Chapter 38 Silver Tears
The moon was a cold, silver eye peering through the window of the Citadel, but it was the heat in Sienna’s veins that truly terrified her. She was alone in her private chambers, the silence pressing against her ears until it hummed. For days, the prophecy had been a distant thunder on the horizon a warning from old men in dusty robes. Now, the storm had arrived, and it was brewing inside her own ribcage.
"I don't get it," she whispered, her voice a fragile thing in the dark.
She stared down at her hands. They weren't just shaking; they were vibrating with a frequency that felt ancient, a rhythm that didn't belong to her heart. Every pulse felt like a hammer blow against her soul. Something was waking up. Something that had been sleeping in her bloodline for generations was finally stretching its limbs, and it was using her muscles to do it.
The air in the room grew heavy, thick with the scent of ozone and old parchment. Suddenly, a sharp, searing pressure bloomed behind her sternum. Sienna gasped, clutching her chest as her breathing turned into shallow, weak gasps. Her heart wasn't just beating; it was fighting to escape her ribs.
"What is this?" she wheezed. "What's going on with me?"
The answer came not from her mind, but from a memory of a rhyme she’d heard as a child: Silver tears will mark the coming of the curse.
She had always assumed it was a metaphor a poetic way of describing a deep, transformative sadness. But as she touched her cheek, her fingers didn't meet salt water. They met something cold, viscous, and unnaturally heavy.
She pulled her hand away and gasped. A streak of liquid silver glinted in the moonlight, shimmering on her fingertips like molten starlight. As a single drop fell from her chin, it didn't soak into the stone floor. It hit with a sharp, violent hiss.
Sienna watched, paralyzed, as the silver liquid sizzled and evaporated, leaving behind a blackened, jagged burn mark on the floor. The realization hit her like a physical blow. The prophecy wasn't a warning; it was a set of instructions. And she was the vessel.
"Not... this can't be real," she murmured, but her body was no longer listening to her denial.
A second drop fell, then a third, each one burning a hole into the Citadel’s foundation. The sensation in her chest intensified, a dark, magnetic tug that started at the base of her throat and pulled toward the door. It was as if an invisible thread had been sewn into her heart, and someone on the other side was beginning to reel it in.
Then came the voice.
It didn't come from the hallway or the window. It echoed inside the architecture of her skull, a low, guttural vibration that made her teeth ache. It was a voice she knew better than her own, but it was stripped of its warmth.
Sienna, Ryder’s voice groaned. Come to me.
The words sent a jolt of heat through her that made her knees buckle. There was a desperate, primal need in his tone a command that bypassed her logic and spoke directly to the curse waking up in her blood.
"Ryder?" she called out, but the room remained silent, save for the sizzle of her silver tears.
The pull grew stronger, a violent gravity that dragged her toward the exit. Her legs moved of their own accord, heavy and stiff as though she were wading through waist-deep water. Every step toward the hallway felt like a betrayal of her own will, yet her body craved the source of that voice with a hunger that eclipsed her fear.
She reached the heavy oak door of her chambers, her hand trembling as it hovered over the latch. The silver tears were flowing freely now, stinging her skin, marking her as the harbinger of whatever darkness was about to be unleashed.
She knew that once she opened this door, the girl she used to be would stay behind in the shadows. But Ryder was calling, and the thread in her chest was about to snap if she didn't move.
Sienna gripped the handle, took one last shuddering breath, and flung the door open. The hallway was a tunnel of shifting shadows, and at the far end, the darkness wasn't just sitting still it was breathing.