Chapter 57
It happens in a flash—one second, I exist in the world I know, and the next, reality folds in on itself like an implosion.
No transition, no warning, just a sudden shift, as if the air around me has been ripped away and replaced with something thicker.
The fabric of space itself bends, warping around me, pulling me through an unseen thread that stretches beyond time, beyond logic.
For an instant, I am nothing and everything, weightless and infinite.
My mind strains against the sensation as I’m unable to grasp the enormity of it, the way existence splits apart and reweaves itself in the same moment.
No sound, no movement, no breath—only the feeling of being rewritten, of stepping between the cracks of what was and what will be.
Then it’s over.
The ether. It was different this time.
Or perhaps I’m what is different.
I have no weapons, which means I won’t need any. Alara would have made sure I had them otherwise.
The sky above me is overcast, and the dirt is hard under my boots. Trees sway around me, and wind drifts over me. I inhale the scent of earth, of impending rain.
Of storm.
The same fragrance from my place, right before I emerged here, in the ether.
Yes, the ether.
Alara’s words echo in my mind.
To move through the ether, you must understand the ether. The ether is not just a place, but a state of being, an existence beyond the tangible constraints of our physical realm. It is akin to the air around us—invisible yet ever-present, a fabric interwoven with the very essence of life and death.
What I thought was another plane of existence is in fact a current—an endless, shifting tide that flows among worlds, among time, among thought itself. It’s not a place to be reached, but a force to be understood. It is neither light nor darkness, neither here nor there.
It simply is.
I didn’t understand before.
I thought the ether was another plane where supernatural beings fought their wars, where the echoes of their power clashed and rippled through existence. I believed it was a battlefield, a realm of shadows and light, of forces beyond my comprehension waging endless conflict.
Or a place where love blooms, as it did between Rogan and me. In the green meadow where we were free to be who we were, love how we pleased, without the judgment of both our peoples.
But I was wrong.
The ether is not a place at all—it is the space between, the breath of reality itself, a force that permeates all things.
It is neither war nor peace, neither creation nor destruction, neither love nor hate, but the pulse that binds them.
It is the unspoken memory of the universe, the fabric through which time weaves its stories, the undercurrent pulling at the edges of existence.
And now, standing here, feeling it coil around me, whispering, shifting, waiting—I understand what Alara meant.
The ether is not where battles are fought.
The either is not where love is forged.
It is where everything is remembered.
For the first time, I sense it—really sense it. The pulse beneath reality, the way it bends and shifts, the whispers of a thousand voices layered over one another, remnants of those who came before, those who were lost to it. The ether does not simply exist around me. It remembers me.
And I begin to understand.
I am no longer simply moving through it.
I am becoming part of it.
My child is becoming part of it.
The path to my destiny begins here.
I close my eyes, breathe deeply.
And when I open them, I see her. The she-wolf.
Her coat is darker than Rogan’s, black as the void between the stars of the night sky. But her eyes—they are nearly golden, and they burn with something more than instinct, more than hunger.
She stands motionless, those amber eyes fixed on me.
A shiver ripples through me.
She knows me.
Not just in this moment, but beyond it—beyond time, beyond memory.
And I sense the demon within her. The evil. The air around her is thick with it, suffocating, charged with something ancient and unspeakable. It seeps from her like venom.
She doesn’t move, but I feel her presence pressing against me, weighing me, judging me.
Does she see what I am? What I will become? What my child will become?
The wind shifts, rustling the trees, and in the silence between heartbeats, I understand.
I’m not meant to run from her.
But I’m also not meant to chase her.
If it’s a battle she wants, she must come to me.
Only then can I face my destiny.
I suck in a breath, gather the energy that Alara taught me to harness.
I’m here, Eris.
Bring it, you demon bitch.