Page 276 of Elemental Becoming

No body. No sound. Just gone.

A scream tore through the chaos, but not hers.

I whirled.

Sera.

She was on the ground, crawling, blood pooling beneath her hands. Her leg twisted at a grotesque angle, bone white against the crimson staining her dress. A black figure loomed over her, its elongated fingers stretching toward her face.

She fought. But the shadow gripped her jaw, and I watched, helpless and frozen, as blackness poured into her mouth like living smoke. She convulsed once. Twice. Then her body went still. The shadow dropped her like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

I took a step forward, but the world shifted beneath me. The ballroom fractured, reality splintering. The walls stretched and twisted, unraveling into an abyss of flickering gold and black.

Figures emerged from the darkness. More of them. Too many. They moved like ink spilling into water. Formless. Writhing. Endless.

I turned.

Lyra stood at the edge of the shattered floor, her dagger dripping with something thick and tar-like. Her eyes found mine, burning with defiance even as the shadows closed in around her.

Amara, RUN!

Then they took her. She screamed as they grasped her limbs and dragged her down, down, down. Her nails bleeding as she desperately tried to catch hold of the marble floors.

I lunged, reaching for her hand. I swear I felt her fingertips brush mine. But she was gone, yanked into the abyss. Leavingme alone.

No bodies. Only blood and silence.

A creeping horror slithered up my spine. I could still feel them. They were there. Watching. The air was too cold, the shadows pressing in from every direction.

A voice pierced the stillness, twisting through the darkness like slime and rot.

You will never be strong enough.

The words wrapped around me like chains.

Not for them.

A shadow shifted in the darkness.

Not for this war.

More eyes opened beyond the veil of black. Watching. Waiting.

And everyone you love will pay the price.

Then, the shadows surged. And I woke up screaming.

So no.

I won’t slow down. I won’t stop. I can’t. Because the next time I stand in battle, I refuse to be the person who wasn’t enough. I will be better.

I have to be.

HOME IS MORE THAN A PLACE

THIRTY-EIGHT

I no longer believe shadow magics are the evil we were taught to fear as children. The rhymes we chanted in school, which I once dismissed as harmless tradition, now appear to have been designed to reinforce a false history. Given what I have uncovered in Silas’s journal, I am increasingly convinced that a great deception lies at the root of our understanding. If I am correct, generations have inherited not truth, but prejudice.