Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Even with their flashlights cutting white beams through the darkness, even with the darkness of the new moon leaving the sky velvet black, the corruption of the convergence point was undeniable.
The ground wasn’t just dark — it was wrong.
It was black like oil slicks, like rot, like something that had never been meant to exist in the natural world.
The grass was dead in spreading circles, crispy and brown, crumbling to ash when Ramona stepped on it.
The air smelled like sulfur and copper and, underneath, something that made her instincts scream danger and run and this is a place where things die.
Was this what Hell was like? Was Zara used to this?
They stood at the edge of the clearing. All of them.
Ramona could hear their breathing — Felix’s quick and shallow, Kashvi’s measured and controlled, Posey’s whimpers of pain, her breathing already labored like she knew what was coming.
Cammie stayed with the group, there for moral and emergency support only.
Gerald was unusually still on Felix’s shoulder, head tucked against his neck.
The fox pressed warm and solid against Ramona’s leg, a point of comfort in the growing dread.
“Whoa,” Cammie breathed. Her voice was barely a whisper, like speaking too loud might wake something. “It’s worse than I remember.”
“The corruption’s been accelerating,” Kashvi said. “We need to start now. Before it spreads further.”
Ramona could feel it through the soles of her shoes. A wrongness in the earth. A sickness. The convergence point wasn’t just corrupted — it was dying. And taking everything around it with it. If it got beyond the convergence point, would it ever stop? Or would it consume everything?
Ramona shivered.
They moved into the clearing.
Each step felt like walking through water. The air grew thicker. Heavier. Ramona’s lungs worked harder for each breath. Beside her, Zara’s jaw was tight. Through the tether — still there, still humming between them — Ramona felt her tension. Her focus. Her fear.
They set up in the pattern they’d practiced.
The circle they drew was in the center of the clearing, approximately five feet in diameter.
Ramona at the north end of the circle. Zara at the south.
Felix at the east. Posey at the west. The others arranged themselves outside the immediate ritual space — close enough to help, far enough to be safe. Or as safe as anyone could be.
The supplies were laid out with shaking hands.
Lunar water in glass jars, still glowing that faint silver that seemed too delicate for what they were about to attempt.
Blessed iron nails that Felix placed with reverent care.
Sacred salt from Greenbriar Manor — Ramona tried not to think about her mother or sister, or about anything except the ritual.
They had everything they needed.
Everything they’d prepared since the last ritual.
Everything that suddenly felt completely inadequate.
“Ready?” Kashvi called from outside the circle. Her voice was steady, but Ramona heard the tremor underneath.
Ramona looked at Zara. Through the tether: determination like steel. Love like drowning. Fear like falling.
This was it.
After the ritual, everything would be different.
After the ritual, Zara would be gone.
Ramona’s throat closed. She forced words out anyway. “Ready.”
They began with the convergence point cleansing.
Zara spoke first. The banishment.
Her voice dropped into that register Ramona had only heard a few times — the one that wasn’t quite human, wasn’t quite anything that should exist on this plane. Dark, velvety sounds like promises, like temptation incarnate.
The temperature plummeted. Not gradually. Instantly. Ramona’s breath fogged in front of her face, thick white clouds that hung in the air too long. Frost spread across the dead grass in delicate patterns. Her fingertips went numb inside her gloves.
The corruption responded.
The dark marks on the ground didn’t just sit there. They writhed. Pulled back from Zara’s words like living things recoiling from fire. Ramona could see them moving — oily, viscous, wrong wrong wrong.
Zara intoned. Her voice echoed strangely, like the clearing was bigger than it should be. Deeper. She’d translated the words for Ramona: Return to your origin. Return to Hell. This is not your place.
The words bounced off the circle of ancient trees. Multiplied. Ramona heard them from every direction — Zara’s voice and not-Zara’s voice, speaking in unison, in rounds, in terrible harmony.
The corruption pulled back farther. Retreating toward the center of the circle. Concentrating. Getting darker. Denser.
Worse.
Felix’s turn.
He stepped forward on legs that shook. His voice came out thin at first, reedy. He cleared his throat. Tried again.
His words, in a forgotten tongue: Cleanse this place. Purify the sacred earth. Dissolve all corruption.
She picked up the first jar of lunar water. It was heavier than she remembered. Or her arms were weaker. The glass was cold enough to burn her palms even through her gloves.
She began to pour.
Where the water touched the ground, it hissed.
Not like water on hot metal. Like water on acid.
Like something being destroyed at a molecular level.
Steam rose in white plumes that smelled wrong — sweet and rotten at the same time.
The ground beneath seemed to sigh. A sound like dying, or like relief.
Her magic pushed out from her — weak, uncertain, fighting against the curse that had suppressed it for twenty-seven years.
It felt like pushing through mud. Through concrete.
Through something that didn’t want to move.
But it was working. She could feel it. The lunar water amplifying Felix’s invocation, carrying it deeper into the earth, the words sinking in like roots.
She moved around the circle. Pouring as Felix spoke, his voice getting stronger as his magic found its rhythm.
The second jar. The third.
Her hands were shaking so hard water slopped over the sides. Wasted. She couldn’t afford to waste any, but she couldn’t stop shaking.
The fourth jar. The last one.
She poured the final drops, stumbling as she stepped back.
The purification was done.
Now Posey.
Posey moved to the center of the circle. She was already pale, gray-tinged, ashen. Already swaying like a tree in high wind.
“Posey—” Ramona started. Her voice sounded far away.
“I’m fine.” Posey’s voice was strained. Tight. Absolutely not fine. “Let me finish this.”
She knelt on the poisoned ground. Her knees sank into the soft earth. She pressed her palms flat against it.
And began to speak.
It wasn’t a language Ramona knew. It was something older. Known words, but the cadence was wrong — ancient, primal, from a time before language crystallized into modern forms.
“Remember what you were,” Posey said. Her voice was soft, but it carried. Filled the clearing. Seemed to come from the ground itself. “Remember the green and growing things. Remember life. Remember connection. Remember the roots that go deep. Remember the flowers that reach for sun. Remember—”
Light burst from her hands.
Not metaphorical light. Actual, physical light.
Green and gold and so alive it hurt to look at.
It spread across the ground like roots, like veins, like the vascular system of something vast and sleeping.
Where it touched, the darkness dissolved.
Not slowly. Violently. With small popping sounds like bubbles bursting.
The grass began to grow again — not gradually but fast, too fast, shooting up green and vital.
The clearing lightened from black to gray to verdant.
But Posey was shaking.
Her whole body trembled with effort. Her hands were sinking deeper into the earth like it was trying to pull her down. Sweat poured down her face despite the cold. Her breathing came in gasps.
“Posey!” Cammie’s voice was sharp with fear.
“Don’t—” Posey’s gasp was barely audible. “Don’t break the circle. I can… I can finish.”
The light intensified. Spread farther. The corruption retreated like a living thing trying to escape. Dissolved. Disappeared in those awful popping sounds.
A pulse like the heartbeat of the land shot in every direction, a circle of light flowing like a ripple through the air.
The convergence point was clean.
Clean and empty and somehow more terrifying for it.
Posey collapsed. Dropped. Boneless. Unconscious before she hit the ground.
Cammie was there in an instant, breaking the circle to catch her before her head struck the ground. “Posey? Posey, talk to me—”
Posey’s eyes fluttered. “I’m okay.” Her voice was barely there. A thread of sound. “Just… tired. So tired.”
But she wasn’t okay. Ramona could see it. The pale tinge to her skin. The way her chest barely rose with each breath. The restoration had taken too much. Way too much.
Felix was breathing heavily, his hands on his knees.
Ramona felt it, too. The cleansing had drained her in ways she hadn’t expected. Her magic felt depleted just from being near it. Stretched thin like old elastic. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
They were only one ritual in.
They still had to break the curse. Break the tether.
She looked at Zara. Through the tether — still there, still humming, still real — she felt exhaustion mirroring her own.
“We need to keep going,” Kashvi said. She was checking her watch, but her hands were shaking too. “We have maybe an hour of optimal dissolution energy left. If we stop now—”
“We’re not stopping,” Ramona said. The words came out hoarse. Raw. “We can’t.”
Through the tether: agreement. Underneath, a terrible grief, because they both knew what came next.
They rearranged with movements that felt clumsy. Disconnected.
She placed the banewood bark in the center of the now-cleansed convergence point. It looked worse now, darker and twisted, like it didn’t belong in a clean place.