*Jiselle*

The room was too quiet.

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I knew the sound of battle. The sh of ws and steel. The way wards shattered like ss under dark magic. But this silence wasn’t that. It wasn’t the stillness before impact. It wasn’t even the aching hush that followed pain.

It was the kind of silence that curled around your lungs and squeezed.

The kind that made you think something was missing.

Something vital.

I stared down at her.

Violet me still clung to her tiny frame,pping at her skin but never burning. Her body was warm–too warm–but she didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. Her eyes were open, glowing faintly like the leyline itself, and yet she made no sound.

No cry.

No life.

“Why isn’t she…” Nate’s voice cracked beside me. I heard the stumble in it, the shatter underneath the words he didn’t finish. He moved closer, reaching as if to check her pulse, but stopped just short. His hand trembled in the air.

The midwife was already gone. Dead. Bastain stood over her broken body in the corner, whispering a rite for the lost. Eva was chanting something near the doorway, trying to hold the me barrier in ce, but even her voice had begun to fray.

I looked down again.

My daughter.

So still.

My fingers moved without thought, brushing over her cheek. It was soft, too soft, as if the skin hadn’t yet decided it belonged to the living. My heart thudded in slow, uneven beats. I didn’t even know if it was mine or hers I was hearing. My mind screamed to do something–to press, to shake, to call. But my body wouldn’t

move.

Nate fell to his knees beside the bed, mouth parted, but no words came. His hands balled into fists against his thighs.

“Jiselle,” he said, so quietly I almost missed it. “She’s not-”

“Don’t,” I snapped, my voice raw. “Don’t say it.”

The me around us began to flicker.

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I stared at the child who hadn’t yet cried. Who hadn’t yet breathed. And still I couldn’t let myself say what every part of me was already feeling.

I lowered my mouth to her car.

And I whispered.

I didn’t n the words. I didn’t reach for old prayers or chants or anything ancient and holy. I simply spoke.

“You’re here.”

Her skin stayed still.

“You fought through fire to find me.”

No breath.

“I know it hurts. But I’m here. And you are not alone.”

For a moment, nothing changed.

And then the heat shifted.

The mes surrounding her flickered once. Then again. Then rose higher.

The violet hue brightened, and with it came something else–a pulse through the stone beneath the bed. It ran through my spine and into the air like a heartbeat. Not mine. Not hers. Something older.

The leyline.

I gripped her tighter. Nate leaned forward.

“Jiselle,” he whispered, but I couldn’t look away.

She moved.

Her hand twitched.

A soft inhale.

Then another.

And then, atst-

bA /bcry.

High, raw, and thunderous in its own way. The sound split through the air like lightning, echoing off the stone

b8:58 /bThu, bSep /b18 bd/b…

walls and through the cracked ceiling. It wasn’t just a baby’s cry.

It was a deration.

It was life.

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The mes that had danced around her exploded upward, harmless but brilliant. They curled up the walls and along the floor, and then surged straight down through the cracks in the stone–into the leyline below.

The ground pulsed.

I felt it in every bone. Magic roared back to life under us. The fractured threads that had flickered for weeks now zed like a newly lit forge.

And somewhere in the distance, the Hollow–born howled.

But not in victory.

In pain.

The surge of power knocked several of them back through the shattered wall. Eva gasped as the barrier she’d been holding grew stronger on its own, thickening with the power that now spilled freely through the veins of the earth.

Bastain stood slowly, eyes wide.

“She… repaired it.”

I held her closer.

Her eyes had begun to shift now. The glow softened, reced by something more real. More human. But still ancient. She looked up at me and blinked.

“You did it,” I whispered, brushing sweat from her brow. “You’re here.”

Nate pressed his forehead to my shoulder. I felt his tears on my skin. He said nothing, just let the sound of her crying fill him up.

But the moment didn’tst.

The air changed again, turning colder, heavier, as if a thousand hands had reached through the walls and pressed the heat out of the room. The me that had wrapped gently around the child’s skin dimmed, flickering like a dying candle.

Eva stepped forward, her hand pressed tightly to the side of her ribs. Blood stained her tunic, but it wasn’t the pain that made her voice tremble. “Something’s-”

She didn’t finish.

A sound cut through her words. A footstep. Then another.

b8:58 /bThu, Sep b18 /b

Slow. Dragging. Echoing against the stone floor as if the entire stronghold held its breath.

We all turned.

The doorway hung ajar, the curtain of ash outside still curling in the breeze.

And through it, stumbling and covered in grime, came Ethan.

b84 /b

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His shirt was torn open at the shoulder, the cor dark with blood, sleeves tattered. Dirt streaked his neck, and soot clung to every exposed inch of his skin. His eyes looked straight ahead–but didn’t see. Not truly. They weren’t vacant, but there was no Ethan in them. No light. No fury. No boy who used tough beside me in the halls or press a hand to my stomach to feel her kick.

He walked like something else was inside him. Like his body belonged to a will not his own.

“Ethan?” Nate stood, pushing away from the edge of the bed, his voice cautious. “Say something.”

But Ethan didn’t speak.

He didn’t even blink.

He just kept walking. Step by step. Across the shattered floor. Past the ckened edges of the destroyed wall. Through the blood and dust and rubble. His boots scuffed against the floor, but his gaze never once lifted from its path.

He stopped when he reached the bed.

Right in front of me.

I held the child tighter to my chest, my arms coiling instinctively. Her head was nestled beneath my chin, warm and quiet now, her tiny hand still gripping my finger.

“Ethan?” I tried again. My voice was barely more than a whisper. “Ethan, please… say something.”

Still, he said nothing.

Then-

Without a sound, he dropped to his knees.

No hesitation. No faltering. No recognition.

He didn’t kneel to me.

He knelt to her.

His head bowed low. His hands rested on his thighs, palms upturned. The same way the elders used to pray beside the sacred me. The same way Serina had once stood before the Gate.

Bastain’s voice sliced through the stunned silence. “Step back, Ethan. Step away from her.”

8:59 Thu, Sep 18 bd /b

But Ethan didn’t move.

Didn’t flinch.

Didn’t even seem to hear.

“She is the me,” he whispered.

His voice was different.

Too low. Too even. Not his.

“She is the gate. She is the end.”

:

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The cadence was wrong. The tonecked emotion, stripped of all Ethan’s usual sarcasm, his frustration, his warmth. It wasn’t monotone. It was too full of knowing for that. But it wasn’t… alive.

I stared at him in disbelief.

That voice-

It didn’te from Ethan.

It came through him.

The child shifted against my chest.

Then stilled.

Her tiny head turned–slowly, deliberately–until her gaze met his.

Gold met shadow.

Power shifted in the air.

Not violently. Not suddenly. But with certainty.

Like two mes recognizing one another across a great distance.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. My heart pounded in my ears, drowning out even Eva’s hiss of breath or Bastain’s muttered oath.

And then-

The child blinked.

And Ethan lifted his head just enough to meet her eyesb. /b

Neither of them spoke.

But something passed between them. Not words. Not memory. But knowing.

8:59 Thu, Sep 18 bd/b..

An understanding that settled like ash on my skin.

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My throat tightened as the child’s hand opened and closed, fingers flexing once like she was tasting the magic in the air.

She wasn’t afraid.

Not of Ethan.

Not of whatever had brought him to his knees.

Because she knewb. /b

She knew something I didn’t.

I looked between them–my daughter and the boy who’d onceughed beside me, now reduced to a vessel. Or maybe something more. Something not yet written.

And I felt the shift again.

This wasn’t over.

This was only the beginning.

Because whatever tether had pulled Ethan back to us… wasn’t done.

And whatever force had found its way through him–through blood, through ash, through fire–was watching.

Waiting.

And now, it had seen her.

Now, it knew where the me breathed.

bAD /b