Page 15 of Hellfire to Come (Infernal Regions for the Unprepared #5)

Chapter Fifteen

ALICE

There was no light here.

No ceiling.

No walls.

Just an endless, viscous dark pressing against my skin like oil. It clung to me, slow, suffocating, creeping into my nose, my throat, my lungs. Breathing felt like swallowing static.

Existing felt… optional.

I wasn’t sure if I was dying.

Or if I had already died and just hadn’t been informed.

Everything hurt. But not in the way a body hurts. Not flesh or bone. This pain was stranger. More intimate. Like my soul was being plucked apart string by string, tuned and snapped, over and over again.

It began in my core; A sharp, smoldering heat coiled like a serpent behind my ribs. It twisted tighter with each second that passed, unwinding only to tear through me again. I would’ve screamed if I could find my voice. But even that had been stripped away in this liminal void.

No chains here.

No dungeons.

No Frederic with his knife and smirk.

Only the remnants of his magic, buried so deep I felt it chewing at the marrow of what made me, me.

And inside it all.

Something else was moving.

Not the curse. Not the pain.

Me.

Or at least, a version of me that still remembered how to fight.

She stirred in the shadows, barefoot, bloodstained, wearing a cracked pair of glasses and a manic grin. She was the girl who once beat back demons with a crowbar. The girl who had nothing but bad jokes and rage and a promise to her best friend stitched across her ribcage like armor.

“You’re not dead,” she told me, her voice echoing weirdly in this not-space.

I stared at her. At myself.

“Could’ve fooled me,” I muttered.

She cocked her head. “You’re not dying either. Not yet. The magic’s just… confused. Like a virus stuck in its own code.”

“The virus is melting my brain.”

She shrugged. “Then melt back harder.”

There was a pause. The darkness rippled, and for a moment, I swore I heard Brooklyn’s voice. Faint. Distant. Like wind through leaves.

It tugged at something deep inside. A tether I didn’t know I still had.

“I told you she’d come,” my shadow-self said. “Now all we have to do is not combust before she gets to us.”

Easy.

Another pulse hit me, white-hot and merciless. It clawed through my veins like molten metal. I arched, trembling in this bodiless existence, as the magic inside me howled. It wasn’t trying to kill me anymore.

It was trying to take root.

Oh gods.

Was I being turned into a vessel?

Images flickered around me, flashes of glyphs, broken circles, the smell of burned sage and blood. I saw Frederic’s sneer. Rowan’s empty eyes. My hands lighting up with power that wasn’t mine.

“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no…”

“You can fight it,” the other me said. “You’ve always been good at pretending. Pretend this isn’t your mind. Pretend it’s a lock. And break it.”

I clenched my fists.

Somewhere beyond this mental prison, I knew my body still lay trembling. Fevered. On the brink.

But here?

I was still here.

And that meant I could fight.

Even if I didn’t win. Even if I tore apart what was left of my mind doing it, I wouldn’t hand over my body, my thoughts, my soul. Not to Frederic. Not to the curse. Not to anything.

I screamed.

Not out of fear.

But defiance.

And the darkness rippled.

Cracked.

Sharp pain speared through me, and I burst into a million pieces.

It was dark.

But not the kind of darkness that meant nothing.

This was a darkness that breathed. That pulsed. That listened.

I stood barefoot in a corridor that defied reality, endless and surreal, like a strip of forgotten film playing on a loop, its colors desaturated and its frames juddering.

The walls swelled with each breath I took, as though the space itself was mimicking the fragile rhythm of my lungs.

Beneath my feet, the ground beat like a heart…

uneven, persistent, aching. Somewhere ahead, hidden in the shadows, something ancient loomed. Cold. Watching. Waiting.

The most disturbing part wasn’t the impossible architecture or the way the air hummed like the breath of a sleeping beast. No, it was the sense that I’d been here before. Not in a dream. Not in memory. But in the marrow of my bones, in the hidden corners of my psyche.

This place wasn’t unfamiliar.

It was intimate.

It was me.

Or what was left of me.

Magic throbbed beneath my skin, wild and foreign, running too hot and too cold in alternating waves.

It didn’t belong to me. It had a pulse all its own, slithering through my veins like a parasite with purpose, curling possessively around my bones like ivy made of knives.

I could feel it whispering things I couldn’t quite hear, a cacophony just below consciousness.

I wanted to scream.

To tear it out.

To demand it leave.

But my throat betrayed me, tight and silent, sealed under layers of fog and weightless pressure. My voice was buried too deep, sealed away like some forgotten secret. I opened my mouth, and nothing came out but the soundless press of desperation.

Still, I walked forward.

Because standing still meant surrendering.

And I didn’t know how to do that. Not yet.

So, I walked. I had no choice.

Every step echoed with strange whispers, little chants in a language I didn’t know but understood anyway. The words felt like needles. Ancient. Accusing. Familiar.

“Unworthy.”

“Weak.”

“Replaceable.”

“She’ll leave you next.”

Brooklyn’s name flared in my chest, a warmth amid the chill. That anchor. That tether. That one true goddamn thing. I clung to the feeling of her hand in mine. Not real, but real enough. If this place was trying to strip me of everything, it would have to pry that bond from my cold dead fingers.

And they were cold.

My fingers.

My arms.

My heart.

I stopped in front of a mirror. It stretched ceiling to floor, framed in black veins. My reflection smiled at me before I did.

“Oh no,” I whispered. “No, no, no.”

She was beautiful, the girl in the mirror. Too smooth. Too poised. Not me. Her eyes were molten gold, not brown. Her grin was all teeth and promise. Her voice was mine, but cracked open.

“You’re unraveling,” she said, tilting her head. “Finally.”

I shook mine. “No. This isn’t…”

“Real?” she offered. “It is. It’s the only thing that is. The rest is borrowed time. You’re a house built on someone else’s blueprints. But me? I’m the foundation. The root. The truth. You just haven’t let go yet.”

She reached for me, palm to mirror, like she wanted to climb out.

I backed away, breath catching.

Magic coiled in my gut again, this time surging like it wanted to answer her call. I choked. It hurt. My knees gave way and I crumpled to the ground, hands fisting the illusion of carpet.

“Why are you fighting?” she asked, kneeling in the mirror now, eyes soft. “Wouldn’t it be easier to stop and become what you were meant to be?”

Because of Brooklyn.

Because of Dominic.

Because of all of them.

I wanted to scream it, but no voice came out when I opened my mouth.

I was more than a vessel. More than a crack to be filled.

“No,” I whispered. “You don’t get to take my life from me. Not after everything.”

The girl in the mirror frowned. “Then I’ll have to burn it out.”

The walls caught fire.

Magic surged through me again, this time tearing. Splitting. My body convulsed in this dream-space like it was caught in a live wire. I screamed, soundless, but the fire didn’t touch me.

Something else did.

A memory.

Brooklyn’s shy barely there smile.

Dominic’s quiet strength.

Echo rolling her eyes.

Chester grinning at nothing.

Rowan’s awkward, beautiful silence.

Samir’s smoldering gaze on me when he thought I wasn’t watching.

The soft fur and calming presence of my dog that I refused to call wolf.

They were light.

And I was not alone.

The mirror cracked.

So did the girl inside it.

“You’re not strong enough,” she hissed.

“I don’t have to be,” I said, rising to my feet even as my legs trembled. “I’m not doing this alone.”

The fire died.

The walls split.

And for the first time since I’d arrived in this hell, the darkness retreated.

I didn’t wake.

Not yet.

But I was close.

I’d be damned if I let Frederic win, that asshole.

He’d picked the wrong girl to mess with.