Page 23 of Ghoul Me, Maybe

ELIAS

T he bay is burning red.

Not with fire.

With moonlight .

The blood moon hangs like an open wound over the water, staining everything beneath it—sand, sea, sky, us —in a copper-soaked glow that smells like rust and storm.

The veil is thinning by the second.

And The Collector’s already begun.

He stands on the wreck—on my wreck—cloaked in shadows and incantation. His goons are stationed in a circle, arms outstretched, channeling energy through cracked runes and sacrificial sigils. The relic pulses between them like a second heart.

Sienna stands beside me, fingers laced with mine. Her magic’s raw, unfiltered, wild with grief and fire. Mira flanks her other side, silver markings drawn across her cheekbones like war paint.

Lyle’s behind us, muttering about ley lines and ancient fail-safes. He’s holding two totems and looks one spell away from cardiac arrest.

“You good?” I ask him, not taking my eyes off the ritual.

“No,” he says. “Absolutely not. But I’m here. ”

That’s enough.

I turn to Sienna. “We go now, or we don’t go at all.”

She nods. “We go.”

The first ward hits me like a wall of broken glass.

I phase through it, my edges flickering, pain ricocheting through every splinter of me. The relic screams— not literally, but in my mind, a sound like every regret I’ve ever buried being yanked back into light.

The Collector raises his hands.

The tide shifts.

The water lurches upward—dragging with it specters. Old souls. Pieces of the dead who never left.

Sailors with half-sunken eyes. Wrecked fishermen bound in kelp. Things older than humans that crawl through tide pools and whisper in barnacles.

He’s weaponized the veil.

I push forward.

I don’t feel my feet anymore. I don’t need to. I’m here because she’s here—because her heartbeat is the only thing anchoring me to this plane.

And I’ll burn this whole damn bay before I let him take that away.

“GET DOWN!” Mira screams.

An arc of raw magic slices overhead—blue lightning wrapped in cursed scripture. It cuts through one of the Collector’s men, sending him flying into a mast.

“GO!” I roar, charging.

I slam into a summoned shade, ripping through it with both hands. It screams, disintegrates, reforms behind me. I turn and snarl, phasing into its core, tearing out the energy inside like peeling away a soul from bone.

Sienna vaults the hull beside me, a dagger in one hand and her father’s charm in the other.

She slices a goon’s thigh, then punches him hard enough he stumbles straight into a broken spar.

Blood and seafoam mix.

The Collector doesn’t flinch.

“Too late,” he says, voice unnaturally calm. “The binding’s already begun.”

“No,” I growl. “It ends now. ”

I launch myself at him—spectral, savage, feral. But he’s ready. He chants something in a language I haven’t heard since the wreck first dragged me under.

A sigil explodes beneath me.

I scream as I’m flung back—pain blooming in my chest like frostbite. I hit the mast, slide down, flickering hard.

Sienna yells my name.

She dives for the relic.

The Collector intercepts her—barely. They clash, her blade meeting a shield of compressed air that knocks her flat.

Mira throws fire. Lyle screams and hurls a rune bomb that blows a hole in the deck.

Everything is falling apart.

I crawl to my feet—if you can call them that. I’m not fully here anymore. Parts of me are shadows. My fingers phase through the deck.

But I see her.

Bleeding. Fighting. Refusing to break.

And I know, I will not fade.

Not tonight.

I rise.

And the tide rises with me.

Water slams the ship—drenching all of us. But it listens to me now. Bends to my will. The Collector stumbles. His circle cracks.

I lunge.

Grab the relic from where it’s fallen.

And I burn.

Sienna screams.

But I’m not letting go.

I focus every ounce of my being—every fragment left from the man I was, and the ghost I became—and I pour it into the relic.

It shrieks.

Glows.

Then shatters.

The bay explodes with light.

The second I touch it—everything stops.

Not just time.

Everything.

The relic hums in my palm like it’s alive—pulsing in time with a heart I no longer have. Light pours from the cracks in it, spilling like molten gold, ancient and angry and hungry . It doesn’t want to be held. It wants to command.

The ship groans beneath me.

Not from battle.

From memory.

The wreck is waking up.

Its bones glow—every plank, every nail, every carved rune on the hull Jonas ever etched now pulsing with the same ghostlight bleeding from the relic.

The ocean howls in answer.

Waves rise, towering like gods called from slumber. Winds scream across the cove. Lightning cracks— but doesn’t strike. It arches, wrapping the wreck in a circle of raw magic that blisters the air and stinks of ozone and salt.

Sienna’s shouting something.

I can’t hear her.

All I can feel is them.

The spirits.

They rise from the water, faces from a hundred wrecks—eyes hollow, mouths open in silence. Sailors. Drowned witches. Sirens who lost their songs. Fae that slipped through rifts and bled into the deep.

They circle us, tethered to the relic’s pulse. Waiting.

Judging.

The Collector tries to flee—too late.

A hand—skeletal and glowing—reaches from the tide, wraps around his ankle, and drags him down.

He screams.

He doesn’t get a second one.

I close my fingers around the relic.

It bites back.

Power slams into me—visions, too fast, too loud. Screams. Laughter. Sienna’s face, Jonas’s voice. My own death . The binding. The regret. The love.

The choice .

“I won’t be your vessel,” I growl.

I don’t yell.

I don’t chant.

I decide .

And I break it.

I drive it into the deck with all the strength I have left.

It shatters —not like glass, but like reality .

Light explodes.

A wave of force throws me backward, into the mast. Spirits scream—not in pain, but in release. The storm evaporates mid-breath, like it was never there. The wind cuts out. The lightning vanishes.

The relic’s gone.

Ash.

Vapor.

Silence.

I collapse.

Breathing, somehow.

Sienna’s by my side in seconds, hands on my face.

“Elias. Elias! ”

“I’m here,” I whisper.

“You idiot. You suicidal, beautiful— you stayed. ”

I nod once.

And feel...not lighter.

Not healed.

But free.