What I chose to become
Daphne
The Surge had torn me open. Now, the world slammed back in.
My bones screamed in agony as I scrambled to my feet, leaning on the wall to catch my breath.
The Salt Womb was a battlefield. Twisted bodies littered the floor.
Smells hit me–so heavy they were nearly palpable—blood and dust, wet stones, incense that lingered around for millennia, and something foul.
Hollowborn.
Orren’s druidic chants shook the tunnels. Camille’s blood spells hissed. Maerya and her Watchers of the Dead carved through the Hollowborn ranks.
And above it all, the desert wind wailed like a choir of lost souls. The mural’s colors were so bright that my eyes nearly bled.
God, what did the Surge do to me? I was so painfully aware of everything, so alive.
I had no time to marvel.
Emrys. I needed to find Emrys.
When I limped along the walls, sand swirled around my ankles, each little grain going up, defying all laws of nature.
The Surge’s magic was gone. But something curled itself into the void in my chest and grinned when I looked.
The ley line magic was in me now.
It didn’t matter. Emrys.
I felt it—a fragile thread of silver humming inside me. Unwinding. I recognized that essence—it was him. A last strand of his power still tethered to my heart. One end wrapped around my soul. The other...
The other led into the Dusk Roads.
“I’ll find you, Emrys Ravenborn,” I said through clenched teeth.
I followed the thread like a child chasing breadcrumbs through a dark forest.
It vanished into the stone wall. I stepped around the corpses of the Twisted Ones, their bodies still twitching with the last drops of their stolen magic. The limestone beneath my palm was cold and solid. Relentless.
“Take me to him,” I whispered. “You have no other choice.”
The wall stood solid. The gaps between the ancient stones grinning like toothless faces.
“Take me to him, or I’ll make you do it,” I murmured as if the magical highway were a living being which I could bargain with.
Nothing happened. I wiped my sweaty palms on my tunic and reached for that new power that curled inside me. I opened that Pandora’s box inside me—just a sliver.
It was enough. The void wasn’t just a hunger. It was a key. A weapon. A map. And now it answered to me.
The wall parted.
Suddenly, I stood in a vast dark realm—a monstrous loom stretching into the horizon. Threads shimmered and twisted through the black. Some glowed. Some pulsed. And there—that silver strand, humming with the rhythm of his heartbeat.
“Emrys.”
I pulled.
And the world tilted. It warped and moved at my will while I stood still.
The rigid air carried the stench of bleach and urine. To my new, heightened senses, it was unbearable. A chill ran down my spine as I realized where the Dusk Roads had taken me.
Emrys lay motionless on a bed without a mattress, chained by his wrists and ankles. Sweat soaked his temples. His breath was shallow.
My stomach dropped.
“Well,” someone from the chair by the barred window said. “There’s more to you than meets the eye, Miss Draymoore.”
The Renegade crossed one leg over the other, calm as a priest before a sacrifice.
“Release him,” I said, my voice steady. If he didn’t do it, I’d make him, I realized.
He looked at Emrys with an amused smile. “Oh, I’ll break him. It’s only a matter of time. I’ll get my hands on everything he knows. But with you here, it’ll go much faster. I knew you were the best choice for this task. Love is such a splendid tool.”
Love. The word sunk into my chest, bitter-sweet and heavy. Did he believe Emrys loved me?
A scent hit me—whiskey, smoke, cigar ash.
“Too slow,” I muttered just as Dr. Vexley lunged from behind.
He aimed for my neck, a syringe gleaming in his hand.
I vanished. I had no idea how I did it, and I decided to dwell on it later.
Air whooshed behind me as I landed soundlessly at his back. I grabbed his wrist, twisted it, and shoved the needle into his own throat. A blood drop rolled down the reddish hairs of his perfectly trimmed beard.
His eyes bulged. His lips opened. Foam frothed at his mouth. He hit the floor with a thud.
I stepped over his body and looked at the monster sitting at the window.
“I’ll say this once more,” I told the Renegade. “Release him.”
He rose from the chair - a viper preparing to strike. Heavens, how tall he was. His white wings unfurled, brushing the ceiling.
He was no longer smiling. Instead, he stood still. Studying me. Entering places in my mind he had no right to.
“You have your grandfather’s eyes,” he said.
The words dropped like stones into the silence. I flinched as if he’d struck me. Then it all clicked into place.
I suddenly knew.
That macabre snake of vertebrae biting its tail—the symbol of the Eclipse - I’d seen it before.
On my grandfather’s portrait hanging over the fireplace in my father’s study.
The same place Arthur locked himself in every night and drank until passing out.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I saw the portrait again—my grandfather in his naval coat, with that strange serpent curled around a skull etched into the frame.
It was such a minor detail that was easy to overlook. I thought it was decorative.
I was wrong.
“He was a Hollowborn,” the Renegade continued, stepping toward me. “A gifted one. The void ran deep in him, too.”
My mouth went dry. My fingers curled around the weight of the magic pulsing through my veins.
What did that make me?
The truth chilled me to my bones.
That emptiness inside me, starved for magic—
No, Daphne. Don’t go there. Don’t let him win. Don’t let him tell you what you are.
“Liar,” I said, but the word tasted like ash. Because something in me already knew it was true.
Memories of the last time I saw my grandfather stirred, his scent of cologne and tobacco tingling my nose. He wore his spotless royal navy uniform, his white hair was combed in a hopelessly old-fashioned way.
His ship sank, they said. An unfortunate incident. Nobody survived. Mother locked herself in her bedroom for a week.
“He was my right hand,” the Renegade smirked, his angelic face twisted by something darker.
As if his image crumbled like a poorly made mask and the decay beneath it showed.
“He served his purpose. But you, Daphne.” He took another step toward me and I clenched my fists.
“You’re far more valuable. Ever wondered why that undyne chased you so relentlessly?
And how you walked the Dusk Roads - alone?
You’re a Hollowborn, Miss Draymoore. The rarest type of human.
And you’ll serve me. In life and in death.
” He reached out to touch me, but I was faster.
No way I’d let him mark me again. Amused wrinkles appeared in the corners of his cerulean eyes.
“You’re trying to tame it,” he said. “It’s beautiful to watch.
How does a mortal handle such power, Daphne?
Do you think you can fly just because your cage is open? No, dear girl. Your wings are cut.”
Something swept my feet and the floor beneath me shifted. He was trying to drag me into the Dusk Roads, I realized, in that maze of hideouts, secret worlds and magical highways where they would never find me.
Where I’d be at his mercy.
It made me angry. All my life, someone else was deciding my fate. That was enough.
“I’ll not serve you, Cagliostro.” My voice was so loud it startled the shadows in the corners. He looked down at me, surprised. “I’ll stay with you right here.”
He thought I was still the frightened girl in the refectory who drew the Death card from the tarot deck.
Time for a lesson.
I reached out to him with... something. It wasn’t my hand or any part of my body. It was something wild, roaring, singing for vengeance. Lashing out to protect me.
“You—” His eyes bulged, bloodshot. “You depleted the Surge,” he gasped, writhing in the grip of my magic. “That’s impossible.”
I stepped closer, light crackling at my fingertips. “You said it yourself, Cagliostro. I’m far more valuable than you imagined.”
The magic surged. I lifted him from the floor without touching him. His wings spasmed, feet kicking against the air like a drowning man. His bones groaned beneath the pressure.
“This is for my grandfather,” I said. Blood trickled from his nose, pooling at his lips. “And this—” I twisted my wrist, and his arms snapped behind him, “is for Emrys.”
He screamed—but the void inside me didn’t.
It sang.
For a single terrifying moment, I saw how easy it would be. To break him. Make him suffer. I had the right.
I had been silenced. Shackled. Beaten and forgotten.
But I wasn’t like him.
I wouldn’t be.
My fists relaxed. The magic settled—softer now.
I had made my choice.
“You don’t get to define what I become,” I whispered. “You don’t get to win.”
The Renegade dropped to his knees with a sound between a gasp and a curse. His wings flared wide, but they trembled.
He lay at my feet, face twisted, gasping like a god who never thought he’d kneel. And maybe he wouldn’t. Not before me. Not before a mortal girl born broken.
I looked down at him, breathing hard. Magic still throbbed under my skin—hot and raw, as if the stars roosted in my bones. The roar of the Surge was steadying now. It listened. It belonged to me.
“I wasn’t supposed to survive you,” I said. “Not the asylum. Not the Hollowborn. Or the truth about what I am.”
He didn’t answer. His chest heaved.
“I’ve been caged all my life, Cagliostro. It was always someone else who held the key. And everything I’ve ever wanted was freedom. Funny, but it took me all my life to realize what freedom is.”
I knelt beside him. The scent of his power—once overwhelming—now smelled like dust. Like rot. Like something already fading.
The silence clung to my skin. Even the screams of the patients had muffled as if St. Dismas were waiting.
“It’s what you choose. Freedom is what you choose to become.”
Behind me, the Dusk Roads opened with a breathless hiss.
Orren stumbled out first, eyes wild, looking for something to kill. Camille followed, blood trickling from the corners of her mouth. She saw me and rushed to me. “Daphne, are you okay—” Then her brows climbed up. She saw it, too.
Maerya stepped out of the portal last, her shadow filling the room and consuming the scarce lantern light.
The Renegade shuffled when he saw them. I tightened the magical noose around him, and his eyes turned into his skull. Then he stilled.
The three towered above him, studying him as if he were some rare animal.
“What now?” Camille asked, her tone as casual as ever. She nudged the Renegade with her boot. “Do we kill him?”
“Can’t,” Orren said. “He’s one of us. Or something like us. Killing him would be hard.” He tapped his foot, thinking. “I know. There are thousands of terrible options. I say dismember him, and lock his parts into boxes, scatter them all over the world.” Camille nodded with enthusiasm.
“Lock him up,” Maerya murmured thoughtfully. “I know just the place. A chamber, deep beneath the desert that even the dead avoid. Let him rot there.”
Camille tilted her head toward Vexley’s crumpled form. “And what about that one?”
I glanced down. Dear Lord, I’d nearly forgotten about the cruel doctor. His chest was still rising, his eyelids twitching.
“We leave him,” I said darkly. “To his patients.”
With a flick of my fingers, the asylum doors groaned open.
St. Dismas answered the call. Dragging steps filled the cold corridors.
Jeremiah—the boy he’d tormented—entered first. The wounds on his temples were still bleeding. He didn’t speak. Didn’t hesitate. Just stepped into the room with eyes full of silence. More followed.
I turned away.
Let them have their justice.
Behind me, Orren knelt beside Emrys.
“Should I kiss you like Sleeping Beauty?” he muttered and slapped Emrys hard across the cheek. “Wake up, you arrogant bastard. It’s time for the best part. Vengeance.”
Emrys groaned.
My chest eased for the first time in what felt like hours.
“Maerya.” Camille turned to the older woman. “Care to show us to that chamber?”
Maerya smirked. “With pleasure. Take us back to the Sphinx.”.