Chapter 25
Alanna
The world outside vanishes in a shimmer of silver light as the ward ceiling arcs high above my head, enclosing the center area of the plaza and trapping me in a realm that feels a step outside reality. The sirens, yelling, flashing lights—it’s all gone.
It’s just me and the echo-beast.
For the moment, it’s distracted, launching itself at the gleaming barrier, its serpent-like tendrils lashing out to smash against the inside of the dome.
But the impact does nothing. I hold my breath, keeping my magic dormant.
The silver walls of Kade’s ward are humming with so much power that they must be blinding the beast’s senses, masking my quiet signature.
It doesn’t realize that what it’s been seeking all along is imprisoned in here with it. For now.
I stand perfectly still, but my mind is racing inside my skull. My first hypothesis was wrong. My plan, flawed at best. Now I have the contained environment that I asked for, and there’s still a piece of this puzzle that I haven’t solved. This is my last chance to find it.
Keeping a wary eye on the beast, I review the passage, the words clear in my mind as the silver dome above us shudders under another vicious blow.
Something was fractured, and then . . . the wound it left was an echo . . . a chaotic memory, forever seeking, forever hungry, tethered to the shard. Until it can be made whole.
I already tried making it whole by solidifying it, thinking we could trap it, maybe even kill it. Only, that didn’t make it vulnerable. It made it angry.
But—what if there was a different meaning, a different interpretation of the passage?
The beast slams its brawny shoulder against the barrier again, and this time a spiderweb of cracks blooms at the site of impact. Its shriek fizzles into a low, keening whine. Like it’s in pain. Lost, and starving. The noise is shockingly sad.
Any moment now, it’s going to notice me. Yet as I stare at it, I don’t see a monster. I see a starving thing, thrashing in the dark, alone, and desperate for something it can’t name.
Cold recognition douses my fear. I know that hunger. I know that hollowing ache of being left behind, of being broken. Of yearning for something out of reach.
A new path unfolds, terrifying and fragile and . . . right.
One last attempt. If I’m wrong, I’m dead.
I drop my defensive stance. Taking a shaking breath, I let my power flare, filling our small world with dancing light and the clean sensation of my Cognitive Resonance.
Immediately, the creature snaps its head to me, drawn like a magnet, its purple eyes boring into me.
In their depths, beneath the hunger and the menace, swirls a confusion that I had never noticed before.
Still, the air crackles as it crouches, preparing to strike. It expects a fight. It wants to consume me, and my magic.
It wants to be whole.
I raise my hands, palms open, and pray my new plan works. The stillness in the dome allows me to hone my focus, to weave a new thread into the Aura of Clarity: compassion.
This is not what you are. Remember.
The creature recoils, abandoning the lunge in an awkward twist. It thrashes its head from side to side, as though trying to clear it. An expression flits across its face, for only a moment, that betrays the first hint of intelligence I’ve ever seen on it.
As quickly as it came, the expression is gone, and the echo-beast arches its back, screeching at me in a violent rejection of the understanding I am offering.
My hearing cuts out and my eyes water, but I keep us both awash in my resonance even as it thrashes and screams, its formidable tendrils whipping wildly through the air.
Heart pounding, I step forward.
And with that first step, a deluge of discord, a tidal wave, threatening to pull me under, to shatter my own consciousness and leave me just as lost as the creature is.
No. I accept the chaos, but I will not lose myself to it.
Another step, another surge of my magic.
The midnight hide ripples, cracking and reforming continuously in response to what I’m doing.
Its tendrils spasm, coiling and uncoiling in erratic bursts, as if my abilities are short-circuiting them.
Sensations slam into me, formless and all-encompassing.
Centuries of endless, gnawing hunger, born from the void where purpose used to be.
The frenzied drive to consume, to do anything to fill the gaping nothingness—and the agonizing lack of satisfaction. Mired in futility.
I push forward, pouring more of myself into the connection, holding fast to my purpose.
Another step. A burst of shadow erupts, a frenzied pulse meant to drive me back.
But when the darkness rushes through my magic, I absorb it.
The colors—aquamarine, cerulean, fuchsia, rose gold, amethyst—suffusing the air around us deepen, growing richer and more vibrant with the infusion of shadow.
But as the chaos merges with me, the world suddenly feels . . . thin. Stretched.
I cling to a single thought like a lifeline: I am here to lead it home.
One more staggering step, and I reach my hand out, my fingers crackling with iridescent power.
The beast shudders, the cracks in its hide seeping a violet light.
It shrinks back from my outstretched hand, hunching inward as the once-menacing tendrils curl in to shield its core, and a confused hiss escapes its throat.
I feel its confusion, its mindless hunger. Even now, it’s drinking in my energy at a rapid pace, bloating larger and larger, yet unsatisfied. The more it consumes, the more it wants. An eternal torture. It will consume all of my magic and then me, if I let it.
But I don’t stop. This is not a monster to be feared or even an animal to be coddled. It’s a wound to be mended.
I press my palm flat against its churning flank.
Contact.
It’s like plunging my psyche into an infinite pool of ice and static. The beast’s entropy surges into me, into the core of my essence, seeking and starving.
Shattering light. A sound that is not a sound, but the concept of sundering. The deafening emptiness of a purpose lost, ripped asunder. Agony. Confusion. Unmitigated need, eternal search. Emaciation in the dark. A cold, grasping wrongness. Cacophony.
A searing pain shoots up my arm. Horror spikes through me as inky, glass-like scales crawl over the hand that touches the beast, up my arm, blighting my skin, swallowing the glow of my crystal mark in absolute darkness. My arm feels heavy, dead, like it belongs to a statue.
For a terrifying second, I am slipping, my own identity fraying at the edges.
Impossible things brush against the fragile veil of reality.
The scent of grave dust and starlight. The whisper of alien geometries at the edge of thought.
A predatory chill not of this world. A thousand spired cities layered on top of each other like pages in a book.
But then, a specific anguish cuts through the noise. The all-too-familiar, desolate pain of being left behind, of an essential attachment being violently severed.
I know it. I’ve felt it.
My father’s face emerges in my mind. Unable to meet my eyes, not even looking at me, before he walked out the door forever. The beast’s ancient agony and my own childhood wound are the same unbearable, lonely ache.
My link to the beast amplifies my pain a million times until I’m drowning in sorrow. Tears stream down my face, full body sobs racking my chest without restraint. Me and the beast—we are hungry for the connection we lost. We are hungry for the one we drove away—the one who was supposed to stay.
We are the same. We are one.
Around and around, we circle our injuries, every past pain hurting like a fresh gash. An existence defined by the ties severed, adrift in an unfeeling universe. As it was, as it will always be.
The obsidian scales have reached my shoulder. My light sputters.
Kade surfaces in our consciousness, the sting of his rejection like an ice pick to the heart.
He tore open the old wound and poured acid into it.
He threw open the door to that lonely, well-worn prison of abandonment where I waited in vain for a father who never came back, and he shoved me back inside.
Why fight it? Kade left because I am broken. Dad left because I am broken. The beast is right; we are hollow things, made to be discarded.
The fight drains out of me, escaping through the cracks in my soul. I am so tired. Tired of proving I’m worth keeping. Tired of pushing, always striving to be wanted. The darkness feels safer than the light. I stop resisting as the jet-black scales splay across my chest, freezing my heart.
Hope can’t hurt me here, because there is none.
I let go.
The shimmering light around us dies, plunging us into a womb of absolute darkness.
The cold scales race up my neck, claiming me. They cover my mouth, silencing my sobs. They cover my eyes, blinding me. I am turning into shadow. I am turning into it.
It doesn’t hurt anymore. It feels like relief. It’s the peace I’ve been chasing since I was thirteen years old—the freedom from feeling too much, from wanting too much, from being too much. The void washes it all away.
Yes. Let it all go.
The hunger opens its mouth inside my soul, ready to swallow the last fragment of who I am. My magic, my life, my memories. Feed it all to the abyss. The way I felt when Kade kissed me. The warmth of Em’s hugs. The last time Dad held my hand. None of it ever mattered.
N-no.
No.
No!
I will not end like this.
I wrench my consciousness back. I won’t lose myself to this. Pain cannot heal pain. I have to challenge the narrative.
It feels like lifting a mountain, but I force a spark of light to ignite.
I think of my dad, throwing himself into danger, risking his life for Em—for me. The onyx shell encasing me fractures, spiderwebbing with cracks of kaleidoscopic luster.
I think of Em, and her constant stream of texts. Our sister nights. Shards of darkness flake away from my eyes and mouth, dissolving into mist as I reclaim my own skin.
I think of Mom, who never left. Warmth floods back into my limbs, into my heart.
I think of Lizzy and Jen, who bring hazelnut lattes and always have my back. I am not hollow. I am full.
And I think of Kade. Not the guarded man who rejected me, but the partner who fought for me.
The broken shifter who still grieves for his sister.
The protector who looked at me with raw terror in his eyes—not for himself, but for me.
I see him in my mind—his reluctant smile, the heat in his glances, the way he threw himself in front of a steel beam to save me.
A warm, insistent tug pulls at my chest, and I lift my gaze.
Through the shifting silver mist of the ward, a dark shape presses against the barrier.
Kade. He’s hurt, he’s exhausted, but he hasn’t left.
He’s right there, his hand splayed against the energy field, keeping vigil over my darkness. He is waiting for me.
And I understand. The answer isn’t a love that is perfect and painless. It’s the kind that can look at a wound—in him, in me, in this creature—and choose to try anyway. The kind that can hold both the agony and the ecstasy and call it whole.
That is the magic I need. That is the truth we need to remember.
I gather every bit of it—every stolen touch, every gruff kindness, every moment my heart ached for him. I take the whole, messy, contradictory truth of my feelings, and I infuse that powerful love into my Cognitive Resonance.
I project it outward, an embrace, around myself and the echo-beast alike. A promise whispered into the heart of the storm.
You are not alone. You will not be abandoned. It’s time to come home.
The echo-beast is utterly still beneath my hand, its thrashing finished. It recognizes this love. It yearns for it.
With a mighty shudder, it begins dissolving at the edges like the morning mist meeting the sun. Its purple eyes, once wild with craving and confusion, clear instantly. For the first time, I see recognition there—not of me, but of itself. Of what it was meant to be.
The bone-deep cold of the void evaporates, and the jagged, mental static scratching at the inside of my skull finally relents, resolving into a harmonious frequency that leaves me feeling almost weightless.
The onyx tendrils slowly unfurl, bathing in the illumination surrounding us, relaxing for the first time in what can only be relief.
As my power wraps around the appendages, they transform, the darkness giving way to ribbons of pure luminescence—no longer black and violet, but the same iridescent light as my own.
It’s beautiful.
The beast’s form continues to unravel, but there’s no violence left in it anymore. No desperate clinging to a shape that was never truly its own. Instead, it bleeds into the air like ink in water, the dark lines transforming into threads of radiance that spiral toward me in a graceful dance.
The essence of what it truly is—a part of my own shard, torn away and lost so long ago—flows back into me, back into the power I wield, in a rush of breathless homecoming.
The impact drops me to my knees.
Not painful, but vast. A torrent of power and memory and feeling flooding back into a space I didn’t realize was empty.
My magic roars to life, fuller and richer than it’s ever been, and suddenly I can’t contain it all.
Light explodes from my skin, from my hands, cascading outward in waves of prismatic color that make the air itself sing.
The last remnant of the echo-beast’s form hovers before me—a small, flickering shadow no larger than my fist. In it, one final flash of those purple eyes, full of gratitude. Then even those unspool, streaming into my chest as warmth and light and the overwhelming sense of being complete.
I gasp, pressing my palm to my chest as the sensation spreads through me.
The gnawing emptiness in the beast’s soul—and the sympathetic echo of it in my own—is gone.
We are whole.
My crystal mark blazes, scorching hot, then settles into something deeper—I look down to see the iridescent swirls beneath my skin slowing, their frantic shimmering darkening into a vivid, deep luminosity.
They no longer look like marks on skin; they look like veins of pure crystal running deep beneath the earth’s mantle—permanent, structural, unshakable.
For a moment, I simply kneel there, trembling, tears still wet on my cheeks, as my magic settles into this new vastness. It crackles through my veins with joyous recognition, harmonizing with itself in a way it never could before. The wound is healed. Complete.