Page 17 of The Blood Rites

The further we walk, the more often it happens. Half-seen silhouettes. A boy kneels in the dust with blood running down his throat. A girl stumbles forward with empty hands held against her stomach as if she’s trying to keep something inside. Shapes flicker into existence for only a heartbeat before dissolving back into the mist.

Marissa sucks in a sharp breath beside me.

“You saw that too?” she whispers.

Before I can answer, another figure appears ahead of us. This one lingers.

A young man stands in the middle of the path, his body translucent beneath the glow of the Mother Shard. His mouth is open in a silent scream. One arm hangs uselessly at his side while the other reaches towards something that isn’t there.

He disappears suddenly, and Callen swears quietly under his breath.

The Overseer nearest to us slows slightly, though it doesn’t fully turn around.

“Mana leaves an echo,” it says.

Its voice crackles strangely through the air, as though several people are speaking slightly out of time with one another.

Marissa stares after the place where the figure vanished. “What does that mean?”

The Overseer tilts its head.

“The Heartlands remember.”

The deeper we move into the Heartlands, the worse these Mana Echoes become. They gather near the Mother Shard in greater numbers, overlapping one another in brief fragments of violence and terror: a body collapsing onto bloodstained stone, someone crawling forward with shattered legs, a handprint smeared dark against the ground before vanishing entirely.

I try not to look directly at them after a while, but it doesn’t help. I can still sense them there, lingering at the edge of my vision like memories trapped inside the air, repeating their final seconds.

The Mother Shard towers above us now, and the humming beneath my skin grows steadily stronger the closer we get to her.

Not always painful, but familiar. That frightens me too.

The crystal surface pulses once, slow and deep, and heat rolls through my body hard enough that I nearly stumble again.

I stuff it down, clenching my fists until my nails bite into my palms.

The Overseers drift towards a narrow fracture running vertically through the surface of the Mother Shard. At first, I think it’s another crack like the others, but as we approach, I realise it’s too thin. Too precise.

It’s a seam, barely wide enough for a person to pass through. The light inside it shifts strangely, bending inwards in impossible directions until looking directly at it makes my eyes ache.

The lead Overseer stops beside the opening.

“You will proceed,” it says.

Marissa stares at the seam. “In there?”

The Overseer does not answer.

Callen exhales sharply through his nose and steps forward first. Of course he does.

Marissa hesitates only a second before following after him, shoulders tight with fear.

I’m the last to move, but the moment I touch the seam, the world changes. The surface of the crystal gives way beneath my hand like warm water stretched impossibly thin. Pressure closes around my body from every direction at once, crushing against my ribs and ears until I can’t breathe properly.

The humming becomes deafening as light floods my vision—pink, gold, white—so bright it’s like something burning directly through my skull. For one horrible moment, I think the Mother Shard is trying to tear something out of me.

Then I fall forward, cold marble slamming into my palms and jarring my wrists.

I suck in a sharp breath and push myself upright too quickly. The air inside the Mother Shard feels different. Alive, but—heavy.