Chapter 15: The Hollow Pulse

The collapse didn’t sound like stone.

It sounded like bone.

Snapping, splintering, breaking apart in the marrow.

I should’ve been gone with it. Should’ve been buried in the flood’s black throat. But when the shadow lunged, when it swallowed the wrong heart I tore from my chest, something cracked sideways.

And I wasn’t drowning.

I was standing.

Except the ground wasn’t ground. It was skin, stretched thin over nothing. Translucent, veins glowing faint blue. Each step sank, elastic, like walking on a drumhead. Beneath it, no water. No stone. Just a hollow void stretching down forever.

My chest was still split open. I looked down, expecting emptiness where the wrong beat had lived. Instead, a faint pulse. Weak. Off-rhythm. But mine.

The shadow wasn’t gone. Its grin rippled across the horizon, stitched into the skin like a scar. The teeth that weren’t teeth anymore flashed as it curved around the void. Watching. Waiting.

And she was still there.

My mirror.

Not strung up now. Freed. But bleeding, arms trembling, ribs split wide. Her light dimmed with every breath, but she stood anyway.

“You gave it the debt,” she rasped. Her voice wasn’t an echo this time it was raw, human. “You don’t get to walk away from that.”

I spat blood. The taste was rust and ash. “Never planned on walking away.”

Her eyes flicked to the faint pulse in my chest. “It’s already eating you.”

“Good.” I grinned. “Then I’ll choke it from the inside.”

Her laugh broke halfway. Pain twisted it. But there was steel under it too. “Always so certain in the middle of the fire.”

Before I could answer, the skin-floor buckled. A tendril punched up from below, slick with black-red. Another followed, then another. They weren’t striking for me this time they were pulling. Anchoring. Sewing the void shut with their own veins.

The shadow wasn’t just waiting. It was reshaping the place. Closing every crack until escape wasn’t even a concept.

And then I heard it.

A voice under my skin.

Not Max. Not Evelyn. Not even my sister.

Me.

“You’ll never save them. You’ll only trade them. Like you always do.”

I staggered, almost dropped to my knees. The voice came from the pulse in my chest, rattling my ribs. Each word a hammer.

“One by one, you cut them loose. Pretend it’s mercy. Pretend it’s strength. But it’s hunger. Yours. Ours.”

My mirror flinched like she heard it too. “Don’t listen.”

“Kind of hard when it’s coming out of my chest.”

The grin on the horizon widened, spreading until the whole sky was teeth.

She stepped closer, close enough I could see the tremor in her hands, the way the light in her ribs flickered. “It’s not talking. It’s digging. Every word, it’s pulling you deeper. You have to fight it.”

The laugh ripped out of me before I could stop it. Harsh, jagged, wrong. Not mine. Not anymore. “Fight it? That’s all I’ve been doing. Maybe the trick is to stop.”

Her palm cracked across my face. Not gentle. Not pity. A sharp, grounding strike.

“Grace.” Her eyes burned, even through the dimming glow. “You’re not allowed to stop. Not when she’s still out there.”

My sister.

Her scream still rang in my ears. The way Evelyn held her tight against the breaking plateau. The way I shoved them away, knowing damn well it could’ve been the last time.

The grin above pulsed. The skin-floor lurched. Tendrils tightened the seams of the void. My pulse stuttered faster, slipping closer to the wrong rhythm.

I clenched my fists until my nails dug through flesh. “Fine. I’ll fight. But not with this.” I tapped my chest. “With hers.”

Her brows furrowed. “What”

I didn’t let her finish. I slammed my hand into the wound in her ribs, the one leaking light. She screamed, staggered, but I didn’t stop. I pulled.

Not blood. Not bone.

Light.

It poured into me, burning hotter than fire, sharper than blades. My body convulsed, heart hammering double-time my weak pulse fighting her radiance. My mirror collapsed to her knees, hands clutching at air, eyes wide with fury and grief.

“You’re stealing it”

“No.” My teeth grit. The glow flooded my veins, searing every nerve. “I’m carrying it.”

The shadow roared. The grin shook, teeth cracking, skin-floor trembling. The void fought back, tendrils whipping, slicing, trying to tear the light from me.

But for the first time, the laugh wasn’t louder than me.

I screamed back.

The pulse in my chest synced with the glow. Wrong beat and right light. Discord and fire. The tendrils struck, but every lash that landed seared off in sparks. The teeth tried to close, but the light split them wide.

My mirror lay broken, dimming fast. Her eyes still on me. “Don’t… waste it.”

I knelt beside her, grabbed her hand. It was cold already. “I’ll burn it clean.”

Her lips twitched. Almost a smile. Then nothing.

The light inside me flared so bright it cracked the skin-floor wide. The void below screamed open. The grin above split until the whole horizon shattered into splinters of teeth.

And through the rupture, I saw it

Not water. Not blood.

The flood pouring into the plateau. Evelyn’s arms around my sister, dragging her against the rising surge. Max clawing his way onto a slab of stone, crown of shadow still coiled around him like a leech.

The world I’d left was bleeding into the hollow.

I didn’t think. I jumped.

The skin tore under me, the void’s roar trailing like a hurricane in my ears. The light in my veins boiled, shredding me alive, but I didn’t let go. Not of the glow. Not of the scream that ripped itself raw from my throat.

When I hit the flood, it didn’t swallow me.

It exploded.

Black water split in arcs of white fire, carving veins of light across the plateau. Tendrils shriveled. The shadow recoiled, howling, the grin shattering into fragments that rained like glass.

Evelyn’s eyes locked on me through the chaos, shock carved across her bloodied face. My sister’s bracelet flashed, sunlight in the dark.

And Max

Max was laughing. Crown burning, eyes black, riding the surge like it was his birthright.

“Finally!” he screamed over the roar. “Now we can finish this!”

The flood swallowed his words, but not his grin.

I dragged myself upright, every inch of me seared hollow, pulse hammering with stolen light. My body shook, breaking under the weight of it, b

ut I stood anyway.

The plateau was breaking. The shadow wasn’t done. And Max had never looked stronger.

But neither had I.