Darkness.
Not the silence of sleep, not the hush of dawn after a fire, but a black so absolute it felt like being swallowed whole. Aria floated in it, weightless, stripped of body, stripped of breath. Her chest did not rise. Her heart did not beat. And yet she was aware.
The mark had dragged her under.
For a long, endless moment, nothing stirred. Then a sound split the void. Not a sound of earth or sky, but of bone cracking, flesh tearing. A laugh woven through flame.
Mine.
The darkness peeled back.
Aria stood barefoot on ash. It stretched forever in all directions, an endless desert of soot and smoke. Above her, no stars burned, only a black sky stitched with red veins, pulsing like the inside of a wound. Every breath scraped her throat with cinder.
She turned and froze.
There it was. The throne. The vision that had haunted her since her fire first broke. A mountain of cinders, corpses buried within, charred bones glowing faintly red. Upon it sat her reflection.
