Chapter 7 #2
Rebecca raised the weapon, sighted carefully, and pulled the trigger.
There was no sound, no visible beam, just a faint shimmer in the air between us and the drone.
For a heart-stopping moment, nothing happened.
Then the drone’s lights blinked several times and went dark.
It dropped a few feet before its backup systems kicked in, but by then, its cameras were useless, its sensors fried.
“Move,” Rebecca said, already breaking down the weapon and stowing it back in its case. “We’ve got maybe ten minutes before they send someone to investigate.”
We moved.
The portal clearing felt different from the way it had five days ago.
The standing stones still stood in their ancient circle, their Ogham inscriptions pulsing with faint light, but the cracks in the earth where the Dragon had emerged had sealed over, leaving behind only faint lines in the soil.
The bioluminescent moss had spread even further, creeping up the stones and out across the clearing floor until the entire space glowed with soft green luminescence.
And the energy…I could feel it pressing against my skin, against my mind, a tangible force that made my scars tingle and my bones ache. The veil was thin here, thin enough that I could almost see through it to whatever lay beyond.
“Positions,” Rebecca said, already moving toward a rocky outcrop on the western edge of the clearing. From there, she’d have a clear line of sight to the sky — and to any drones that might come investigating the one she’d disabled. “Finn, you’re with me. Ben, Sidney — do what you need to do.”
My father paused beside me, his dark eyes meeting mine for a brief moment.
He looked like he wanted to say something…
“good luck,” maybe, or “be careful,” or any of the things a father might say to a daughter about to attempt something impossible.
But the words seemed to stick in his throat, and in the end, he only nodded once and followed Rebecca into the shadows.
Then it was just Ben and me, standing at the edge of the stone circle with the weight of worlds pressing down on us.
“Ready?” he asked.
I pulled in a breath and let it out slowly, feeling the familiar rhythm of our synchronized bioelectric fields. “No. But that’s never stopped us before.”
He smiled — that crooked, slightly self-deprecating smile that had first made me look twice at him in my shop, all those months ago. “Then let’s go save the world.”
We stepped into the circle together.
The moment we crossed the boundary of the standing stones, the energy around us intensified.
I felt it rushing through my body, filling the channels that the phoenix merge had carved into my nervous system, lighting up pathways I hadn’t even known existed.
My scars blazed with light, gold and iridescent, and beside me, Ben’s answered in kind, silver-blue tracing patterns across his skin.
We’d practiced this. We’d spent hours learning how to merge our bioelectric fields, how to use Ben’s resonance to amplify my abilities.
But practice was nothing compared to the real thing.
The power that flowed between us now was unlike anything I’d ever experienced, vast and wild and almost too much to contain.
“Easy,” Ben said, his voice strained. “Don’t fight it. Let it build.”
He was right. I forced myself to relax, to let the energy accumulate instead of trying to channel it immediately. It gathered in my chest, in my scars, in the space between our joined hands, building and building until I felt like I might burst from the pressure of it.
When I opened my eyes — I hadn’t even realized that I’d closed them — the clearing had transformed.
The standing stones blazed with light, their Ogham inscriptions burning like brands against the granite.
The moss beneath our feet pulsed in rhythm with our heartbeats, waves of bioluminescence spreading outward from where we stood.
And at the center of the circle, exactly where the Dragon had emerged five days ago, a gap was opening in the air itself.
Not a portal, not exactly. It was more like a window — a thin place where the veil between worlds had worn so translucent that I could almost see through it.
Shapes moved on the other side, indistinct and shifting, and I caught glimpses of colors that didn’t exist in our world, deep teals and impossible violets, silver that shimmered like moonlight on water.
“I need to go deeper,” I said. My voice sounded strange, distant, as if it was coming from very far away. “I need to reach through.”
“I’ve got you.” Ben’s grip on my hand tightened, and I felt his bioelectric field wrap around mine like an anchor. “Whatever happens, I’ve got you.”
I reached for the gap in the veil.
It was like plunging my hand into ice water, a shock so intense that it drove the breath from my lungs.
The energy of the other side rushed over me, through me, bringing with it sensations and impressions that my human mind struggled to process.
I felt the vastness of what lay beyond, the infinite complexity of a dimension that operated by rules utterly unlike our own.
And somewhere in that vastness, I felt something familiar.
My mother’s scarf. The purple and turquoise silk that still hung on the coat rack by our front door, the one that had been delivered through the portal months ago with a note pinned inside.
We’re safe. Protect the crossing.
I’d touched that scarf what seemed like a thousand times since then, had pressed it to my face and breathed in the fading scent of my mother’s perfume.
Now I reached for it across the void, following the thread of connection that linked the scarf in our world to the woman who had worn it in another.
The thread pulled taut, humming with recognition. Somewhere in the mist ahead of me, a light flickered — faint but unmistakable, warm and familiar in a way that made my heart ache.
Mom, I called into the void. Mom, I’m coming.
And I let the thread pull me deeper into the space between worlds.