By the time I was dressed, dark, sleek, prepared, Selene was already waiting outside Arbor's walls, draped in a cloak of shifting shadows that never quite decided on one shape. "I will take her," she said quietly.
Malvor didn't like it. I could see it in the set of his jaw, in the way his fingers twitched at his side like he was resisting pulling me back. He caught me before I could leave, his hands brushing my arms. His tan eyes were fixed on me, stripped of the usual theatrics and magic. "Listen," he murmured. "Leyla's realm… it isn't like the others. It doesn't try to scare you. It just knows you. It reflects things. Memories. Fears. You'll feel things that aren't yours, or things you buried for a reason."
I nodded. My voice was steady. "I can handle it."
He hesitated, then pressed a kiss to my brow. "I know."
But he couldn't come with me. No god could enter the Abyss without Leyla's leave. She had not given it to him. So I walked forward with Selene, into the dark that rose like smoke, swallowing us whole.
The Abyss didn't welcome me. It consumed me. No gate. No sky. No walls. Just endless shadow stretching in every direction, pressing so close it felt like it had already crawled inside me. The whispers were immediate, low, layered, like a hundred voices breathing the same truth against my skin.
The first thing it gave me was the first cut.
Eight years old. Leyla's priests bending over me, chanting in words I didn't know, their hands steady, the knife steady, like they'd done it a thousand times. I remembered the sting, the fire in my arm, the blood soaking the altar. But the Abyss didn't show me just that. It dug out the part I'd buried the deepest. The thought I'd never told anyone. Where's my mom? Where's my dad? Please, someone… anyone. I'd screamed myself raw. No one came. Not that day. Not the next. Not ever. The Abyss whispered over the memory, curling into my ear like smoke: That was the end of your childhood. The day you stopped waiting. The day you knew you were alone.
The Abyss shifted.
Ravina's face hovered above me first, too close, too sharp, lips curled like she'd won something. "He was mine." Her vines crawled over my skin, winding around my ribs, my throat, pulling me open like roots breaking stone. The air smelled of wet earth, sweet rot. My knees hit marble. My scream tangled in the vines. Darkness. Then cold steel. My back pressed flat, wrists raw against metal restraints. The air tasted different here. Sterile. Silent. Not Ravina's forest. Somewhere else. Somewhere hidden. Aerion's shadow leaned over me. His hand cracked across my cheek, sharp, echoing. "Stay awake," he ordered. His voice was law, as if the words themselves were a sentence being carried out. His palm slammed over my eyes, forcing darkness. "You agreed. You broke the covenant. Now you pay."
I gasped, trying to lift my head. Ravina's laughter bled through, wrong, too close, even though she was gone. "You thought he chose you?" The vines were still on me. No, not vines. The straps biting into my wrists. My body couldn't tell the difference.
Darkness again. Navir's quill scratching, steady and clinical. He didn't look at me. He looked at the page. At the symbols glowing faintly under his hand. As if I were just numbers. Just evidence. Just proof. Aerion's grip in my hair yanked me back into the moment. "You humiliated me before the Pantheon. Do you think law doesn't remember?" Another slap, stinging, bright. His voice cold as iron. "This is justice." Aerion's hand pressed me harder into steel. Navir's quill scratched louder, louder, louder, until it drowned out my own pulse.
I didn't know where I was. I didn't know where one ended and the other began. Forest. Marble. Steel. Dark. Their voices braided together, three gods speaking as one tribunal:
"Mine. Punishment. Witnessed."
The Abyss pressed closer, forcing me to remember the worst part, not the pain, but the certainty in their voices. This wasn't crime. It was law. The whispers were manic: You are nothing more than what they made you. You deserved that. You are nothing compared to the Gods.
My knees nearly buckled. Still, I kept walking. Because if I stopped, I didn't think I'd start again.
The shadows shifted again, but this time it wasn't a carving or an assault. It was death. My mortal death. The moment Calavera pressed her bloody palm to my back and tore my mortality out of me. The runes lit like fire across my spine. I'd arched and screamed until my throat bled, until the bond went silent, until I felt the last pieces of myself crumble to ash. The Abyss replayed it. The moment my chest stopped rising. The silence that followed. I saw myself go still, limp in Malvor's arms. I felt the emptiness again, the absolute certainty that I was gone. The whispers wound tighter, merciless: That was the day you stopped being human. The day you died.
I staggered, clutching at my chest like I could still feel the absence of my own heartbeat.
Sudden, sharp, Aerion's voice. Not memory. Not illusion. Too raw, too alive. The Abyss echoed with him, loud enough to rattle my bones. "Obey me!" His scream split the black, his rage crashing over me like a tide I'd drowned in a thousand times before. I couldn't see him, but I felt him. The heat of his fury. The weight of his demand. He wasn't here. He couldn't be. But the Abyss carried his voice anyway, ripping through me like he'd clawed out of some unseen cage. The whisper curled around the sound, cruel and certain: Even hidden he still owns you.
My hands shook. I wanted to scream back, but the air caught in my throat. Because part of me believed it.
Then came the last. Not gods. Not priests. Not death. Me. Malvor, on his knees. Golden blood dripping between his fingers, staining the ground in bright, impossible rivers. His eyes locked on mine, betrayal carved deep enough to gut me. My own hands glowed, chaos burning out of them uncontrolled, wild, consuming. His mouth opened, not with a curse, not with a joke. Just one word: Why?
The Abyss shoved the truth into me, whispered the fear I never let myself think in daylight. One day you will hurt him. One day you will carve. One day you will be the one who betrays.
My own voice. Not a memory. Not a whisper. Me. Breaking on the words like they'd been waiting all along: "I'm afraid I'll destroy him."
The shadows pulsed, alive, like they agreed. My fists curled. Not flinching this time. Then another voice. Different. Smooth, calm. Cruel in its serenity.
"Tell me, girl… are you afraid of the dark, or of what it reveals?"
I exhaled, steady. "Is that supposed to be a riddle?"
"You have walked through fire, through pain, through chaos. And still, you cannot name what you fear most."
The voice had no source. It was everywhere. Inside my chest. "Do you fear your power? Or that it will never be enough?"
I lifted my chin. "I came here for answers. Not to be toyed with."
A low chuckle, unnerving. "Oh, but you are a toy. Carved, reshaped, passed around. Now chaos holds you like a talisman." The shadows drew tighter. "You hide from your bond. Not because it hurts, but because it asks too much. Even now, he does not feel what you feel."
My jaw locked. "I'm warning you."
"You warned the others too, didn't you? Still, they carved you. Deeper than they should have. They wanted permanence. Obedience."
Something cracked inside me. "Show yourself," I snapped. "If you're going to psychoanalyze me, you can at least look me in the eye."
Silence. Then movement. The darkness folded in on itself, and out of it stepped Leyla. Half-shadow, half-flesh, she was veiled in smoke that never held still. Her skin shimmered like onyx beneath moonlight, her eyes endless night scattered with stars. Her hair drifted like living mist. She looked young. She felt older than silence itself. Barefoot, weightless, she crossed the black floor that wasn't floor at all.
"I thought you would be louder," I muttered.
Leyla smiled. "You thought I would be kind."
She circled me, slow and assessing. A scholar. A predator. Both. Her hand hovered above my right forearm, where my first rune had been carved. My skin burned faintly under the mark. "They made sure you'd never forget," she whispered. "Made sure your body would remember pain even when your mind tried not to." Her gaze lifted, piercing. "And now you come to me… not to understand it. But to master it."
Approval. Or warning. I couldn't tell. She moved around me like smoke, eyes catching every scar. "Most who bear my mark wake screaming. Their minds fracture. Their dreams rot." I said nothing. "But you…" Leyla's voice lowered. "You walk with nightmares like old companions."
I met her eyes. "Because they weren't new. Just… louder."
Her lips twitched. Not quite a smile. Not quite not. "You survived what was meant to break you. That more than anything makes you dangerous." Her hand rose again, shadows curling around her fingers. "There is magic inside you. Dormant. Poisoned. Wild. Old magic. The first kind. Born from silence. It unmakes. It strips. It reveals."
I swallowed. "You think I have it?"
Her eyes glowed with starlight. "I know you do. Because it knows you."
"But you don't trust it. Just as you don't fully trust the gods you've chosen."
"I trust Malvor," I shot back.
Leyla's voice was velvet-dark. "Even chaos casts a shadow, my dear."
Ice slid down my spine. Still, I didn't back down. "What do you want from me?"
Leyla stepped back, shadows spilling from her like wings. "You want answers. Power. Freedom from voices that echo when you close your eyes."
"I want control," I said. "Over whatever is inside me."
She tilted her head, as if watching a crack widen. "You speak like someone who's already lost it once."
Her voice softened, almost a caress. "You want to master your power? Good. Because soon, sooner than you think, you'll be the only thing standing between the Pantheon and the end."
She turned, shadows gathering. "You will have to choose whether to save it… or let it die."
Cold tendrils curled around my ankles, weightless but binding.
"One test," Leyla whispered. "Pass, and I'll return a truth stolen from you. A memory carved out by those priests. The key to your beginning."
My breath caught. "And if I fail?"
Her smile curved, merciless. "Then the shadows will know you lied when you said you weren't afraid."
The ground vanished beneath me.