Page 24 of Ghoul Me, Maybe
SIENNA
H e’s slipping through my fingers.
I don’t mean metaphorically. I mean literally.
Elias is turning to mist.
It starts at his fingertips—trailing upward like fog curling off a grave. His jaw is set like stone, like if he clenches hard enough, he won’t fade. But I can see it. The shimmer in his skin. The way light passes through his chest now, like it’s no longer sure he belongs here.
“No. No, no, no— stay with me. ” I drop to my knees, grabbing his coat, like that’s going to keep him anchored.
He looks at me, and something inside me cracks .
Not the kind of crack you patch up with sleep and sarcasm. The kind that splits wide and ugly, right through the middle of your chest.
His voice is low. “Sienna, it’s okay.”
“Don’t you dare say it’s okay,” I snap. “You broke the relic. The spirits are gone. The storm is over. We won. So why the hell are you vanishing?”
He doesn’t answer.
Because we both know.
The relic was the tether.
He was bound to it, even when he hated it. Even when it tortured him. It kept him here. That was the cost.
I slam my hand against his chest.
It goes through.
Like water.
I yank it back, gasping.
“You promised,” I whisper. “You promised you’d stay.”
He blinks slowly. “I didn’t promise that.”
“Liar.”
He smiles.
The bastard smiles.
“I promised I’d fight,” he murmurs. “And I did.”
My throat closes.
“You’re not allowed to be noble right now,” I say, voice shaking. “I need you to be selfish. Just this once.”
“Sienna—”
“I’m not ready,” I choke out.
“I know.”
He raises a hand—what’s left of it—and brushes it against my cheek.
I feel nothing .
But I remember how it used to feel. Solid. Warm. Real.
Mira’s voice echoes from somewhere behind me, sharp and frantic. “We need to cast again! Maybe a loop tether?—!”
“Don’t,” Elias says, louder now. “You’ll burn yourselves.”
“I don’t care! ” I shout.
“I do! ” he thunders.
That silences everything.
Even the sea.
He gazes at me like I’m the only thing left holding him together.
“You gave me more time than I ever earned,” he says quietly. “Let that be enough.”
“No,” I whisper. “It’s not.”
He closes his eyes.
The mist curls around his shoulders now.
His legs are already gone.
“Sienna,” he murmurs. “I love you.”
And I scream.
Like the sound will stitch him back together.
Like if I yell loud enough, the gods, the sea, the damn laws of the universe will back the hell off.
But he just keeps fading.
And then, there’s a flash.
Behind us.
A figure in the trees.
Not Mira.
Not Lyle.
Someone tall.
Unmoving.
Watching.
I twist around, heart hammering. “ Who’s there?! ”
But no one answers.
And when I turn back, Elias is almost gone.
One last breath of mist clings to my fingertips.
And the last word I hear is my name.
The second Elias disappears, something in me cracks wide open.
I don’t cry.
I move.
Instinct kicks in like a jolt of lightning through my bones. I throw myself to my pack, nearly ripping it apart with numb fingers, digging past soaked notebooks, crushed sea salt jars, broken trinkets—until I find it.
Jonas’ journal.
The leather’s warped from rain and salt, the pages frayed and bleeding ink—but I know what I’m looking for. I’ve read it enough times in the dark, curled under blankets, whispering his secrets like prayers.
The spell’s on a page near the middle. Scrawled in thick, ink-blotched lines.
Tether of Essence. Emergency Rebinding. Use only in finality. Cost: blood, breath, memory.
No instructions. No warnings. Just those words.
It’s meant for one thing only: the moment after the end.
I drop to my knees, fingers digging into the sand, scraping hard enough to bleed. I draw the sigil as Jonas described—spiral spine, mirrored runes, open mouth at the center. It hisses against the beach, glowing faintly the moment blood hits it.
Mira rushes toward me, panic laced into every word. “Sienna— what the hell are you doing?! ”
“I’m getting him back.”
“That spell’s not complete! Jonas never tested it—he warned— you could die! ”
“I don’t care.”
Lyle’s voice follows like an echo, sharp and scared. “It’s not just your life. You’re binding your soul to his. This isn’t magic. It’s alchemy. It changes you. ”
I meet their eyes.
“This isn’t a choice.”
And then I speak the incantation.
The words hit the air like thunder underwater—wrong and right all at once. They coil in my throat, rip themselves out like they were always there, buried in my blood. I speak in two languages: the one my mother taught me, and the one the sea never wanted me to know.
The beach stills.
No wind. No waves. No sound.
Only the circle.
Only me.
Only him.
My voice breaks.
My blood drips into the center of the sigil.
The sand drinks it like wine.
A vibration ripples outward—faint at first, then building into a low hum that reaches deep into my bones. The sigil ignites, ghostlight shooting from the lines like veins, stretching far out toward the wreck.
The sky splits open.
And I fall.
I don’t hit ground.
I fall into nothing.
Cold. Black. Endless.
A place beneath the world. A place not meant to be seen—just felt .
And in that dark, he’s there.
Not mist. Not an illusion.
Him.
Whole. Barefoot. Shirtless. Covered in the sea.
His eyes lock with mine. The shock on his face is something between awe and agony.
“What did you do?” he whispers.
“I found the way,” I say, voice trembling.
“You can’t be here?—”
“I can.”
“You tied your life to mine,” he says. “That kind of binding—it changes you. It doesn’t undo. It takes. ”
“I don’t care.”
He steps toward me. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
I step into him. “I know exactly what I’ve done.”
“You’ll feel everything I feel now. The cold. The pain. The tether. It doesn’t fade. It anchors. ”
“Then we drown together,” I say. “But I’m not letting you fade alone.”
Silence.
Then his hands cup my face.
His forehead rests against mine.
The air buzzes with the weight of what we’ve become.
“Why?” he asks, barely a breath.
“Because I love you, you arrogant, haunted bastard,” I say. “And I’d rather share a cursed soul with you than live a clean one without you.”
He kisses me.
And the darkness explodes.