Chapter 8 #2
Everything was fading, even the pain was leaving her. The roots that bound her legs had gone still, the hum inside the earth no longer sound but weight. She could feel herself draining—blood, breath, thought—until she was nothing but an empty skin left for the tree to claim.
A sound found her through the blur. Faint at first, almost beautiful.
A melody.
It floated through the dark like a thread of glass, fragile. It shouldn’t have been there. Nothing that lovely ever came for her.
Her mind stuttered over the sound, trying to fit it somewhere that made sense. A trick, she thought dimly. A cruel joke. The last thing I hear before the world forgets me.
The sound reminded her of Tehvan.
Soft humming while he worked.
For one impossible second, she thought—
No.
Her body was a forgotten statue left to weather the storm—cold, heavy, cracked. She couldn’t feel her hands anymore. Her heartbeat had slipped somewhere far away.
The melody came closer. It vibrated through her jaw, through her teeth, until her head ached from the sound of it.
Then came the heat.
At first, it was just a thread of warmth in her spine, a shimmer at the base of her neck.
For one bright second, Elora almost welcomed it, anything was better than the draining chill of dissolution.
But the glow wasn’t a comfort, or even an afterthought.
It was a fuse. Heat flared through her vertebrae, threading nerves with molten gold, and before she could brace herself it had spread, gnawing up her back, lancing through her shoulders, igniting every mark carved by Thorn’s cruel hand.
The lines sizzled, burning as if the sap painted on them had caught fire.
The pain was dense, elemental. It belonged to the world, not to her.
Her breath failed. Elora’s mouth opened, but no air came.
The burning raced down her throat, catching in her chest, until every gasp scraped raw and the space behind her sternum felt packed with smoke.
She tried to scream, but her lungs only stuttered.
The effort left her dry-mouthed and shaking, caught in an agony that refused to let itself be named.
Nothing had ever hurt like this. Not even Thorn’s worst punishments.
This pain was total. It was the opposite of erasure. It was engraving.
Her vision went white. Even with her eyes shut, the light was there—blinding, violent, pressed against the back of her skull. It was inside her, tearing its way out.
Her skin began to split. It didn’t tear, exactly. The membrane stretched, translucent, and lines of gold and white bled through the seams. The sap that had once marked her was now inside, filling every channel, every vein, every scar.
The roots trembled, then loosened. The movement was sudden enough to jolt her, and for a heartbeat Elora thought this was the end, that the tree was letting her go, allowing her to collapse into ash and be done with it.
But the release wasn’t mercy. It was recoil.
Whatever they had expected to happen to the Empire’s monster, it couldn’t have been this.
Her body broke.
Her spine bent backward, popping one vertebra at a time, until her head lolled, her jaw unhinging with the force of it. Her shoulders stretched, muscles tearing away from bones. Something in her chest gave way, and Elora heard the pop echo through her own skull.
She hadn’t known it was possible to die this many times in a single moment.
Every nerve screamed, then dissolved into new nerves just so the screaming could continue.
She shattered, then reformed, then shattered again, the pain cycling through her in tidal waves, each one larger and more absolute than the last. The wounds Thorn had left behind were now channels, and the sap boiling through them reached for air, for freedom, for an end.
Her fingers—or maybe claws—curled and uncurled, hands spasming against the slick roots, and she couldn’t tell if she was pulling herself apart or trying to hold herself together.
And while she burned, she remembered.
She remembered Tehvan’s forehead resting against hers, whispering that he’d always protect her. Her heart ached.
The sound of a door opening, Symond standing in her doorway. The first crack.
Thorn splitting her skin with a needle then with a blade. Her blood began to boil.
Wildflowers, pink and purple, trampled as Gerard dragged her deeper into the woods. She wanted to scream.
But it stuck in her throat. There was no sound, nothing to see, but she sensed someone next to her, a gentle hand tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, someone who doused the burning inside her.
Then Tehvan’s lifeless eyes, his body broken beneath Thorn’s monster.
She could still feel that warm presence ushering her to come back.
But those eyes…
That crunch of bones…
That horrible laugh…
She was unraveling, thought by thought, until there was nothing left but pain and the violent certainty that Thorn could not be allowed to keep existing.
Then a roar split the world.
It was not a sound, not even a vibration, but the instantaneous shattering of everything within her.
It was the shriek of torn clouds and the bellows of a thousand dying beasts, the shrill whistle of iron on bone, the howl of a newborn forced into light.
It battered her from all sides, echoing in the canals of her ear but also in the space behind her eyes, the pit of her gut, the spreading cold cavity where her heart had been.
And then— Silence.
Not a hush, not the aftermath of a storm, but a black, absolute void.
Time passed, or maybe it didn’t. She floated, unmade.
And then, like dawn breaking after a hundred years, air flooded her lungs.