The ash was beginning to settle, but its weight clung to everything like a memory refusing to be buried. The wind stirred it lazily, pulling curls of gray into the sky where they vanished like fading dreams. Sky lay still for several minutes, staring at the spiral etched into the scorched earth, its eight jagged shards curling around the center like a ritualistic seal that pulsed faintly in the back of his mind. The mark wasn't just symbolic—it was personal. It radiated something foreign yet oddly intimate. He didn't touch it again. Not because he feared it—but because something in him already knew that contact had changed him. It was more than a symbol. It was a claim. A brand etched on his soul.
He groaned as he pulled himself upright, his arms trembling under his own weight, each motion stiff with exhaustion and the stiffness of too much burned energy. The muscles in his legs burned from the relentless Shadow Steps he'd used, and the toll on his body had settled deep in his joints like frost in old bones. Vulkran's death had been massive—a rupture in the balance of nature. Elemental destruction drawn to fire—and the silence that followed had only invited scavengers. Sky hadn't looked back. He couldn't afford to.
The forest was long gone now, fading behind smoke and memory. In its place stood the hollow remnants of human civilization—a long-abandoned neighborhood fractured by nature's revenge. Roads split apart by roots. Asphalt crumbled beneath crawling moss and shattered glass. Homes sagged under collapsed roofs, eaten alive by weather and time. A swing creaked in the wind from a rusting frame, its chain holding on by a whisper. Cars sat rusted, vines woven through shattered windshields. Streetlights hung at awkward angles, their poles bent like crooked spines. Time had slowed here, or perhaps it had simply been forgotten.
He passed a cracked mailbox—number "37" still visible in peeling paint—and ducked under a sagging wooden beam into a collapsed house that offered more shadow than shelter. Inside, the stench of mold and dust blended with the lingering scent of scorched earth. The walls were blackened with smoke, and graffiti older than the Momentous had been scratched into the remnants of wallpaper. The floor groaned beneath his boots. Glass crunched. A family portrait, half-melted and stuck to the frame, stared at him with empty eyes.
Sky dropped to the floor, his back against a wall that barely held itself upright. He exhaled slowly, letting the silence embrace him. His side ached, a dull throb where the wound had once been. Though healed externally, his core felt raw—unsettled. Flickering. Like a candle struggling in the wind. The remnants of the power he'd gained from Vulkran stirred within him, restless and barely contained.
Who was she?
The thought came unbidden. But the answer eluded him.
You're mine now.
The words replayed in his head with the same weight they'd carried when she first whispered them. He hated how they affected him. Hated the warmth that rose in his chest, the heat that climbed into his cheeks at the memory of her voice—rich and seductive, confident and untouchable. It lingered not as a threat, but a promise. A tether.
She hadn't touched him with a weapon. She didn't need to.
She'd walked into his world, crushed his resistance with a glance, and vanished.
Sky glanced at his palm—the one that had brushed over the spiral. It still tingled faintly, as though the mark had woven itself into his nerve endings. The memory of it was burned into him in a way he couldn't name. It scared him. It excited him. It made him feel exposed.
He forced himself to focus, eyes scanning the room. The interior was dust-choked, the furniture bloated with dampness and rot. Torn couches, an upturned coffee table, framed photos too blurred to make out. A broken television hung from the wall by a single wire. His attention shifted to the claw marks gouged into the drywall beside him. Three deep slashes, made by something large—something angry. The plaster crumbled slightly as he leaned forward.
He adjusted his posture, bringing his knees to his chest. He needed sleep. Real sleep. But he didn't trust this place. Still, he let his eyelids lower, just slightly. He counted his breaths. Let his muscles unclench. The tension in his core faded only a little.
Sleep came slow. Broken. Filled with flickers of memory that weren't entirely his own. Flashfire. Screams. A shadowy figure with glowing burgundy eyes. Her voice, again and again. Not taunting—claiming.
Far below the surface of the dying world, hidden in the deep cradle of the earth, was a place immune to storms and flame—The Resonance. A sanctum of blackstone and voidsteel, humming with anti-energy. It was neither hot nor cold, and the deeper one went, the less the body remembered sensation at all. Time moved differently here. Slower. With intention.
The air buzzed with silence, its very existence an affront to elemental harmony. Glowing sigils etched into the walls whispered counter-rhythms to the world's corrupted pulse. The corridors were wide, echoless, their geometry slightly wrong to the eye—angular, sharp, and smooth in ways that denied normal architecture. It was a place made not for living—but for watching. Waiting. Unraveling.
In the core of this sanctum, beneath a suspended black sun that gave no heat nor light, was a mirrored chamber where shadows rippled like oil. The floor reflected nothing, and yet everything was seen.
Thalra Elarion entered without sound.
Her cloak drifted behind her like midnight smoke, her pale-gold eyes unreadable. She moved with the patience of someone who had never been in a hurry and never needed to be. Her boots did not echo. Her breath did not disturb the air.
Before her, seated upon a raised platform that pulsed faintly with voidlight, was Velira Elarion, the High Matron, draped in deep obsidian robes. Her silver-streaked hair was woven into a crown, and her hands rested delicately on the arms of her throne. She gazed not at her sister, but at the slow rotation of a sigil floating mid-air above the reflective floor.
The spiral. Nyx's mark.
Velira's lips curved, just barely.
"So," she said with quiet amusement, "she finally used it."
Thalra stopped at the base of the dais, folding her arms beneath her cloak. Her expression was carved from granite.
"She broke protocol," she said.
"She followed her instincts."
"Instinct leads to softness."
"Sometimes softness leads to survival."
Silence settled between them, as alive and pulsing as anything spoken.
"You've seen the pulse readings," Thalra continued. "The core inside him—it consumed Vulkran without trace. No fragmentation. No recoil. The shockwave from the consumption rippled through our shielding. That hasn't happened in over two decades."
Velira nodded, eyes still fixed on the spiral.
"I felt it before the sensors recorded it. A natural core. Dominant. Not inherited. Not scavenged. Born of the Momentous, perhaps even its echo."
"Dangerous."
Velira finally looked at her sister.
"Or valuable."
Thalra's eyes narrowed. "You want to bring him in?"
Velira's gaze softened. "I want her to bring him in. On her own terms."
"She's never allowed herself to connect. Never lingered."
"She is now."
A pause.
"She's watching him," Thalra said.
"She's remembering him," Velira corrected.
Thalra said nothing for a long while. Then, in a voice quieter than usual, "You think she's falling."
Velira's expression was unreadable. "I think she's learning. For the first time."
Thalra offered a faint nod. "If it turns, I'll sever it myself."
Velira didn't disagree. "If it turns... you'll be too late."
Another silence passed. This one less tense. Almost peaceful.
"She's going to fall hard," Thalra said at last.
"Good," Velira whispered. "It's time she felt something real."
Far above them, atop a crumbling tower overtaken by vines and time, Seraphina Nyx stood with arms crossed, her cloak whispering in the breeze like silk across broken glass. Her burgundy eyes gazed over the ruined city, catching the dim reflection of the moonlight on the rooftops. She stood motionless, like a statue carved from night, staring at the shadows below.
The wind brushed past her, cool and indifferent. But she felt warm.
She had watched him stagger away. Wounded. Determined. His will flaring like a star trying not to collapse.
She hadn't meant to push him that far.
Not truly.
But it was beautiful to watch him resist. To defy her field. Even if it had nearly broken him.
She brought her fingers to her lips, remembering the look on his face when she whispered.
It had startled him.
Made him flush.
She could still see it. Feel it.
It made something strange twist in her chest.
Nyx looked down toward the city again. Somewhere, not far from where she stood, he was tucked into the hollow of a broken home, catching breath, recovering. She could feel his core—flickering, uneven, but alive.
He's thinking of me, she thought, and smiled to herself.
You're mine now.
The words came to her lips again, but she didn't say them.
Instead, her gaze darkened—not with malice, but longing.
"I hope you survive," she whispered to the stars. "Because I want to see just how far your shadows go."
And with a ripple of motion that left no trace, Seraphina Nyx disappeared into the wind.