Chapter Fifty-Two
Go Back and See
Blood had called to blood, and at last Viktor heard the answer.
Viktor lay on his back, arms at his sides. Amerei had shifted in her sleep, her hip still warm against his, her shoulder brushing his own.
His breath came shallow, uneven.
Sleep dragged him under, and the roots of the Aetherheart tree closed around him once more.
The sky darkened.
Rain poured down, soaking his hair, blinding his eyes. He pushed through the tangle of spindly roots, voice breaking through the storm.
“Who brings me here? Show yourself!”
A voice stirred in the branches—one he did not know.
“Go back…”
He squared his shoulders, defiance roughening his tone.
“You brought me here. I won’t leave until you show yourself!”
“Go back…” the voice urged again, lower now, threaded with something ancient.
The vision burned brighter.
The ground split, and suddenly—he was a boy again. Eight years old, standing in the doorway as his mother rode away, a newborn in her arms. His father silent behind him, grief like iron in the rain.
“Go back and see.”
The downpour thickened until it drowned the world.
Viktor’s chest seized as he looked closer.
“See.”
It was the day his brother was born.
The brother he had buried in memory.
The brother he had never truly known.
The brother whose fate had haunted him all his life.
He saw him.
The blind man on the Whispering Way.
The figure who walked between worlds.
The Midnight.