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The shadows whisper with a voice I haven’t heard since childhood,Choose wisely, my son. Some chains, once broken, can never be reforged.

“Then let them break,” I whisper back to the darkness. “Some things are worth the fall.”

13

ASH

Darkness tasteslike soil and suffocation.

Iron and rot coat my tongue. Soil presses against my cheek like a corpse’s palm refusing to let go.

Memory fragments slam through my skull.

Kieran’s arctic touch. Hunters circling. Power exploding through me like lightning-struck trees.

Then nothing.

Absolute fucking nothing.

The space squeezes tighter with each ragged breath. Wood groans around me like a coffin settling into fresh grave dirt.

Buried alive. I’m fucking buried alive.

Panic detonates through my nervous system. Every nightmare I’ve ever had about being entombed crashes through my brain.

Training hammers against my skull—assess, plan, escape.

Nowhere to move. Nowhere to run.

I’m trapped in the earth’s hungry belly. Roots curl around my limbs like skeletal fingers trying to drag me deeper.

Get OUT. Get OUT NOW.

My heart slams against ribs suddenly too fragile to contain the wild thing clawing at my sternum. I thrash against walls thatshouldn’t exist. Bark scrapes skin raw. Blood mixes with dirt until I can’t tell where I end and the earth begins.

Every movement makes the space tighten.

Alive.

Trying to digest me.

I scream and scream and scream. It’s as though every emotion I’ve ever buried in my entire life bubbles to the surface, demanding I feel it right here, right now.

No isn’t an option.

Anger at the situation that brought me here.

Every person who has ever lied to me.

Making me feel small in my own skin.

Every time I’ve bitten my tongue to keep my thoughts to myself.

Every suspicion that I was more than I was meant to be.

Then the hope ripped from me as the universe knocked me down, telling me that I’m just Ash.

It all bubbles out into one long desperate scream as my soul fractures into a million little pieces, until my throat is raw and all the tears I’ve kept at bay fall.