Chapter Twelve #3
“I can make you afraid of hurting humans. Not as a punishment…” He pauses, and something moves behind his expression, something that might be the shadow of old guilt. “As a conditioning. Pair the instinct to feed with the fear of what it costs. It won’t stop the hunger, but it can redirect it.”
My hands are trembling slightly, which is irritating, because I know it’s his power and not a genuine threat response, yet knowing still doesn’t stop my body from doing it.
“You’re doing that on purpose right now,” I say.
“Showing you what it feels like at a low level,” he says. “So, you understand what a full application means before you agree to it.”
That is a deeply unsettling form of consent negotiation, and I find myself thinking that he takes it seriously rather than just going ahead and doing it. I give myself a moment to process it, count to four, then answer, “I’ll think about it,” I say.
“Some of us in this club did things, in our first years of being what we are, that we still pay for. The fear I can give you is cheaper than what you’ll pay without it.
I’m not selling you anything, Charlotte.
I’m telling you what the alternative costs.
” He steps back, and the pressure in the room recedes.
“Think about it. Whatever you decide, no judgment from any of us here. We’ve all had to choose once.” The pressure in the room recedes by degrees as he goes, and Oracle steps into his place like pure sunlight.
There is no other way to describe it. The warmth that precedes him is golden, gentle, and entirely without demand.
He looks older than the others, lines around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth that speak of centuries of expression rather than age, and his gaze carries a quiet light that isn’t quite human but isn’t threatening either.
It is the kind of presence that feels safe enough to lower your guard, which makes me wary of it immediately.
He doesn’t sit, crouch, or posture. He simply stands and studies me, the way someone watches a flame to see what shape it will choose.
“The Phoenix burns…” he says, voice low and layered, “… and is reborn from what’s left.
” His eyes hold mine, that golden light pulsing faintly.
“Perhaps your humanity can be too. Not recovered, not restored to what it was…” The silence after is intentional.
“Reborn. Something new built from the ash of what the turning took.”
The word ‘reborn’ lands wrong.
Not hopeful.
Final.
Something cold slips through my chest, quieter than the Null Pulse but sharper. Because rebirth means something had to end.
Something had to stay dead.
Charlotte Harris.
The name echoes through me like a ghost trying to remember its shape.
My fingers curl slowly against my palms, nails biting in as I hold his gaze a fraction longer than I want to.
For five days, I’ve fought to keep pieces of myself intact and clung to my memories.
And now he stands here speaking like those pieces aren’t meant to survive.
“You’re saying she’s gone,” I say, voice flat enough to hide the fracture running beneath it.
Oracle doesn’t flinch, and he doesn’t soften the truth. “I’m saying she changed,” he replies gently. “And pretending otherwise will keep you trapped between two lives that cannot exist at the same time.”
“That’s not—”
“I know.”
“You don’t.”
“I know you feel that I don’t. I also know that every person in this cabin who wasn’t born what they are has stood where you’re standing, and said those same two words.” The warmth around him presses closer, not comforting, just present, and it makes the air feel heavier.
I look away first, my jaw tight.
For a split second, I want to argue. I want to insist that Charlotte Harris is still here, still fighting, still human somewhere beneath the hunger, the power, and the fire.
But the dragon saw me.
Hades’ ghosts looked at me.
And neither of them looked for Charlotte.
They looked at what I am now.
The realization settles slowly, sharp and unwelcome, carving a quiet space inside me that feels too much like acceptance.
“I don’t know how to let her go,” I admit finally, my voice low, more to myself than to him.
Oracle’s expression softens, not with pity, but with understanding earned the hard way. “You don’t let her go,” he says. “You carry her forward differently.”
The words don’t comfort me.
They unsettle me.
Because carrying her forward means acknowledging that the girl who walked into this world will never walk out the same.
Silence stretches between us, thick with everything I don’t say.
I force my shoulders back, grounding myself in the steadiness I’ve fought to build since the turning.
“Thank you,” I say at last, the words rough but honest, because even if I don’t like what he’s offering, I recognize the truth inside it.
Oracle inclines his head, the golden light in his eyes softening as he steps back, leaving warmth in his wake rather than absence. The space he occupied lingers for a moment, quiet and reflective.
The cabin settles around me again while the fire cracks softly. Rogue’s hand remains steady against mine, an anchor that keeps me from drifting too far into the thoughts Oracle stirred loose.
I don’t say anything for a long time.
Outside the window, the light has shifted.
The morning flare of sun that lit the tops of the pines when Scorch first walked in is gone, replaced by something lower and warmer, the kind of afternoon light that arrives after hours have passed without anyone noticing.
The shadows in the cabin have reoriented themselves.
A bird I don’t know the name of makes a sound I’ve never heard before, and then is quiet.
I think about Charlotte Harris.
I think about her terrible reality television and her overcaffeinated lattes.
I think about the boys whose names she never learned.
I think about the twenty-three years that belonged to her, and the four days that have belonged to whatever I am now, and the ratio of those two things, which will shift every single day from this one forward until she is nothing but a small, bright fraction of what I am.
Reborn. Something new was built from the ash of what the turning took.
I don’t know yet whether I believe him.
I don’t know yet whether I can.
But I hear the words, and I let them sit, and the afternoon moves slowly on around me while I do.