Chapter 16 “Echo Of His Name”
Sleep has stopped being sleep.
Every time I close my eyes, the world slips sideways—half forest, half starlight, and somewhere inside it, him.
The first night after the connection, I thought it was just my imagination. A trick of memory. A fading ghost of the light that had flared through me like lightning trapped under my skin. But the feeling doesn’t fade. It grows stronger every day, threading through every breath, every heartbeat, like a song I can’t stop hearing even when the room is silent.
When I wake, I still feel him.
A quiet warmth at the base of my spine.
A pulse beneath my skin that answers to his.
A presence—patient, watchful, steady—hovering just close enough to touch the edge of my thoughts.
Liam tries to distract me from it. He spends the mornings repairing the cabin roof even though the last storm didn’t touch it. He stacks firewood twice the height of the hearth, lights the fire early, cooks meals he barely eats. And every time he thinks I’m looking away, I feel his gaze settle on me like a question he’s afraid to ask.
The more he tries to hold our small life together, the more it feels like something inside me is drifting out of it. Like a tide pulling away from shore, smooth and unstoppable.
By dusk, the humming starts again.
It’s faint at first—a vibration deep under the soil—but it grows as the light fades. The forest glows softly in the evening haze, threads of silver dust rising from the moss as if the earth itself is remembering magic it once carried easily.
I step outside. I don’t plan to go far, but my feet follow the pull without asking me. Past the cabin. Past the ring of old pines. Deeper into the trees where the air feels thinner and the shadows breathe differently.
And then I hear it.
My name.
“Elera…”
This time, I stop breathing.
It isn’t a whisper. It isn’t memory.
It’s presence.
I press my hand to the mark on my arm, and warmth bursts through me like a second heartbeat awakening. The world bends, colors softening into moon-washed silver. The forest melts at the edges, and for a moment, I feel him standing just beyond sight—close enough that if I reached out, I might touch the space where he exists.
“You feel it too,” his voice murmurs—not through the air, but inside my thoughts.
I don’t answer out loud. I don’t need to. My thoughts shape themselves toward him like water flowing to its source.
Who are you?
“The one you saw,” he says gently. “The one bound to you.”
The words strike through me with a force that leaves my chest aching. Bound. Not chosen. Not imagined. Bound.
A wave of emotion breaks open inside me—fear, wonder, and something dangerously close to longing. His presence feels ancient, steady, and yet impossibly warm, like a hand reaching for mine from across a world.
“I don’t even know you,” I whisper.
“You will.”
The air flickers. Silver light curls at the edges of my vision, unfolding into fragments—stone towers threaded with veins of light, wolves howling beneath two moons, and him. Tall. Quiet. Eyes like distant stars. Watching me from a world made of shadow and silver.
My heart aches with a familiarity I shouldn’t feel.
I reach toward the vision.
The trees around me seem to lean with me, their branches shimmering like they’re reflecting the place he stands. When my fingers brush the silver edge of the image, a spark leaps between us—soft, electric, intimate.
I gasp. The connection snaps back—but not away. Like an elastic band stretched between us that will never let go.
I can still feel his heartbeat echoing faintly through mine, two rhythms trying to match.
“Elera!”
The world jolts.
Liam’s voice shatters the moment.
He bursts through the trees, chest heaving, panic bright in his eyes. “You can’t just disappear like that! Do you know how long I’ve been calling you?”
The glow drains from the air as if chased by his fear.
“I was just—” I begin, but the words tangle in my throat.
He sees my face. The tremor in my hands. The way I stare at the fading shimmer between the trees. His expression softens for a breath… then hardens with something like hurt.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” he says quietly. “Whatever this is—you’re thinking about him.”
The truth is too heavy to disguise.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” I whisper. “But it feels… right. Like I’ve known him forever. Like he knows me.”
Liam’s shoulders fall. Not in anger, but in something worse—resignation.
“And what about here?” His voice cracks. “About me? About everything we’ve survived together?”
I look at him, really look.
Liam, with his quiet devotion.
Liam, who patched my wounds.
Liam, who held my shaking hands through nightmares.
Part of me will always care for him. But it’s a different part now. A smaller part, humbled by the weight of something vast and inevitable settling into my bones.
“I wish I could choose,” I say softly. “But something bigger already has.”
He steps back like the trees themselves pushed him. The distance between us feels colder than the night air, a thin line of frost forming where warmth used to be.
We walk back to the cabin in silence.
He keeps a few steps behind me.
I don’t turn around.
Inside, I lie awake long after he’s gone still. The fire crackles softly, but the warmth doesn’t reach me. Every gust of wind against the window carries a hint of that other world—a pulse, a promise, a calling.
And as I drift between waking and dreaming, the boundary thins.
I hear him again.
Closer this time.
Soft. Certain. Unshakeable.
“Soon, Elera. The gate is opening.”
My mark flares with moonfire—hot, bright, alive—and I know the truth as surely as my own name.
Whatever binds us isn’t done with me yet.
No matter how much of this world I try to hold onto…
Something on the other side is already holding onto me.