Part 2-Chapter 8

Part 2-Chapter 8

Sleep didn’t come again after the wards woke me. Even after the shaking stopped, even after the brothers left the room to argue in the hall, even after the lamps stabilized, my body felt…wrong. Too light. Too aware. Too open.

Like my magic wasn’t sitting inside me anymore but perched just under my skin, listening for something I wasn’t ready to hear.

I pushed the blanket aside and stood slowly, steadying myself against the bedpost. The floorboards were warm beneath my feet, humming with residual energy from the flare. I didn’t know if that warmth was meant to comfort me or warn me. With the wards right now, it could’ve been either.

I crossed to the window, peering out. Morning had barely broken, the sky still tinted blue-grey, as if dawn itself was hesitating to step into the world. The courtyard below looked quiet, but the air…God, the air was vibrating. Every breath tasted metallic again, the same way it had the night I inverted the commander.

“Not now,” I muttered, agitation filling my voice.

A pulse rippled through the glass in response, and I flinched. “I wasn’t talking to you,” I breathed, feeling ridiculous for speaking to them.

The wards flickered like they disagreed. Fine, I thought, they could be offended later.

I turned away from the window, rubbing my arms, trying to shake off the crawling sensation growing inside my chest. It wasn’t fear, not quite. Fear I knew…fear had a shape, this was shapeless. Vast. Like standing at the edge of a cliff and hearing a voice call from below, asking if you remembered how to fall.

Slowly I crossed the room and exited through the door. I moved down the corridor, toward the east wing. The hallways were empty, rare for morning, but I felt eyes on me anyway. Not mortal eyes. Not witches. Not wards. Something older. Something patient.

I quickened my pace, and as I reached the bend in the hall, the world stuttered. It wasn’t visual, nor physically, the sensation was inside me.

My pulse doubled. Then doubled again, and I gasped, bracing a hand against the wall as heat surged through my ribs…not painful, but overwhelming, like a door opening inside my sternum and letting in a wind from a place that didn’t exist anymore.

A whisper brushed my ear. Not in verbal form as it held no voice…more a memory of a word: Eter.

I jerked upright. The name was familiar…I wasn’t sure how I knew it was a name, but I held little doubt it was. As well, I knew it hadn’t been the full name and that it was older. Carved from a language that lived long before this city, and died long before this body.

“No,” I whispered. “Not this. Not again.”

The hallway rippled, and for a heartbeat, just one I wasn’t in the Manor at all. Stone arches overhead shifted into ruins, half-eaten by time. The floor beneath my feet turned from polished marble to ancient basalt. Wind tore through a valley somewhere far, far away, carrying with it the metallic scent of lightning and blood. And stars…stars everywhere, too many, burning in patterns I felt instead of recognized.

My breath hitched. “Stop.” The vision deepened. A hand, my hand, brushed someone’s shoulder. A figure stood in the valley below, shadowed, waiting. 

I blinked, and the Manor snapped back around me like a trap closing. Unbalanced, I stumbled, grabbing the wall for support. Sweat dampened my palms, my throat felt scraped raw, like I’d been screaming in a world no one else could hear.

As if a distance away, I heard footsteps thundering toward me, Redakai calling my name. “Kaisha!” His voice crashed down the hallway, harsh with fear he didn’t bother hiding. He reached me in three strides, hands gripping my arms. “What happened? Talk to me.”

I shook my head, breath trembling. “I saw something. Not a vision. A…place. A valley. Stars…and a figure.”

Dirk appeared next, already scanning me for signs of magical overload. “How long was she gone?”

“Three seconds,” Redakai snapped.

Corton skidded to a halt behind them. “Three seconds? I thought she fell into a portal.”

“It wasn’t a portal,” I said, wincing at my own shaky voice. “It was memory, or rather it felt like memory.”

Syrus now stood amongst the others, quiet and assessing. “Another bleed-through?”

Dirk crouched beside me, eyes sharp. “Describe everything you can remember.”

“I can’t.” I swallowed hard. “It felt like trying to hold smoke. But it was…real. Familiar. And someone said a name.” My voice dropped. “Eter.”

Redakai went still, Dirk exhaled slowly. “Then the convergence is accelerating.”

“No,” Redakai growled, pulling me closer. “It means the entity is too near.”

“I didn’t feel it this time,” I whispered.

“You didn’t have to,” Dirk replied. “Memory responds to proximity. The closer it gets, the more it will reach for you.”

My stomach twisted. “Why?”

“That,” Dirk said, “we don’t know yet.”

Redakai didn’t wait. He scooped me up, not gently, not delicately, but with the urgency of someone refusing to let the world touch what he held. “We’re not staying out here.”

“Redakai—” I began.

“No,” he cut in. “You’re about to collapse.”

“I am not—” I protested, but my knees buckled mid-sentence.

Redakai swore and held me tighter. “Proving my point.”

I glared weakly at his chest. “Put me down.”

He shook his head. “Not happening.”

“Redakai—” I argued.

“Kaisha.” His voice lowered, soft but unyielding. “You disappeared. Even for three seconds, it was too long.”

Something in my chest cracked, not painfully, but in recognition. I looked away, unable to meet the expression in his eyes. I disappeared?

He carried me back toward my room, but before we reached the door, the wards screamed. Not hummed. Not vibrated. Screamed.

The sound hit like a shockwave, magic slamming through stone, rattling windows, crawling into marrow.

Dirk stopped dead. “It’s here.”

Syrus drew his weapon without a word, and Corton whispered, “Oh, shit.”

Redakai turned sharply, positioning his body between me and the hallway instinctively. “Dirk, what boundary did it cross?”

Dirk’s face went pale. “The last one.”

I felt the world tilt. “That means,” I whispered, voice barely audible, “it’s at the Manor.”

“No,” Dirk said softly, eyes locked on me. “It’s not at the Manor.”

A chill slid down my spine. Redakai’s grip tightened. Syrus swallowed hard, and Corton went still.

Dirk stepped toward me, gaze heavy with truth he didn’t want to speak. “It’s in the manor,” he finished.