Chapter 95 95

Chapter 95 Part 2-Chapter 12
~Sponsor~

With the girl’s words, the pendant around my neck flared, and at the sight, she collapsed to her knees. The sound of bone meeting concrete cracked through the warehouse, sharp and ugly, echoing off the metal walls before dissolving into the dust. She folded inward like gravity had doubled without warning, arms clamping over her head as if she expected something to strike next.

“I didn’t know,” she sobbed, the words breaking apart as they left her mouth. “They said it would just show me things.”

The pendant burned against my skin, not heat exactly, but pressure, like something long dormant had finally locked onto the frequency it had been waiting for and refused to let go. My pulse spiked hard enough to make my vision shimmer at the edges.

Breathe, I told myself. I forced my breathing to slow, grounding myself the way Cyne had taught me. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Panic would turn this into something uncontrolled, and uncontrolled was exactly what they wanted.

Raines moved immediately. She holstered her weapon in one smooth, practiced motion and dropped into a crouch in front of the girl, keeping her body angled protectively while still leaving me in the girl’s line of sight. “Look at me,” she urged, her voice low, steady, impossible to shake. “Eyes up. You’re safe right now.”

The girl’s response was laughter. Brittle. Sharp. The sound scraped across my nerves. “No one’s safe,” she said, rocking slightly, palms scraping against the concrete as if she needed the friction to keep herself here.

Raines didn’t flinch. She extended one hand slowly, deliberately, stopping just short of touching her. “You’re here,” she said. “You’re breathing. Stay with me.”

I stepped closer despite the warning glance Raines flicked my way. The pendant tugged me forward, not pulling, not commanding, but aligning. Like the space between us had been measured long ago and was now correcting itself.

“What did they show you?” I asked softly, careful not to crowd her, careful not to let urgency sharpen my voice.

The girl’s hands fell away from her face. Her eyes locked on my chest like they couldn’t find purchase anywhere else. “You,” she whispered.

The word landed like a fist in the stomach.

After a few seconds, I managed, “Anyone else?”

Her breath hitched and she nodded. “Him.”

His name didn’t need to be spoken as knowledge filled the space.

“Where?” I asked.

She squeezed her eyes shut, lashes trembling like holding them open hurt too much. “Below,” she said, dragging the word out like it scraped on the way up. “Past the corridor. Where the sound goes thin. Where it feels like the world forgets to breathe.”

Raines inhaled sharply, the breath audible despite her control. She looked at me, and in her eyes I saw confirmation, not speculation. “They moved him,” she murmured.

“Yes,” I agreed.

I didn’t know how I knew. The certainty didn’t arrive as information, but as weight. Something settled behind my ribs, immovable and exact. The silence inside me shifted, no longer hollow, but stretched taut, drawn tight like wire pulled too far.

Pressure surged without warning. Not a voice, not contact…intent. It hit like stepping too close to something vast and aware. My vision blurred, stars flickering at the edges, and my heart stuttered hard enough to steal my breath. Instinct screamed at me to pull back, to recoil, to shut it down before it tore something open I couldn’t close again.

As pressure built, I didn’t pull upon something I hadn’t even truly admitted to myself might exist within me…magic. I wasn’t ready to claim or dismiss it. Instead, I reached with will. With the part of me that had been bracing against absence for days now, the part that refused to accept that distance meant erasure. However, the silence resisted. For one long, dangerous second, it pushed back, then it bent.

The warehouse tilted, just enough to throw my balance. Dust lifted from the floor in a slow, spiraling bloom, the air thickening as if the space itself had inhaled. My knees buckled, vertigo slamming into me hard enough to make the world spin.

Raines caught my arm instantly, her grip iron-strong, grounding me before I could hit the floor. “Sponsor,” she snapped, sharp enough to cut through the haze. “What did you do?”

I dragged in air, lungs burning, heart pounding like I’d sprinted miles instead of standing still. “I reminded him,” I said, the words scraping out of me. “He’s not alone.”

The pressure didn’t vanish. It eased, settling into something coiled and watchful, like a predator that had opened one eye and decided to keep it that way.

The girl stared at me now like fear had been rewritten into something else entirely. Awe, raw and trembling. “They’re afraid of you,” she whispered, certainty replacing hysteria.

I met her gaze, feeling the truth of it settle deep in my bones. “It seems that maybe should be.”

Sirens wailed somewhere beyond the warehouse, threading through broken windows and rusted metal. Too far to matter, yet close enough to promise we were out of time.

Raines tightened her grip on my arm, scanning the space with renewed urgency. “We need to move,” she informed me. “Now.”

I nodded, forcing my legs to cooperate despite the tremor still buzzing under my skin. “She comes with us,” I said, nodding toward the girl. “She doesn’t stay here.”

Raines assessed the girl in a single glance, then nodded. She shifted her stance and extended her hand. “On your feet,” she said firmly. “You’re leaving.”

The girl stared at Raines’s hand like it might disappear if she blinked. Slowly, shaking, she took it.

As we moved toward the exit, the pendant cooled against my skin, the burn fading to a dull ache that felt more like a reminder than relief. The silence shifted again, settling differently this time. Not hollow, more as if listening.

Outside, the gray daylight felt too bright, too ordinary after the weight of the warehouse. Traffic moved. Somewhere a horn blared. Life carried on like something ancient hadn’t just stirred beneath its foundations.

I paused at the threshold, one hand braced against the doorframe, letting the cold air hit my face. My pulse slowed, but the awareness stayed, coiled tight and awake.

Somewhere deep beneath the city, far past concrete and steel and ritual spaces that pretended they were forgotten, I felt the answer ripple back. Not through a tether, but through consequence.
And for the first time since the silence fell, I understood something with terrifying clarity. Whatever they thought they had contained, whatever they believed they had broken, they hadn’t weakened it. They had provoked it.