Kaiden held her there, disbelief breaking through his composure.
"Why," he demanded, voice shaking for the first time, "are you so desperate to die that you would give yourself to a mindless end?"
Inara's strength was already leaving her.
Her legs buckled.
Kaiden lowered her slowly to the ground without realizing he was doing it.
Darian watched, frozen.
His mother's face blurred as tears flooded his vision.
He remembered her voice, soft, calling him in from the yard.
He remembered her hand in his hair when he was sick.
He remembered her laugh.
"Inara," Kaiden said hoarsely. "Stay. Please."
She didn't look at him.
She looked at her son.
"Darian," she whispered.
He choked on a sob. "Mom…?"
Her lips trembled.
"Be… good," she said softly. "I'm sorry."
She turned her head just enough to look at Kaiden.
"And… I'm sorry," she whispered. "For everything."
Kaiden didn't scream at first. He just stared at the blood on his hands as if it were a mathematical error he couldn't solve.
Then, the silence of the field was broken by a sound that wasn't a shout—it was a low, jagged howl of a man who realized he had won the war but destroyed the prize.
Her eyes lost focus.
Her breath stilled.
Silence fell.
Kaiden stared down at her, unmoving.
Then—
"No," he shouted.
The word tore out of him, raw and broken, echoing across the fractured space.
He tightened his grip around Darian without meaning to.
The boy cried out.
Kaiden didn't notice.
He was still looking at Inara.
At the body that wasn't moving.
At the woman who had chosen to disappear rather than belong to him.
The world around them settled.
And somewhere far away—
....
Vesperyn fell.
"Mom—!"
The word tore out of him before he hit the ground.
Something hard slammed into his back. The air rushed out of his lungs in a sharp, painful burst.
"Ugh—"
He rolled onto his side, coughing violently. His stomach clenched, twisted, and then—
Hrrk
He vomited.
Dark, metallic-tasting fluid splattered onto the dirt. He retched again, dry this time.
His ears rang.
His chest burned every time he tried to breathe.
For a long moment, he just lay there, face pressed against cold ground, hands digging weakly into soil that felt damp and uneven beneath his fingers.
When the spinning finally slowed, he forced himself to open his eyes.
Black.
The way it looked at night in his room.
This was thick. Heavy.
He blinked a few times, half-expecting the world to come back.
It didn't.
Vesperyn swallowed, his throat dry and sore
He pushed himself upright, wincing as pain flared across his ribs. His hands brushed against something rough—tree bark. Another hand found more of it.
Trees.
He craned his neck, but the darkness refused to give him anything. No sky. No stars. Just vague shapes pressing in from all sides.
A forest.
His breathing picked up.
No—no, this wasn't possible. This wasn't how things worked. One second he had been in his house, his mother shouting, Darian screaming, the world tearing.
He wiped his mouth and looked for Darian. He tried to stand tall, the way his brother did when the neighborhood bullies came around. But his knees didn't care about being brave. They gave out, dropping him back into the mud, and the sob that broke out of him sounded small—younger than he actually was.
"Mom?" he said lying there, "Darian?"
His voice cracked halfway through his brother's name.
Still nothing.
The silence felt… watchful. Like the forest was listening, even if nothing else was.
He hugged his arms to his chest without realizing he was doing it.
Where am I?
The question echoed uselessly in his head. There was no answer to grab onto. No familiar sound. No smell of home. Just damp earth and the faint, sharp scent of leaves.
His hands were still shaking.
He looked down at them, barely visible against the dark.
The ring.
Or what was left of it.
Tiny, cold fragments lay scattered near his palm, faintly catching what little light there was—if there was any at all.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
That had been real.
His father…
His mother screaming…
The man—Kaiden. That was his name.
It's been thirteen years since I last saw my child.
Darian.
His chest tightened painfully.
"…Whose child am I?" he whispered.
The words sounded stupid the moment he said them. He knew who his parents were. He knew—
Did he?
His thoughts spiraled, tangling over each other.
That power. The light. The way the man had walked through it like it wasn't there. The way his mother had looked—terrified, but not surprised.
None of it made sense.
He pressed his hands against his face, trying to steady himself.
He was twelve.
He had never been alone at night before. Never like this. There had always been a door. A wall. A voice somewhere in the house.
Now there was just the forest.
And the dark.
And the awful, creeping certainty that no one was coming to get him.
His breathing hitched.
Don't panic, he told himself weakly.
He didn't know how long he sat there, listening to his own heartbeat thud too loudly in his ears. Every small sound—the rustle of leaves, the distant snap of a branch—made his muscles tense.
"…I want to go home," he muttered, his voice barely more than air.
Vesperyn drew his knees closer and stayed where he was.
Suddenly—
A sharp sound cut through the silence.
Crack.
Vesperyn flinched.
He lifted his head slowly, breath catching in his throat.
The sound came again—closer this time.
Crack.
Something was moving.