Nima's breath came in sharp gasps, her chest rising and falling with an urgency she could no longer control. Her hand gripped the shard of the Bell, and its unnatural warmth pulsed against her skin, radiating a hum that reverberated through her entire body. It was as though the Song, the very force that had consumed her, was now trying to reach out from the shard and suffocate her entirely.
The images—the faces, the broken worlds—still clung to her mind, flickering like ghosts. No matter how hard she closed her eyes or tried to steady her breathing, they would not fade. She was trapped in this endless loop of visions, of horrors she couldn't yet understand.
Her legs buckled, and she fell to her knees, gasping for air. The ground beneath her was cold, foreign, like a thousand voices pressing into her from every direction. The world felt too vast, too empty, yet suffocatingly close, and she could feel the weight of the Song bearing down on her like a mountain, its echo hammering against her soul.
She couldn't—couldn't—make sense of it all.
A distant part of her mind, somewhere buried beneath the rising tide of terror and confusion, screamed out for help—but no one would hear her. No one could. She was alone, utterly alone, surrounded by visions of endless pain and destruction, and the only thing she had was the shard, the key to it all.
And the Song.
Her thoughts fractured again, snapping like brittle glass. Her hand clenched around the shard as if it were the only thing anchoring her to reality. But even that began to slip away, fading like smoke.
In the distance, the figure—the one that had spoken to her in the abyss—loomed once more, its face unreadable, its form shifting and blending into the surrounding chaos.
"You cannot outrun the Song," it said, its voice reverberating deep inside her mind, splitting her thoughts into sharp fragments. "It has already claimed you."
"No…" Nima whispered, though it was barely audible. Her voice sounded foreign, lost.
"The price of the Song is steep, Nima. You were warned," the figure continued, its gaze penetrating, a dark abyss gazing into the deepest part of her soul. "You are the last of the Bellborn, the only one who has answered its call, and now the world will bleed. And you will lead it."
Nima shook her head violently, trying to block out the figure's words. "I never asked for this," she spat, her voice hoarse, raw. "I didn't choose this!"
The figure tilted its head slightly, the motion eerie and unnatural. "Did you think you had a choice? The Song chooses its vessels. You did not walk this path alone. You never have."
The words were like ice, freezing her in place. The truth, however bitter, was undeniable. She hadn't chosen this—the Song had chosen her. From the moment she'd touched the First Echo, from the moment she'd begun to unravel the mystery of the Bell, she had already been tied to it. The Song had marked her, and now there was no turning back.
The visions flickered again, more rapidly this time, blurring into each other, blending past, present, and future.
A flash of the Bell, glowing with an unnatural light, its power consuming everything in its wake. Her own face—her own empty face—staring back at her from a dark void.
And then, a voice. A familiar one.
Dmitri.
Nima's heart clenched painfully in her chest, as if something deep inside her had been torn open. Dmitri's face appeared in the swirling chaos, his expression one of worry, of confusion. He looked at her, but his eyes—his eyes were not the same. They were filled with something darker, something that shouldn't have been there.
"Nima," his voice called, though it was distant, muffled by the deafening song. "Nima, stop! You don't have to carry this burden. You—"
But the rest of the words were lost in a rising tide of sound. The Song had overtaken his voice, drowning him out.
"No," she gasped, her hand tightening around the shard as if she could hold on to him, as if she could pull him from the depths of the void. "Dmitri! Please—"
But he was already fading, his image growing fainter, his voice swallowed whole by the Song.
And in the silence that followed, Nima felt her chest tighten, her throat constricting as though something were strangling her from the inside out. The truth was clear now, sharper than ever:
This is the price.
The Song would destroy everything it touched. It would devour the world, and in doing so, it would consume her, too.
The figure before her—this strange being who seemed to exist outside of all time and space—finally spoke again.
"You will break," it whispered, almost tenderly. ""The Song will break you, and when it does, there will be no mending."
Nima wanted to scream. She wanted to throw the shard away, to tear her mind from the Song and rid herself of its grip. But she knew she couldn't. The truth was inescapable. The Song was inside her now, and it would never let her go.
"No…" she said, the words strangled in her throat. "I won't let it."
The figure's gaze softened, its swirling eyes watching her with a mixture of pity and sorrow.
"You have no choice, Nima," it said softly. "None of us do."