Seraphine woke with a jolt.
The air was still, but not calm. It felt like standing at the edge of a cliff, waiting for the wind to push. Something was different. She knew it before she even opened her eyes.
The Vale had changed. Or maybe she had.
Her body ached, but not in the way it had before. The cold didn't bite as sharply, her breath didn't stutter, and her limbs felt stronger, steadier, like they had been reforged while she slept. She sat up slowly, rubbing her arms, brushing ash from her skin.
There was a strange charge beneath her palm. It wasn't like magic, but it was present. It was more primal. It felt like something inside her had shifted in its sleep, and now it was stretching awake. A slow, curling tug, as if her ribs were no longer her own.
She looked down at herself. Fear briefly crossed her eyes.
Seraphine noticed a light glare along her collarbone, like an echo of ink barely visible beneath her skin. It hadn't been there before. She pressed her hand to her chest. The fire she felt wasn't hers.
It wasn't a mark she had chosen. It had been given, or perhaps taken.
She stood slowly. Her surroundings looked the same, so what in hell happened to her exactly?
Then she saw him.
Lucien leaned against a tree with blackened bark, arms crossed over his chest. He didn't speak, didn't move. His expression was unreadable, as usual.
She waited for the smile. The dry humor. The flicker of warmth he used to show when he looked at her. But it didn't come.
"You're awake," he said.
It was not a question.
Seraphine took a breath, then another. "What did you do to me?"
Lucien tilted his head. "I answered your plea."
She looked down at her hands. They looked the same. Pale. Human. But they didn't feel the same.
"It feels like I'm wearing someone else's skin," she muttered.
"That feeling will fade." He replied curtly.
She narrowed her eyes. "You could have warned me."
"You didn't ask," he said.
She stared at him, searching for the version of him she had traveled with. The man who sat by the fire, who told her stories of the world before it broke. The man who made her laugh even when her heart was in pieces; when he didn't mean to, and was clearly clueless.
But he wasn't there now. Or she had read too much into it.
"Was that all fake?" she asked.
Lucien didn't answer. He pushed off the tree and turned away. "Follow me."
Seraphine hesitated, then walked after him.
The trail they took was unfamiliar. The Vale shifted its paths often. She had stopped trying to understand it days ago. Time moved differently here. So did distance.
Eventually, the trees grew thinner. Taller. They were weirdly shaped, as if bowing to them. To Lucien.
Lucien came to a stop.
"This is where your path begins," he said.
"My path?" she asked.
"The pact was only the first step. Now you prove you were worth the power."
"I didn't do it for power."
Lucien looked at her. "You did it for something. The Vale doesn't care what name you give it. What matters is whether you can survive."
He stepped aside, observing as she made her way to what looked like a make-shift ring. A battle ring. It was empty, and very quiet. Until it wasn't.
Something moved.
Seraphine took a step back as the figure emerged from the shadows. At first, she thought it was human. Then she saw the way it walked, like its joints had been put together by someone who had never seen a body before. Its head tilted too far to one side, and its limbs shifted in ways that made her stomach twist.
But it was its face that stopped her cold.
She knew that face.
"Cedric."
Her voice cracked.
The creature looked at her with his eyes. Blue. Soft. Kind. The eyes that once promised her forever. The lips that had kissed her trembling hands before the ceremony.
"Seraphine," it said.
She froze.
It wasn't his voice. Not really. It was close, and she wanted to laugh at how much it tried to imitate her ex-lover. Just enough to make her doubt.
"No," she whispered.
The creature took a step forward. It smiled at her. His smile.
Lucien said nothing.
"Please," it said. "You don't have to do this."
She shook her head. Her heart pounded so hard it hurt. Every instinct screamed at her to run, but her feet refused.
"It isn't real," she whispered. "You aren't real."
"I loved you," it said.
The words burned. The ache beneath her ribs returned like a bruise being pressed.
"Stop it," she said, voice trembling.
It kept walking toward her.
"I waited for you," it said. "Even after they took everything from us. I would have followed you into the Vale. I still would."
"Shut up."
Her fingers clenched at her sides. The thing wore his face too well. The smile, the voice, the hesitation in his step. But the longer she looked, the more wrong it became.
The pupils were too wide. The teeth too white. And when it blinked, it did so one eye at a time.
She looked past the face. Past the voice. Past the illusion.
And then she reached for the new current in her chest.
It responded. Not with light. Not with the elegance she had known all her life while playing magic tricks with her friends. But with heat, wild, and fiercely hers.
She raised her hand.
The energy rose like a second heartbeat.
"Don't make me do this," the creature said.
"You already did," she whispered.
Then she let it go.
The power burst out of her at a roaring speed. It lashed like a whip made of fire and shadow. The creature screamed, but it was not Cedric's scream.
The face twisted. The illusion cracked. For one horrible moment, it looked like dozens of faces at once. All human. All made want to puke her guts.
Then it shattered.
When the thing collapsed into ash, the Vale fell silent.
Seraphine stood in the middle of it, breathing hard.
Lucien stepped forward slowly.
"You passed," he said.
"I didn't do it for you."
"I never said you did."
She turned to face him. "It looked like him. Why?"
"The Vale reaches inside you," Lucien said. "It finds what you fear most and dresses it up in memory. It's genius, if you ask me."
She looked down at her hands. They didn't tremble.
She didn't feel powerful.
She felt... hollow.
But there was no undoing it.
Lucien watched her carefully.
"You're changing," he said.
"Am I becoming like you?"
He smiled, faintly. "No. You're becoming something else."
He turned and walked away.
She followed, this time not out of trust, but because there was no other path. The old Seraphine would have cried. Would have fallen to her knees and begged the gods for the torture to stop.
But that version of her was gone now. Left in the ashes with the face of a man who had once said her name like a breath.
She did not weep.
She did not look back
But even the Vale was not finished testing her.