Natalie~
Darkness wasn't silent. It shrieked.
When I let Kalmia in, it was like opening the door to a storm and standing still as it swallowed me whole. Her presence surged into me, not like water but fire. Blistering, spiteful, and greedy. My veins screamed. My bones locked. My mind cracked.
And then—
I was nowhere.
Not asleep. Not awake. Suspended in something ancient and terrible. A void, endless and pulsing with shadows. The sky above me was a deep bruise of stars and torn clouds. The ground beneath my feet was black glass, fractured, echoing every step I dared take.
"Well," a voice purred, slithering through the air, "that was easy."
Kalmia stepped out from the shadows like she'd been born of them. Her hair hung like vines soaked in ink, her eyes gleamed obsidian and cruel. She wore my skin like a costume, but twisted — her smile too wide, her limbs too graceful, too wrong.
"You really are your mother's child. Reckless. Self-sacrificing. Stupid."
