I don't come back all at once.
First there's weight—too much of it—pinning me to the floor. Then temperature, wrong and uneven, cold biting through heat that shouldn't still be there. My body reacts before I can make sense of it, muscles locking, breath stuttering, like it's bracing for an impact that already happened.
The end of the world doesn't always announce itself with thunder.
Sometimes it slips in quietly.
Sometimes it ends in the same silence it started in.
The Ker's eyes vanish.
The granite. The fog that tasted like ash. The oppressive heat pressing in from all sides.
Gone.
And suddenly I'm back—back in my bathroom, back on the cold tile, back under the too-bright light where none of this should be possible.
For a long moment, I don't believe what I'm seeing. Or what I'm not seeing.
Water strikes my shoulder in weak, uneven spurts, already cooling. My hip aches where I must have fallen. The floor doesn't actually move—but my legs do. My breath. My bones.
It takes a full second to realize I'm not breathing right at all.
Air scrapes into my lungs, sharp and broken. Too fast to be useful. Every inhale stabs. My chest cinches tight, like invisible bands are pulling inward—testing how much pressure I can take before something inside me splits open.
My heart slams wildly against my ribs, erratic, panicked. Like it's trying to tear free and sprint down the hall without me.
My hand flies to my sternum. Steady. Steady.
Nothing steadies.
The shower roars like a hurricane trapped in glass, drowning out everything—thought, fear, reason.
My name.
His name.
The room blurs.
I try to stand. My leg buckles. The wall tilts sideways.
"Oh—gods." My voice barely exists. "No one's home."
The realization cuts clean through what little composure I had left.
Mom is at a meeting. Shelby is miles away. Evan is—wherever Evan goes when he disappears.
Will—
No.
I will not think of Will like this.
My breathing spirals. Faster. Shallower. My fingers claw for the faucet, the edge of the tub—anything—but everything slips.
The edges of my vision ripple, then pull inward like a closing curtain.
Black creeps in softly at first. Then faster. Blooming outward. Devouring the room in a single, swallowing pulse.
A shimmer spiders across my sight.
For half a heartbeat, I see myself—older. Wilder. Crowned in light.
Then it snaps away, leaving my pulse racing and my stomach hollowed by something that feels like recognition.
The roar of the shower thins.
Draws tight.
And snaps.
Silence.
Then nothing.
Not sleep.
Not unconsciousness.
Not a dream.
Just quiet.
Weightless. Floating. Dark.
And then—arms.
Strong ones. Warm ones.
They slide beneath my knees and shoulders like I'm something fragile, something precious that might break if handled wrong. I feel myself lifted. The tile falls away. The cold recedes—replaced by warmth. Solidity.
Safety.
My cheek presses against a chest.
I know that warmth.
I shouldn't.
But I do.
The scent follows—ozone, winter air, something ancient and resin-sweet.
Myrrh.
Then—my bed.
Soft mattress. Familiar sheets. The dip where I always curl on my right side.
Gentle hands adjust the pillow. Tuck the blanket around me like they know I get cold easily.
A fingertip brushes damp hair from my forehead.
The room flickers—halfway between dream and memory and something else entirely.
And then a voice.
Not Will's.
Not my mother's.
Not any voice I've heard in any waking world.
"It will all be right, child."
The voice is everything at once.
The word right lingers too long, as if it's being weighed instead of promised.
Warm and cold. Male and female. A lullaby braided with warning. It hums through my bones—gentle, weighted—like it could command oceans to part if it wished.
I open my mouth.
"Wait—who—"
The presence fades. Like a candle pinched out between fingers.
And consciousness tears loose.
I dream.
Of course I dream—but this isn't imagination.
It feels like someone cut open a memory and shoved me inside it.
Rain slashes the night. Silver sheets against black. Headlights and taillights fracture across wet pavement like a broken mirror.
My car sits mangled at the roadside. Front end crushed. Windshield spiderwebbed with glittering fractures.
And on the far side of the guardrail—
Me.
My body.
Thrown ten feet from the car. Limp. Twisted. Hair slick with blood. Skin pale beneath the red soaking my hoodie.
I know this scene.
I've seen pieces of it in nightmares.
But never like this.
I rush toward the people in neon vests clustered near the second car.
"HEY!" I shout. "Over here!"
No one turns.
I grab a woman's arm.
My hand passes straight through her.
Cold eats up my arm from the inside.
Panic detonates.
I try again—reaching for a man bracing someone against the curb.
Nothing.
My fingers slide through him like fog.
"What—" My voice breaks. "What is happening?"
My hands look real.
I feel real.
But I'm not touching anything.
The world sharpens—then blurs. Sound stretches thin. Light flickers like it can't decide which reality to obey.
Then it snaps.
And he appears.
Will.
He bursts into the scene like the storm spat him out. Slips in the mud. Scrambles up. Drops to his knees beside my broken body.
My breath catches.
His face—
It isn't fear.
It isn't grief.
It's ruin.
He touches my shoulder—my body's shoulder—so gently it shatters something in me. His hands shake. His mouth forms my name.
Aetheria.
Aetheria.
His shirt is torn. Soaked in blood—some his, some not. Long scars carve across his back. Rain and red streak down his spine.
He looks like he crawled out of battle.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
He bows his forehead to mine—and that image brands itself into whatever part of me still believes in belonging.
Sirens wail closer. Red lights strobe against rain.
My broken body begins to dim.
Then—
"Aetheria?"
The voice comes from everywhere.
And nowhere.
"Aetheria…"
Darkness swells at the edges. Ink bleeding inward.
Heat sparks beneath my sternum.
A pinprick.
A flare.
A rising burn like molten light flooding every nerve.
I arch, trying to scream—but the sound vanishes.
Pain—bright, blinding—rips through me.
"Aetheria! Wake up!"
Will's voice crashes through the dark.
Desperate.
Commanding.
Terrified.
Another voice overlaps his—
Older. Vast. Like the crack of creation itself.
Light detonates behind my eyes.
I gasp.
Air tears into my lungs. A sob follows.
My hands claw fabric—
Sheets.
I'm upright before I realize I moved, hunched forward, dragging in air like I've been drowning.
The room tilts. My heartbeat pounds in my ears. Everything feels too small and too wide at the same time.
I fist the blankets until the fabric scrunches.
It takes a full minute before I can lift my head.
My alarm clock glows red in the dark.
3:33 a.m.
Of course.
Sweat slicks my skin. My body trembles like I'm freezing even as heat clings to me.
There is no universe where I'm going back to sleep.
Will's presence still hums somewhere deep—no words. Just urgency. Fear.
A tether pulled tight.
I sit there until my breathing steadies. Until the shaking fades to a low hum. Until the night lightens at the edges with the first thin gray of dawn.
The smell of blood becomes ozone in my bedroom.
And even then—I know the truth.
This wasn't a nightmare.
It was a memory.
A message.
A crack in whatever barrier was meant to keep me safe.
And somewhere in the dark, Will is awake too.
Because he felt it.
Because he always feels it.
Because the bond I swore I didn't have?
The bond doesn't settle.
It tightens—just enough to notice.
Somewhere far from me, something answers it.
And for the first time, I understand that whatever has woken between us doesn't belong to just the two of us anymore.