Smoke lingers low, clinging like guilt—thick, oily, and sour on the

  tongue. It seeps through the wreckage, curling over fractured stone

  and blackened crystal, every drift steeped in the acrid tang of burnt

  ozone and the sharper sting of ruptured magic. It smells like

  failure. Like pride scorched down to its bones.

  It slicks her skin, worms into her

  hair, stains her throat with its taste—half chemical, half memory.

  The Broker’s gone. Slipped through

  their fingers like he was never really here, just a shadow wearing a

  face. But the space he left behind still pulses faintly, like the

  land itself remembers the violence. A shimmer lingers—sickly,

  almost green—and the ground beneath it trembles, soft and wrong,

  like flesh bruised beneath the surface.

  Magic still clings to the air, rabid

  and restless. It hums like an insect swarm—erratic, high-pitched,

  maddening—buzzing just beneath her skin. A raw, dissonant energy,

  peeling at the edges of control. She feels it receding, molecule by

  grudging molecule, like an angry tide dragging wreckage out to sea.

  What’s left behind is only quiet.

  Ash. Silence.

  The forest is still. But her failure

  is loud.

  Cold coils in her chest—tight,

  precise, merciless. Not the burn of regret. Not the sting of loss.

  No, this is deeper. Older. Familiar in the way a childhood scar is

  familiar—something she doesn’t remember getting, but always

  notices when the weather changes.

  Disappointment.

  She draws a breath, and it tastes

  like copper.

  Was this what her mother felt, all

  those years? That unspoken weight beneath every perfect sigh, every

  graceful silence. Elara hadn’t asked then—what it meant to carry

  expectation like a crown made of thorns. But now she understands.

  It’s not heavy. It’s sharp. It cuts you every time you move.

  And still—she hadn’t run.

  She could’ve. Should’ve. When the

  Broker split the sky, when violet mana screamed through the heavens

  like a god’s fury unbound—when the world itself seemed to unravel

  at the seams—she’d felt something in her rise. Not panic. Not

  even courage. Something older. Deeper. Something hers.

  It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t

  learned.

  It simply was.

  Mana surged, not as a tool to wield,

  but as a companion—fierce, wild, and unspeakably loyal. It didn’t

  obey her. It agreed with her. Roared through her veins like

  wildfire through dry grass. It knew her, and it answered.

  She hadn’t cast a spell. She was

  the spell.

  Every heartbeat thudded with purpose.

  Every breath was sharpened to a singular edge:

  Protect them.

  Grant had been at the center—worn,

  grimy, grim—but still standing. Like he always did. Like he

  couldn’t not. Around him, his mismatched pack—beasts

  with fangs and fur, eyes too old to be animal—braced as one. Even

  the walking potatoes, absurd and jittery, pressed close to his boots

  like frightened toddlers pretending they weren’t. Their eyes

  glinted, oddly human. Terrifyingly aware.

  Elara hadn’t thought. She’d

  acted.

  A dome of refracted light had slammed

  into place, jagged at the edges but strong. Threads of spellwork

  snapped together with barely a whisper—repulsion wards tangled with

  healing weaves, purification threads laced through like veins of

  silver. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t precise.

  But it held.

  Not because it was flawless. But

  because she had refused to let it break.

  And for once—just once—she hadn’t

  been the calm one. Not the scholar, not the strategist.

  Just Elara.

  Shaking. Burning. Alive.

  And willing.

  Willing to trade elegance for

  survival.

  Willing to be enough, even if she

  wasn’t sure she was.

  Grant’s face swims into view, too

  close, too frantic. His mouth moves in ragged shapes—wild and

  soundless—each syllable torn from him and thrown uselessly into the

  air. His expression is a hurricane: all storm-eyed terror and raw,

  rising fury.

  But she can’t hear him.

  Everything has narrowed. One sound,

  thin and shrill, slices through the fabric of her senses—a piercing

  whine, high and relentless, like steel drawn across glass. It drills

  into her skull, a needle of sound spinning on a spindle of pain,

  unraveling everything else.

  No birds.

  No shouting.

  Not even her own breath.

  Just that sound.

  And beneath it—something else.

  A pulse.

  A dull, rhythmic thud. Slow at first.

  Heavy. Then another. Louder. Closer. Like footsteps in a stone

  corridor. Echoing inside her body, not outside.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Then her knees vanish. Or maybe the

  earth reaches up to take her.

  Either way, she falls.

  Stone greets her cheek with a cruel

  slap. It’s cold, and unforgiving, and unclean—pebbles digging

  sharp little truths into her skin. Her limbs collapse without

  elegance, folding in like wet paper, like something meant to hold

  weight but never meant to break.

  The pounding grows louder. A drumbeat

  behind her eyes. In her throat. A frantic rhythm beneath her ribs.

  Her body clenches around it, desperate and animal. Her heart claws at

  its cage, kicking against her sternum like it’s trying to escape.

  Then—the warmth.

  It seeps upward, slow and sickly,

  blooming in her belly like something foreign taking root. Not

  comforting warmth. No. This is wrong. Thick. Too warm. Like syrup

  gone to rot.

  Her hand drifts down, unsure,

  trembling. Moves on its own. She feels cloth—ripped. Her fingertips

  brush wetness.

  Sticky. Yielding. Warm.

  Her breath catches.

  When her hand comes back up, the

  world tilts—skewed, too bright, then too dim, like someone’s

  knocked loose the controls on color and contrast.

  Her palm is red.

  Blood, dark and glossy, paints lazy

  trails across her fingers. It glints in the fractured light. Heavy.

  Real. Undeniably hers.

  That’s when the ringing dulls. Or

  maybe the world just moves further away. In the hush that follows,

  something sharp blooms in its place. Not pain—awareness. The full,

  ugly clarity of what just happened.

  She didn’t feel the blow.

  Because she wasn’t thinking of

  herself.

  She was thinking of them.

  The shield. The dome of light bending

  and twisting around the others. Grant—bruised, gritty, unmovable.

  The beast-kin, fur raised and eyes sharp. Even the absurd potatoes,

  huddled behind his boots like children clutching blankets. All of

  them—alive, because she had stood between them and the end.

  Her body remembers what her mind

  ignored.

  Her lips curl. Barely. A wisp of a

  smile. Wry. Worn. Honest.

  So this is what it feels

  like.

  The thought drifts through her like

  mist across a frozen lake. Detached. Soft. She feels it but doesn’t

  grip it. Just watches it pass, like a memory that hasn’t happened

  yet.

  Not so terrible after all…

  Her lashes lower. A blink in slow

  motion. Her cheek rests heavier against the stone, but it doesn’t

  feel cold anymore. The pain dulls into something distant—a sound

  she recognizes but no longer minds.

  The darkness that comes is velvet.

  Not cruel. Not sudden.

  Just quiet.

  The world dissolves.

  Not fades. Not slips. Dissolves—as

  if the battlefield, the pain, the scream locked inside her lungs, has

  been nothing but paint washed from glass. In its place: stillness.

  Tranquility so profound it feels stolen.

  She stands again beside a

  mirror-lake—that lake. The one from Grant’s dreams, the

  one etched in his soul so deeply it bleeds into her own. The surface

  is like molten glass, perfectly smooth, reflecting clouds that do not

  move. The air is rich with the scent of wet earth, moss warmed by

  sunlight, and water lilies blooming in a lazy sprawl at the lake’s

  edge.

  Across the water, two men

  stand—shadows made solid by memory and time. Their figures stretch

  long beneath the late-day sun, casting lines into water too still to

  be real. She knows them immediately.

  Grant’s grandfather, all softened

  edges and weatherworn kindness. And beside him—Lancelot. Still.

  Solid. The kind of man who feels like stone and storm in equal

  measure. He doesn’t look at her, but his presence thrums through

  the scene like bass beneath melody.

  A tune floats toward her. Hummed,

  slow, aimless. Familiar enough to tug at something lodged between

  breath and thought. She turns—almost afraid of what she’ll see.

  At the shore sits a woman, her back

  to Elara. Auburn hair spills over her shoulders in waves that glow

  like fire caught in honey. She’s pregnant—undeniably, beautifully

  so—and her bare toes play in the lake as if the world has never

  known war.

  Beside her, a boy—seven, maybe

  eight—sits with a carved wooden boat balanced in his lap. His grin

  is pure mischief. The same grin Elara remembers from moments

  ago when he had poked her in the ribs.

  “So…” the child Grant says,

  squinting up at the woman with sunlit wonder in his eyes, “have you

  thought of a name yet?”

  The woman laughs—a sound like wind

  through chimes—and turns just enough for Elara to glimpse her face.

  Soft features, glowing skin, that

  same slow smile Grant sometimes wears when he thinks no one’s

  watching. “Mmm… we’ve settled on Elara,” she says,

  and her voice wraps around the name like a lullaby.

  Grant scrunches his nose. “That’s

  a weird name.”

  She laughs again—light, teasing,

  deeply affectionate. “So is Grant,” she shoots back.

  He doesn’t argue. Just nods

  solemnly, as if conceding a battle too great to win, and casts his

  line into the water with theatrical flair. His hands are too small

  for the rod. The line lands in a sloppy arc. He hums as he

  works—off-key, earnest.

  “Twinkle, twinkle, little

  star…”

  Elara’s breath hitches.

  The woman’s expression

  softens—softer than the lake, than the light, than anything Elara’s

  ever seen. “Your grandmother’s favorite song?” she asks, the

  words catching halfway through, trembling like a glass about to

  crack.

  Grant nods without looking up. “Yup.”

  There are questions—too many. Elara

  opens her mouth, heart suddenly too loud in her chest, but the moment

  is already tearing apart at the seams.

  The world jerks.

  Like a string pulled taut, then

  yanked. A thread snapping in the gut.

  Her eyes snap open.

  Gone is the lake. Gone is the warmth.

  The scent of lilies. The peace.

  What remains is pain. Air thick with

  the stink of scorched stone and sweat and blood.

  Grant’s face hovers above her,

  carved in anguish, eyes hollow with concentration. His hands tremble,

  wrapped in burning light—his Soul Magic, that strange,

  primal power pulling at something deep inside her. Calling her back.

  Demanding she stay.

  She hears him now. Not his voice, but

  his heartbeat, hammering through the magic like a war drum.

  To his left, a raccoon—tiny paws

  lit with golden light—presses against her side. On the right, a

  squirrel, absurdly large and crowned with antlers far too regal for

  its twitchy face, moves in tight, surgical motions. They’re

  glowing, both of them. Not with fire, but with something softer.

  Gentler.

  Their magic sinks into her like

  sunlight through soil. Warm. Mending. Unfurling something that had

  started to close.

  Elara wants to speak—but no sound

  comes. Her throat is a ravaged thing, dry and tight and full of

  silence.

  Still, her fingers twitch. Her eyes

  lock onto Grant’s.

  She smiles.