Chapter 177: Becoming Her Shadow

Lila's POV

The road up to Dina’s mountain was a ribbon of stone and fog, the trees leaning like old women whispering unfinished prayers. Dante’s bike dropped me at the last switchback, under the mountain’s hulking shadow.

I had transformed into my human self after running a distance. My bare feet crunched over frost-dulled leaves; my hands still smelled metallic, and the scent of it braided itself through my blood like a second pulse. It felt holy and profane at once.

The mountain didn’t welcome me. It never did. It loomed, stone and bone, as if it remembered every oath ever broken at its feet. Dante’s scent was gone before I even reached the threshold of Dina’s home.

He knew this part wasn’t for him. It was for me…and her.

Dina was already waiting at the doorway, a figure draped in shadow, her shawl heavy with symbols I didn’t recognize. She didn’t step forward, didn’t touch me. She only looked, her gaze slicing me like a blade.

“You reek of sin,” she said, voice low and sharp. “Blood and lust. You tainted yourself before the rite. Do you want to ruin the work? To make a mockery of what I’ve built and my grand plan?”

I clenched my jaw, biting back the urge to bare my teeth. “I'm sorry for my actions. I only wanted to do what was necessary.”

Her eyes flared, pale and merciless. “No. You did what was selfish. Do not confuse the two. This mission is larger than you, Lila. Larger than your petty hunger and selfishness. Fate hangs by a thread, and if you snap it before I cut it myself, I won't just kill you. I'll make a historical lesson out of you.”

Her words burned, but I bowed my head, not out of shame, but because I knew she wasn’t wrong. Dina was never wrong. Neither was I. I can't let her see the defiance in my eyes.

“Come,” she snapped, turning on her heel. “The water is waiting.”

Inside, the room was dark and close, thick with smoke and herbs that clung to the back of my throat. At the center sat the great stone bowl, carved with runes so old they looked alive. Steam curled upward, carrying whispers that weren’t entirely human.

The bathing room smelled of pine and sickle-smoke. Bottles clustered round the base of the enormous bowl…dried herbs, bone beads, a coil of thin black hair tied with red twine. Candles burned with soft, blue tongues.

Dina’s fingers found one of the candles and tapped it twice. The flame didn’t surge; it blinked like an animal awake. She didn’t waste the waxing.

She circled it like a predator around prey. She plucked bones from a pouch, scattered dried petals, ground ash into the water with the heel of her hand until it darkened. Each motion was sharp, deliberate, humming with power.

“This,” she said, her voice rising with the chant, “is not to cleanse you. Do you hear me? It is not forgiveness. It is preparation. It will strip away the parts of you that still hesitate, still doubt. It will make you a vessel fit to carry what must be carried.”

My pulse quickened. “And what must I carry?”

She smiled then…not kind, not warm. The smile of a spider pleased with its web. “My magic, child. My work. Everyone believes that your stupid sister was born to break what I bound, but I will not allow them the satisfaction. You will be my hand. You will be the wall that stands between her and her precious destiny. If I can't get in, you can.”

The air seemed to tighten, pressing into my skin. My heart thundered with something between fear and exhilaration.

Dina’s bony fingers struck the bowl twice. The sound rang through the chamber like a bell made of bone. “Undress.”

I obeyed, shedding Dante’s blood-stiffened fabric until I stood bare before the steam. The scent of iron still clung to me, but Dina didn’t flinch. She wanted it there. Proof of what I’d already become.

“Step in,” she ordered.

The water was black, thick, and alive. When I lowered myself into it, it clung to my skin like tar, pulling me deeper, whispering in a hundred voices at once. My breath caught as the surface closed over my chest. The bowl wasn’t just water…it was a mouth, a womb, a coffin.

Dina began the incantation. Her words coiled around me like chains, seeping into the water, binding it to me. She sprinkled powders across the surface, each spark hissing into smoke that sank beneath my skin. My body burned and froze all at once.

Visions clawed their way out of the dark water. Ivy…her face lit by a destiny she didn’t yet understand.

The king…screaming, broken, shadows crawling over his crown. A line of fire connecting them. And then Dina’s curse…a knot of black, twisting, eternal.

“You see it, don’t you?” Dina’s voice cut through the water, sharp and absolute. “The thread tying them together. The curse I wove into his blood. She was meant to sever it. But you will stop her. You will be the blade that turns in her gut before she ever reaches the cord.”

My lungs screamed, but I didn’t rise. I wanted more. I needed more.

Dina’s hand struck the side of the bowl, hard, once, twice, three times. The water roared in my ears. Symbols blazed across my arms, my chest, my throat, searing into flesh like brands. I gasped, half drowning, half reborn.

Then her hand gripped my hair, yanking me up out of the black. I erupted, gasping, water and smoke pouring from my mouth.

The air was ice, my skin carved with glowing runes that pulsed with the same rhythm as my heartbeat. I wasn’t cleansed. I was claimed.

Dina leaned close, her eyes alight with a hunger that terrified and thrilled me. “Now you carry it. My shadows. My vengeance. My will. Do not fail me, Lila… or the mountain will take you whole.”

I stood, stepping out of the bowl, water streaming down my body like oil. The runes gleamed against my skin. I felt hollowed out, remade, sharpened into something that could not be broken.

And for the first time, I didn’t just hate Ivy. I didn’t just want her gone.

I wanted to ruin her and everything else on my path. To take every destiny she thought was hers and crush it beneath my heel.

And with Dina’s shadows burning in my blood, I knew I could.