Chapter 15: Ashes and Embers
The first thing Evan registered was the smell—burnt ozone and wet earth, the aftermath of a summer storm. His skull throbbed in time with his heartbeat, each pulse sending fresh needles of pain through his temples.
He forced his eyes open.
The courtyard was a wasteland of shattered stone and smoldering roots. The rift had collapsed in on itself, leaving only a jagged scar in the earth. Around it, the others stirred—Rowan hauling Isolde upright, Aria spitting blood as she clutched her ribs, Mira kneeling over Caine's motionless form.
And standing at the epicenter of the destruction, her silver hair catching the dim light like a beacon—
Selene Arkwright turned to face him.
Her gray eyes were different now. Not just glowing, but alight with the same silver storm that had rained down from the heavens. When she spoke, her voice resonated with unnatural depth:
"You called. I came."
Evan's breath caught. This wasn't just Selene. Something else looked out through her eyes.
She wouldn't—or couldn't—explain how she'd survived. Every attempt to question her met with that same hollow stare, the same cryptic half-answers.
"Death is a door," she murmured, tracing the cracks in the courtyard stones. "I simply chose not to walk through."
Rowan exchanged glances with Evan. Neither of them voiced the obvious: whatever stood before them now, it wasn't wholly the Selene they'd known.
Aria, ever pragmatic, wiped blood from her split lip. "Great. Zombie counselor. Can she at least do something about that?"
She pointed to the north wing.
Where the roots still twitched.
Where the eyes still blinked.
Where Kai Mercer's half-transformed body had vanished.
-The Hunt Begins-
Tracking Kai wasn't difficult. The trail of black ooze and broken foliage led them to the old greenhouse—or what remained of it. The glass panes had shattered outward, the iron framework twisted like a child's mangled toy.
Inside, the plants had grown to monstrous proportions. Vines as thick as tree trunks coiled through the wreckage, their surfaces studded with those same terrible eyes. At their center, curled in on himself like a wounded animal, was Kai.
Or what had been Kai.
His form flickered between solid and liquid, his skin translucent where the roots had invaded. His eyes, when they lifted to meet Evan's, held only a glimmer of recognition before dissolving back into panic.
"Get out," he rasped, the words bubbling up from somewhere deep in his ruined throat. "Before it wakes up again."
Selene stepped forward. The vines recoiled from her presence, their eyes squeezing shut.
"Too late," she said softly.
The ground trembled.
It didn't speak in words.
It spoke in pressure—a weight against Evan's skull, a whisper in his veins. The sensation was unmistakable: hunger, vast and ancient and angry.
The roots surged to life, lashing out with renewed fury. One caught Rowan across the chest, sending him crashing through what remained of the greenhouse wall. Another wrapped around Isolde's ankle, yanking her off her feet.
Evan reached for the storm—
And found only silence.
Selene moved like liquid silver, her fingers closing around the thickest vine. Where she touched, the roots blackened and crumbled to ash.
"You have no power here," she intoned, and for a moment, the thing inside the rift listened.
The vines stilled.
Kai gasped, his form stabilizing slightly.
Then—
A sound like a thousand mirrors shattering.
The rift in the courtyard reopened.