Chapter 13

Darkness presses against me—no walls, no floor, just an endless, weightless nothing that swallows sound, breath, self. The entity's laughter fades to a distant hum, a vibration I feel in my teeth, my marrow, but it's not gone—its presence lingers, a shadow stitched into the void. My hands clutch at nothing, Kaelen's blood still warm on my skin, but he's not here—his weight, his heat, his ragged breath, all ripped away when the abyss took us. The thread is a ghost, a faint ache where it used to burn, and I scream his name—*"Kaelen!"*—but my voice dies, swallowed by the silence, leaving only a hollow echo in my skull.

Time frays—seconds stretch into eternities, or maybe there's no time at all. My robe's tatters drift around me, weightless, and my body feels wrong—too light, too heavy, shifting like water. The shard's cold graze lingers on my palm, a phantom cut that pulses with every ragged heartbeat, and the grimoire's pull haunts me still, a whisper beneath the hum: *"You chose… you lost…"* I claw at my chest, desperate to feel the thread, to find him, but it's slipping—fraying strands unraveling into the dark, and with it, pieces of me.

A flicker—violet, faint—cuts through the void, and I lunge for it, hands grasping air. The light twists, forming shapes: Kaelen's face, blood-streaked, eyes wide with terror, then gone; Rhea's smile, her teeth multiplying, melting into ooze. Illusions, memories, or traps—I can't tell, but they pull me deeper, my mind splintering as the hum grows louder, sharper, a chorus of voices that aren't mine. *"Lysara… Lysara… Lysara…"* It's not Kaelen, not Rhea—it's *her*, the me from the shard, crowned in bone, her empty eyes staring back through the dark.

Something brushes my ankle—slick, cold, alive—and I jerk, spinning in the nothing, but there's no up, no down, just the sensation crawling higher, coiling around my leg like a lover's touch turned wrong. Tendrils, or memories of them—they tighten, and I feel it again: the entity's hunger, its delight, burrowing into my nerves. My breath hitches, panic clawing up my throat, and the violet flickers again—Kaelen now, closer, his hand reaching, his lips forming my name. "Kaelen!" I scream, lunging, but he dissolves, leaving only his voice—*"Stay with me…"*—faint, fading, a lie.

The void shifts, a ripple like water, and I'm falling—no, floating—toward a glow, dim and bruised, pulsing like the runes from the cavern. It resolves into a platform, jagged stone suspended in the black, and I land hard, knees cracking against it, blood smearing from wounds I don't remember. The shard hovers above, larger now, reflecting not my face but hers—bone-crowned, smiling, her violet eyes glowing with a light that's mine but not. "You're home," she whispers, voice soft, mine, and the platform trembles, cracks spiderwebbing beneath me.

Footsteps—slow, deliberate—echo behind me, and I whirl, heart slamming. Kaelen staggers from the dark, his arm hanging limp, blood dripping in a steady patter, but his eyes—gods, his eyes—are wrong, too bright, too empty, glowing with that same bruised purple. "Lysara," he says, but it's not his voice—it's hers, layered over his, and the thread jolts, a sick parody of our bond. He steps closer, hand outstretched, and I stumble back, the edge of the platform crumbling under my feet.

"No," I choke, shaking my head, but the tendrils rise again—from the cracks, the void, his shadow—wrapping my wrists, pulling me toward him. His touch is cold, fingers gripping my chin, tilting my face up, and I feel the entity in him, through him, tasting me. "You're mine," he/she says, lips brushing mine, and the thread screams, a final, dying flare before it snaps—gone, severed, leaving a void that rips a sob from my chest.

The platform shatters, plunging me back into the nothing, and the hum explodes—laughter, screams, my own voice chanting with hers. The shard follows, its reflection swallowing me, and I see it all: Kaelen consumed, Rhea remade, me crowned and hollow, the tower a husk feeding this abyss. My hands reach for the thread, for him, for anything, but there's nothing left—just the entity's embrace, cold and eternal, and the breaking point stretched into forever.