The night after Raeth's appearance dragged on without mercy.
Amelia didn't sleep.
She couldn't.
Every time she closed her eyes, the darkness behind her lids rippled as if a creature swam just beneath the surface. A whisper curled through the corners of her mind—low, hungry, patient.
Found you…
She jolted upright in bed.
Kael was awake instantly.
He had taken the chair beside her, wings folded tight against his back, sword leaning within reach. His eyes—normally sharp as steel—softened when he saw her shaking.
"Another one?"
Amelia nodded, pressing a trembling hand to her chest where the sigil throbbed like an unspoken truth.
"It's getting louder," she whispered. "The Devourer… it feels closer than before."
Kael rose and sat on the edge of the bed, one hand hovering near hers—not touching until she gave the smallest nod. Then his fingers threaded through hers, warm and grounding.
"It can sense your awakening memories," he said. "But it cannot take you unless you let it."
A weak laugh escaped her. "That's not comforting."
Kael's lips twitched. "I know."
Silence stretched between them, thick with the weight of things neither of them dared say out loud—choices she'd have to make, truths he was afraid she'd remember, promises she didn't know she'd made.
Then—
The candles went out.
All at once.
A cold wind shuddered through the room, even though the windows were sealed.
Kael's hand snapped away from hers as he leapt to his feet, blade drawn in a single breath. His wings unfurled in a flash of pale feathers, shielding her behind him.
"Stay back," he murmured.
Amelia didn't argue.
The shadows pulsed, twisting like ink in water.
A shape materialized at the far corner of the room—not Raeth, not human, not whole.
Limbs were wrong. Bent. The body flickered like a dying flame, unstable.
A fragment.
One of the Devourer's echoes, sent like a hound to track her.
The creature tilted its head, its voice like bones grinding underwater.
"Ser…ael…"
Amelia's blood froze.
Not Amelia. Not Solyn.
Serael.
Her celestial name.
The one only two beings should have known.
Kael's grip tightened on his sword. "It knows too much," he hissed.
The creature lunged.
Kael moved faster.
Steel met shadow, cutting clean—yet the creature only hissed and reformed, its body bending around the blade like smoke refusing to be parted.
"Kael!" Amelia gasped.
"It's not fully here." His jaw clenched. "But if it touches you, even a fragment—"
He didn't finish.
He didn't need to.
The room shuddered again—and then something answered the creature's presence. A wind that wasn't a wind. A pressure that bent the flame-less air inward.
A counterforce.
The sigil on Amelia's collarbone glowed gold.
Her breath hitched.
"Amelia," Kael warned, voice sharp. "Don't let it pull you in—"
"I'm not," she whispered. "It's pulling itself."
The creature turned toward her, recognizing the glow. It stretched a shredded limb toward her, something like longing—or hunger—twisting through its voice.
"Open… the seal…"
The golden light surged, brilliant and sudden, slamming into the creature.
It screamed—an inhuman, piercing sound that shook the glass in the windows—and then collapsed in on itself like a dying star.
The shadow evaporated.
Silence.
Amelia collapsed against the headboard, gasping. "What… what was that?"
Kael sheathed his sword, though his hands were still shaking.
"A message," he said tightly. "A warning. And a threat."
She pressed a hand to the still-glowing sigil. "It called me Serael again."
Kael hesitated—then sat beside her, his voice low.
"Serael was the name you bore before you fell into mortality. Before your soul fractured into the lives you've lived. The Devourer recognizes that version of you."
She swallowed hard. "And Raeth?"
A muscle ticked in Kael's jaw.
"Raeth knew you when you were celestial," he said quietly. "Before the first seal. Before your first death."
Her heart stopped.
"So he wasn't lying."
"No," Kael admitted, voice strained. "He rarely lies. He simply tells the truths that hurt the most."
Amelia closed her eyes.
So many selves.
So many lives.
And now the Devourer's echo had reached her room.
"Kael," she whispered, voice barely holding. "How long until the real thing finds me?"
Kael looked at her—really looked—and the answer in his eyes chilled her more than the creature's voice.
"It already has," he said. "It's only waiting for the last memory you haven't recovered."
The last memory.
The one she feared the most.
The one that tied her to Raeth.
The one that tied her to the seal.
The one that might destroy everything.
Before she could speak, another knock sounded at the door—soft, measured, not dangerous.
But the look on Kael's face—
That was fear.
Real fear.
He rose abruptly. "Stay behind me. Do not speak unless I tell you."
He opened the door—
And froze.
Standing in the hallway, dressed in silver robes marked with the Council's crest, was Elyndra, First Seer, and the woman who had ordered Amelia executed in another lifetime.
Her gaze swept the room, lingering on the lingering gold from Amelia's sigil.
"Child," Elyndra said, voice like a blade dipped in honey, "it is time we discussed your awakening."
Amelia's blood ran cold.
Kael whispered, barely audible:
"Amelia… don't trust anything she says."