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I look around, trying to anchor myself in detail, not feeling. Because the feeling will swallow me if I let it. The courtyard is ringed with crumbling pillars, most half-sunk into the moss-veined ground like they tried to sink back into the dirt. Ivy curls like veins along every surface. A sunken staircase leads down into what used to be a lecture hall—or maybe a crypt. It’s hardto tell. Everything here seems suspended between purpose and decay.
But it’s not dead.
That’s the part that unnerves me.
This placewantsto be something again.
It’sbecoming.
Even the air—thick with dust, old magic, and rot—feels like it's waiting to be exhaled. Like if I speak too loudly, it’ll respond. Shape itself around the sound of my voice andlisten.
And gods, it feels like it’s listeningalready.
There’s something cruel about it, too. Something laced in the foundation. A trick of Daemon’s memory—or Branwen’s design. A place rebuilt not for learning, butluring.Every piece of stone, every vine-choked wall, feels like it’s been placed to draw us deeper. Like it remembers what we were. And it’s not done with us yet.
I take another step, trailing my fingers along the edge of a broken pedestal.
It’s warm.
Alive. And then I hear it—soft, nearly swallowed by the wind.
A voice.
Not Branwen.
Not the Sins.
Mine. But notmyvoice. An echo. A memory. A promise.
“You will come back here.”
I jerk my hand away like it’s burned. No one else reacts. Because no one else hears it.
It happens too fast to make sense of.
One breath I’m fine—heart still racing from the echo that wasn’t mine, skin prickling from the way the stone held my touch like a secret. And then something shifts. Not around me—inme.
The air thickens—or no, not thickens. Itdisappears.
Like the ruins themselves have turned inward and dragged the breath from my lungs as payment.
Dust. Ash. Something older. It pours into my mouth, my nose, my throat like I’ve inhaled the very bones of the place. My lungs seize. My legs buckle. And the courtyard spins, warping at the edges like oil on water. Color drains from the sky. The ground tilts.
And the black creeps in.
First at the corners of my vision, then closer, spiraling inward like a storm made of hands clawing toward my skull.
I stagger.
My knees hit stone, but I barely feel it. Everything’s slipping—sound, thought, shape. Except for one voice, one name, slicing through the haze.
“Luna?!”
Elias.
Panic doesn’t suit him. Not really. But I hear it now—raw, cracked, urgent. He’s running to me. I see a blur of silver hair, boots skidding across moss-stained tile. I try to reach for him, but my hand moves like it belongs to someone else.
He drops to the ground beside me, arms already under my shoulders, pulling me up like he’s afraid if he lets go, I’ll vanish into the stone. He’s saying something—I can’t catch the words—but his voice is hoarse, frantic,real.