Chapter 36 The Awakening
I awoke to the sharp scent of sterilizing alcohol. A woman in a white suit was dabbing at my side, and the sting made me flinch.
“We’re just getting this cleaned up for you. Looks like you tore a few of your stitches last night,” she hummed. “Good to see you awake.”
“Where am I?” I croaked.
“Mercy Hospital,” she replied, draping a heavy blanket over me.
“I’ll let the doctor know you’re awake, and he’ll stitch that back up for you.
Here, take these for the pain.” She handed me two white pills and a glass of water before leaving the room.
I rested my head back on the pillow, staring up at the buzzing string of incandescent lights, a sound that felt strangely familiar, like an echo from a bad dream.
I’m alive.
That was the only fact that mattered.
“Dahl?” someone called from behind the curtain next to my bed.
I recognized the voice immediately, if not the moniker.
I tried lifting my arm to part the curtain, but a sharp pain shot through my side, making me drop back down.
The curtain opened anyway, and Aspen appeared.
His face was pale, fading scratches dotting his cheekbone, but his eyes shone bright amber. My gaze fell to his bandaged hand.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I should be the one asking you that. You were the one who got stabbed.”
“I’m fine,” I lied, though I could tell he saw right through it.
Sequoia appeared behind him, and a wave of relief washed over me. Her eyes were swollen and pink, but she had the widest smile on her face.
My friends were safe.
“Oh, Dahlia, I’m so happy you’re alive!” she said, her voice feeling like a hug. She reached for me, her hand cupping my cheek.
“I am too,” I replied, managing a small smile. “What about . . . the others?”
“Leone will be fine; he’s just in shock. He’s taking a few days away from school. He’s been obsessed with Foresyth and those books for years—he’s reevaluating all he’s known to be true,” Aspen said.
Damn, so was I.
“Understandable,” I muttered, turning my head against the pillow.
Talking was exhausting, but I had to tell them about Sophia, the vision I had had before the ceremony had descended into chaos.
“I saw Sophia. She’s been trying to tell me something, but I finally realized what it was last night during the ceremony. ”
Sequoia scrunched her eyes together and I continued.
“In The Book of Skorn it wasn’t Sophia who asked for the elemental ceremony.
Those visions that came to Khorvyn—it was the demiurge—he impersonated Sophia and dictated the Book, using sacrifices to feed his domain over the material world.
It was never her,” I said, my chest weak with the realization.
Had I really seen her, or was she my subconscious speaking to me? I didn’t quite understand why I felt the need to tell them. But it was the truth I had longed for, and it finally tasted sweet on my tongue.
“Shh, you can relax now, don’t lose your strength.
” Sequoia caressed my forehead. “I knew—that’s what she told me when I went into soul flight in the tub, all those nights ago.
That’s why I agreed to help you,” she admitted.
“Besides my dear regard toward you.” She smiled, her finger trailing the side of my face.
A shard of reality cut through me, as sharp as the cut on my side.
“And Nina . . . is she okay?”
“She’s been placed in the rehabilitation ward,” Sequoia replied sharply. Her tone, usually so gentle, surprised me. “Aspen was right—she didn’t belong at Foresyth.”
A pang of disappointment settled in my stomach, sharper than the ache in my side.
I’d wanted to trust Nina; she had been the first person at Foresyth to show me an inkling of friendship when I needed it most. She and I were like two sides of the same coin.
She came from a working-class family, clawing her way up to Foresyth through her own sheer skill and work ethic.
I’d thought we could have been genuine friends.
But maybe I’d only seen what I wanted to see.
The small, quiet moments I’d observed—her murmuring over her creations in the lab, our shared excitement over the light analyzer—now felt tainted.
I thought she understood the weight of power, its limits, its cost. I believed she was channeling her grief into art, not control.
Yes, we both wrestled with death’s finality, but I thought she at least honored the dead and their peace.
But I was wrong. I thought back to the moments I’d doubted Aspen on her account, the times I’d given her my sympathy.
“She doesn’t deserve your kindness, Dahlia,” Sequoia said, fierce and unflinching. I saw a glint in her eyes that was new, battle-won. “She would have destroyed anything to get what she wanted—even you.”
Her words cut through my regret, clearing the fog of disappointment. Nina had turned something that I held sacred—knowledge—into something twisted and unholy. Just as the Meister had. I could understand her grief over her parents, but not at the cost of her humanity.
I knew I’d be sitting with the grief of our friendship long after the cut on my side healed.
“My instinct knew it,” I said. “She was working with the Meister, hoping for a share of the power for her necromancy. Aspen wasn’t the one who poisoned me that first day—it was her. She framed him to throw me off.”
“And it worked.” Aspen smirked.
“It did work. But when I met her down in the tunnels near that creature that bit me, I knew she was up to something. Those poor creatures . . . they weren’t alive.
They were animated, soulless. She should have known that she couldn’t bring back her parents.
At least, not in the same way as they were before. ”
“If she was doing unauthorized experiments, the Council will deal with her too, in time,” Sequoia said. “She really believed killing you would give her power. Killing all of us. Who knows what lies the Meister fed her about giving her immunity,” Sequoia said.
Aspen looked away as Sequoia spoke. I noted that there was an irony to her words.
She and Aspen risked the very same almost a year ago, and it led to Julian’s death.
They were bound to the school through their parents’ debt, yes, but that did not change the fact they were complicit in Julian’s death.
“You should rest, Dahlia.” Aspen turned back to me, placing a cool hand on my forehead.
“The Meister. What happened to him?” I managed.
Aspen and Sequoia exchanged a look, almost like they were sharing a joke.
“He won’t be at Foresyth any longer. Thanks to that switchbox you rigged, the Council convicted him on charges of false practice and endangering students.
Julian’s letters are going to be used to charge him with murder,” Aspen said.
“So, he’ll be going to prison?”
“Not exactly. The Council has its own authority for dealing with magickal crimes. Though, I suspect his magick has been significantly weakened since the Book was destroyed,” Aspen explained.
“And we have you to thank for that, Dahlia,” he said.
“I’m so proud of you.” He made a point to catch my eye before turning to Sequoia. “Both of you.” He tipped her chin up.
When she pulled away, Sequoia’s eyes were glistening, a small smile on her lips.
“I’ll never forget the sight of you toppling down that tree,” I mused. “How did you do it?”
“It was nothing. I think the House gave me the idea; it was already bending its way toward the Meister. I used the last of my power granted by the Shattered Mother to coax its roots from the ground.”
“You saved me,” I said.
“We all saved each other,” she said, taking my hand along with Aspen’s.
Relief, like fresh snow, settled on me. I didn’t ask any other questions.
I let the warmth radiating from our intertwined hands ground me and I allowed myself to feel safe.
With that forsaken Book gone, the Meister and his followers were no longer my concern.
I’d completed my father’s work and avenged my brother. My responsibility was over.
“Do you think . . . you’ll come back to Foresyth once you’re healed?” Sequoia asked. “I think the Al-Ahmar will be the interim Meister.”
My stomach knotted at the mention of her name. I still didn’t know how I felt about the Al-Ahmar. I didn’t have time to unravel the knots that she held with my family’s history. But one thing I was certain of was that my history with Foresyth was coming to an end.
I stared into Sequoia’s deep brown eyes, seeing her for what she truly was—not delicate, not in need of saving, but a force that was ancient and rooted.
She had always seemed otherworldly, a figure spun from mist and moonlight, but now I understood.
She was not fragile, she was formidable.
The kind of strength that didn’t demand but endured.
My gaze shifted to Aspen, his sharp edges softened by her presence, his fire tempered by her quiet gravity.
He had always been her protector, her mentor, her lover.
But love wasn’t about protection, not really.
It was about adaptation. Growth. I wondered how they would shift for each other over time, how they would bend and rise together, just as the canopy of trees twist and tangle, molding themselves to make space for one another—not caged, but entwined.
Aspen and Sequoia would continue to shift and grow, their roots tangled, bound to this place. But I was something else entirely—something that had never been meant to stay. Maybe I was a seed caught in the wind, drifting toward something new.
For the first time, that didn’t feel like being lost. It felt like being free.
“I don’t have a purpose at Foresyth anymore. I learned what I came to learn,” I said, seeing her eyes fall. “But we’ll stay in touch. You’ll write to me.”
“Of course,” she said, taking a deep breath before leaning down to hug me. Even her slight weight pressed too much on my side, and I winced. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, pulling back, her eyes brimming with tears. “I’m just so glad you’re alive.”
The curtain drew back, and a man in a white coat, glasses perched on his nose, stepped in. The creases beside his lips suggested he was good-humored, despite his profession.
“Lucky thing she is,” he said. “When these two brought you in they said you fell down a flight of stairs and landed on a metal railing. This journal”—he held up a blood-stained book—“is the only reason it didn’t pierce your liver.”
I’d been wearing it on my belt when Nina attacked me. Her dagger had pierced the book, saving me from a deeper wound.
“Let’s fix those stitches before the police come in,” he said, approaching my side. “Your friends can stay for now, but when the officer arrives, they’ll have to leave.”
Aspen leaned over and spoke quietly to the doctor, his tone soft and persuasive, like the first time I’d seen him in his workshop. “That won’t be necessary. She’s already spoken to the appropriate authorities. You’ll call them off.”
The doctor’s expression flickered with surprise, but he nodded, adjusting his glasses. “So, she has. Very well, I’ll call them off.” He turned his attention to my side, preparing to restitch the wound.
“We’ll visit again soon, Dahl,” Aspen said softly. “I’d tell you to take care, but I know you will.” He added a wink, his usual smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.
For a moment, the edges of him blurred, haloed by the soft glow of the room.
Or maybe it was just the medication settling into my veins.
He looked almost regal, like an emperor draped in twilight.
The image of the Emperor card flickered through my mind, weightless as a dandelion seed on the wind, before drifting away.
I blew them both a kiss before turning my head, my eyelids growing heavy.
I had been running on purpose, on anger, on the desire for the truth.
But now, in this sterile, softly-lit room, I had nothing left to give.
A deep tiredness settled over me, a heaviness not just of body but of spirit.
I let my head sink deeper into the pillow, allowing myself, just for a moment, to drift—to let go of the responsibility, the constant vigilance, the weight of being the one who had to see everything, question everything, fix everything.
Just before I drifted off, I noticed the journal on a cracked tray beside me, its pages withered and stained with my blood. How lucky it showed up by my side just when I needed it most.
I guess Julian had saved me after all.