23. Bram
23
brAM
The magick tears through me like a tempest. It’s ancient, primal, a power that existed before the gods themselves. My Dark Fae magick, which still lurks underneath it, responds to it like a tributary being pulled into a vast ocean.
I try to maintain control of the ritual, but it’s like trying to direct a hurricane. The words pouring from my mouth are from the grimoire, which is nowhere in sight. It’s just in my head, and I know exactly what I’m supposed to do and say. It’s the magick. It’s Morrigan’s influence.
Through the haze of power, I see Tate and Torin trapped like I am, crystalline roots climbing their bodies. The clearing has become a nexus point where all times, all realities, all possibilities converge. And I’m the conduit.
The silver threads of magick have turned black, not with corruption, but with something more profound. More fundamental. Like the space between stars.
Images flash through my mind faster than I can process them: Ivy in the void, her form shifting between human and something vast and incomprehensible. The Fae emerge from the spaces between realities. The first gods are born from the chaos of creation. Life and Death are not entities but concepts, patterns woven into the fabric of existence itself.
The magick shows me what I truly am, what I’ve always been without knowing it. Not just a vessel for this magick, but a catalyst. A turning point. Like Ivy, I was made for this moment. It is fate. Our fate.
The pain intensifies as I fight against my own resistance. The crystal roots reach my chest, and I feel my heart syncing to a different rhythm. Not the pulse of life and death, but the space between them. Where true power lies.
For the first time, I’m seeing who I really am. What I was meant to be.
I stop fighting.
The black magick swells through me like a flood breaking through a dam. My consciousness expands, connects, and becomes part of something larger.
The revelation hits me with the force of a cosmic truth. I’m not just channelling this power, I’m becoming a fundamental part of it. Like Ivy’s transformation into something beyond Death, I’m changing into something else. Something necessary for what’s coming.
“I see it,” I rasp. “I see everything.”
The black magick spreads outward from me in waves, touching everything in the clearing. Where it passes, reality shivers and realigns. The crystal roots aren’t just anchoring us, they’re rewriting us into the very fabric of existence.
Through my expanded awareness, I feel Tate’s fated bond beating, a direct line to Ivy and what she’s becoming. I feel Torin’s vampiric nature is no longer just a state of undeath, but something more fluid and adaptable. And I feel myself, transforming into a being of pure magick, a bridge between what was and what will be.
“Bram,” Tate calls out again, but this time I hear the recognition in his voice. He sees it, too. “You’re becoming like her, aren’t you?”
“Not like her,” I manage to say, even as the transformation continues. “Something different. Something complementary.”
The ritual reaches its crescendo. The black magick coalesces around us, no longer chaotic but purposeful. I understand now why it had to be us three - vampire, fated mate, and one of the original creatures. We’re not just stabilising an anchor point. We’re becoming the anchor point. Her anchor point.
Blackthorn is a fucking cryptic fucker, but he knew what he was doing.
Reality fractures one final time, and through the cracks, I see Ivy—no longer just our woman, but a cosmic force taking shape. Her awareness touches mine, and in that moment, I understand everything.
“Balance,” I whisper, the word carrying the weight of universal law. “That’s what she needs. What everything needs.”
The glowing roots tremble with dark light, completing their work. I feel myself settling into a new form of existence - not quite god, not quite Fae, but something essential. A keeper of this wild magick in its purest form, a guardian of the spaces between life and death.
As the ritual’s power finally begins to ebb, I look at my hands. The black magick flows through them now like liquid starlight, no longer external but part of my very being. I am both more and less than what I was - transformed, like everything else, by the tide of change Ivy has set in motion.