Ten #3
He laughs, short and dismissive. “It’s everyone’s business. You think the Blessed didn’t know? You were chosen because you’re a fucking perversion.”
The words land somewhere behind my ribs, and I forget how to breathe.
Marissa steps between us, hands trembling as she tries to push us back.
“Don’t,” she pleads, her voice shaking. “Please don’t do this. Please, Callen.”
He looks at her like she is a stranger.
I taste the thick metallic tang of blood again. “Do you think I wanted this? Do you think I asked to be born this way?”
He actually shakes his head. “You could have tried to be normal. You could have—”
“What does normal even mean?” I roar. “Did the Mother Shard whisper it in your ear? That there’s something rotten inside me? Well, fuck you, and fuck your Mother Shard. Fortunately for you, I’ll be dead soon.”
I spit at his feet. “Don’t forget, though—you’ve been sent to die too.”
He lunges, shoving Marissa aside, and throws a punch at my face. I duck, but he catches me in the jaw, and my teeth crash together, shaking my skull. I swing back, connecting with his cheek, but he is barely fazed.
He tackles me to the ground, and we roll across the rough rock. Fresh wounds tear open along my back and arms as my uniform rips apart. Blood runs down my skin, but I barely feel it.
Marissa is screaming. “Stop this! Please—stop—”
Callen pins me and draws back his fist. “You ruin everything you touch,” he growls. “You think the Mother Shard doesn’t see it?”
I spit in his face. Saliva streaks down his mouth. “I hope you fucking choke on it.”
He pulls back to swing, but before he can, the ground convulses beneath us.
The noise hits a heartbeat later.
It sounds alive. Like thunder trapped beneath the earth. Like a mountain tearing itself apart.
I twist around and see a shadow bearing down on us, immense and terrifying.
The ocean is rising. Rearing up like a solid wall of moving water flecked with white and silver. It rises higher than the tallest rocks, the crest trembling and unfurling like a stampede of white horses.
Marissa screams, her voice raw and frantic. “Get up!"
She’s grabbing at me, her eyes white all around the edges. Callen’s face has gone rigid with terror, the hate in his eyes temporarily replaced by something colder.
We run.
It’s not graceful. We’re battered and bloody, every limb screaming, every cut and scrape aching. Our footing is unsteady and clumsy as we clamber over the jagged rocks.
The wave devours everything in its path. Its base is thick and dark, as though the ocean depths themselves are rising to claim us, while its face remains impossibly smooth, like a wall of glass.
It feels alive.
Hunting.
I see it then: the curve of the wave doesn't look natural. It bends inwards, flattening as though it’s pressed up against an invisible wall. The tops of the wave splinter and break, but the water doesn’t fall outwards. Instead, it rebounds, rejoining the churning water below.
The edge. We need to reach the edge.
I grip Marissa's hand and drag her after me. We sprint across the uneven rocks, slipping and stumbling as the wave closes in. I can't catch my breath. My legs tremble beneath me, already starting to go numb.
“Come on,” I shout. “We have to get out of its path. Look—you can see the edge.”
The wave surges towards us, closing the distance faster than I can comprehend. The ground shakes and my ears pop beneath its roar.
Marissa’s face is drained of all colour. When I look into her eyes, I see not just fear but awe, the kind that appears when someone witnesses something truly unexplainable.
I want to say something comforting, but nothing comes. My brain is fuzzy, and I can only think about putting one foot in front of the other.
The wave presses in, so close that its shadow envelops us in a void of blue-black. At this distance, I can make out the hard and unnatural edge of the wave.
“We’re almost there!” I shout, but my voice is lost in the noise.
The three of us dive just as the wave closes in, crashing mere steps from where we land sprawled on the ground. The thundering crest rolls past while the tail of the wave splashes against an unseen barrier, as if the ocean itself were trapped behind a sheet of glass.
I turn to Marissa. Her eyes are huge, bewildered, and terrified, but she’s alive.
Callen walks to the edge of the water’s boundary, staring in awe at the wave churning within.
I sit there, numb, watching.
Eventually the wave subsides and whatever held it in place fades. The last of the receding water spills over the ground, soaking Callen to his ankles and drenching Marissa and me as we sit.
We stay seated, sodden and salt-stung as the water invades our fresh scrapes.
No one speaks. There is nothing left to say.
Marissa looks at me, fresh tears rising as the saltwater soaks into the rock. She mouths a single word: sorry.
Callen gets up and walks away. He doesn't look back.
I pick myself up before helping Marissa to her feet.
I stare at the Mother Shard.
At the golden one burning against her surface.
The wave didn’t claim us.
“What do we do now?” Marissa asks, sniffling softly.
“We survive.”