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DAIN

L iora stands before me, defiant, trembling, alive when she should not be.

The truth has splintered through my mind like a jagged blade, cutting through every lie I’ve told myself. I had thought, hoped, she was something else. Someone else. But the dark presence has spoken her name, and the moment it did, I felt it.

Amara.

The syllables are a curse, a wound, a chain tightening around my throat.

Liora shouts something, denial, anger, I barely hear it. My thoughts are drowning in old memories, in rage I’ve held for centuries. I see her standing there, but it is not her.

It is her.

The woman who sealed me away. Who whispered my name with devotion even as she betrayed me. The one who kissed me, loved me, and then destroyed me.

How? How can she be here? How can she look at me with those eyes and not remember?

"I am not Amara!" she screams. Her voice trembles, but her stance does not waver. She grips her fists at her sides, her chest rising and falling rapidly.

Lies.

She is standing there, wearing the face of my past, standing in the shell of another body. Reincarnated. Cursed. Sent back to haunt me in another lifetime.

"You don’t even know what you are," I growl, stepping forward. The look in her eyes flickers between rage and fear. "You speak as if you have a choice in this, but you don’t. You were not supposed to exist. "

Her breath hitches. I want her to hurt. I want her to feel the way I do, to feel like something is tearing through her mind, rewriting reality, unmaking everything she thought was real.

She shoves me. Shoves me.

I almost laugh at the absurdity of it, but there is nothing funny about this.

"You think I chose this?" she spits, voice shaking. "You think I want this? Whatever this sick fate is, I didn’t ask for it. But here’s what I do know," she steps forward, chin high, meeting my glare with fire in her veins. "I am not Amara. And I never will be."

Her words snap something deep inside me.

I lunge.

My claws extend before I can think. Every ounce of logic, every shred of restraint, gone.

I will end this.

I will carve the past from the present, sever this twisted fate before it can consume me.

Liora gasps and stumbles back, her hands lifting too late.

But I don’t make it to her.

Pain erupts through me.

My body locks.

It’s like invisible chains snap around my limbs, clamping down so tight my wings fold against my back, my muscles straining against a force that is nowhere and everywhere at once. Magic.

No, her magic.

It thrums through the air, wild and frantic, a defense that is not deliberate but instinctual.

I know this magic.

I remember it.

It’s the same power that once sealed me away.

I roar, but my body does not obey me. My claws are frozen mid-air, inches from her throat.

Liora is panting, her eyes wide, uncomprehending of what she has done. She stares at me with shock rather than control, her magic thrashing against itself like it barely listens to her.

She doesn’t know.

She doesn’t even understand what she is.

Rage coils through me, twisting with something else, something deeper. I want to break free, to shake her, to demand she tell me why she is here, why she has returned.

But she doesn’t wait to hear my words.

She runs.

The moment she moves, the magic falters. The invisible grip on my body weakens.

The second I am free, I drop to my knees.

I dig my claws into the ground, heaving air into my lungs as the remnants of the spell ripple through me. My vision flickers between the present and the past, the lines blurring.

She’s gone.

She ran.

The dark presence watches. It does not chase her.

I can still hear it laughing.