saw the man drowning beneath it all.
“Not him,” I said, clearing my throat. “The thing that took him. It has his memories, uses his voice to mess with my head.” I dragged my hands through my hair. “Knows exactly what to say to hurt me most.”
Without warning, Aurora reached out and pressed her palm against my temple. The contact sent electricity through my veins.
“Let me help,” she said.
“You can’t use your Nexus.”
“I won’t.” Her irises began to glow scarlet, the same light I’d seen in Brasov when she’d torn through the Souleater hordes. “Trust me.”
The first time I met her, I wouldn’t have trusted her past spitting distance. She was an original. Her people had killed my family. But after all these months together… I’d never met anyone more determined to change the world.
I gave her a nod.
Her presence slipped into my mind. Not the brutal invasion I’d expected, but careful. Gentle. Her Blood Manipulation wove around the jagged edges of my consciousness, creating a buffer between me and the worst of the screaming.
The relief hit so suddenly and completely I nearly sobbed. Finally, I could hear my own thoughts clearly. The Voices were still there, but muffled now, pushed to the background where they couldn’t claw at my sanity.
“How?” I breathed.
“Think of it as insulation,” she murmured, offering a soft smile. “I can’t silence them completely, but I can muffle the worst of it.”
The delicate pressure never wavered. Without the constant noise, I became aware of everything else. Her steady breathing, lips parted in concentration, the breeze carrying wisps of her hair across my neck. Nicotiana from the garden mixed with her natural scent.
“Tell me about before,” she uttered. “When you and Conin were children. What was he like?”
For decades, I’d avoided thinking about the past, about the brother I’d lost. But with Aurora’s magic wrapped around my mind, the memories didn’t hurt as much. I could remember Conin without feeling like phantoms of the past were carving my chest open.
“He was fearless,” I found myself saying, “absolutely fearless in the most reckless way possible. Used to climb the tallest trees in our dad’s territory just to see what was on the other side of the mountains.
Ma would lecture him about safety, and he’d listen with this serious expression, nodding along like he was taking it all to heart.
Then the next day he’d do something even more dangerous. ”
Aurora’s lips curved in a smile. “Sounds familiar. I knew someone like that once.”
“Did you now?” I raised an eyebrow, surprised to find humor creeping into my voice. “And what happened to this reckless person?”
“She grew up. Learned that sometimes the people depending on you are more important than the thrill of taking risks.” Her expression grew wistful. “Though I suspect she still has that streak buried somewhere.”
Another piece of herself offered freely. Aurora didn’t share personal details easily. Everything I knew about her past had been hard-won through observation and patience. The fact that she was opening up now, while shielding me from my demons, meant more than she probably realized.
“Conin had this theory,” I continued, letting the memory wash over me. “Said the stars were tiny holes in the sky where the gods had poked through from the other side. If you wished hard enough, your dreams would slip through those holes and come true in other realms.”
“What did he wish for?”
“Peace. To every corner of every world.” My throat tightened despite the buffer Aurora had created. “Said when he inherited our clan’s magic, he’d travel to each realm beyond the stars and bring back stories for children who’d never seen anything but the battlefield.”
Aurora’s free hand found mine, weaving our fingers together. The simple contact sent my pulse racing.
“He sounds wonderful,” she whispered.
“He was. Even as a child, he had this way of making everyone around him want to be better. More hopeful.” I turned my head to face her, struck by how the shadows played across her features. “The Shepherd knows this. Uses those memories to torture me with what I lost.”