Page 142 of She Who Devours the Stars

Older, lower, Eventide staff and faculty: “It’s Sere again!” “Oh stars, no—It’s Sere.” “Get them inside, NOW!”

Somewhere, a siren tried to go off, but the mythic pressure sucked the sound out of the air, leaving only the taste of char and panic.

Closer: “Shut down the core resonance nodes! We’re getting a full Reclamation echo!”

Students started to panic. Not the fun kind, where people run for cover from a fake drill or the Friday “Gas Leak Social,” but real, chest-thumping, animal-fear panic. Screams tore down the rows of benches, the sound fracturing as mythprint after mythprint overloaded. Some kids ran. Others collapsed on the steps, hands on heads, like it might help keep the narrative from digging into their brains.

There was one, maybe twelve, who just stood there, eyes wide, mouths open, lost in the spectacle. My people.

The mythquake built, then doubled, then detonated in a ring of force that knocked every sense out of my skull. My vision doubled, tripled, split into nine overlapping timelines, each one fighting for dominance.

In the confusion, I caught a blur of Zevelune. She was walking straight into the firestorm, wine glass in hand, hair up, smile broad as murder. She looked up, winked, and the sky bent around her.

The Lioren vector inside me sang.

I tried to say something, but my throat had dried to nothing. All I could do was swallow, eyes locked on the pillars of fire, wondering if I’d ever see anything this beautiful again.

Near me, a cluster of students huddled, one of them—brave or stupid or both—shouting, “Wait—what’s Sere? Is that a drift class or something?”

Another: “I thought this was just a contest glitch, like, a mythic meme?”

A third, older, voice, trying to herd them away from the epicenter: “Move! Sere Prime is a kill event. You do not want to be here for this!”

My AR tried to reboot again. It failed, flashed a single line of text across my retina:

[LIOREN GHOST EVENT: SYSTEM OVERRIDE]

I could feel the ghost of Lioren in my bones, a pulse so pure it erased my own thoughts for a second, replacing them with a burning clarity. I wanted to get up, to run, to do anything but sit there and wait for the sky to collapse on my head.

But I stayed.

I always did.

The mythdrift sucked at my mind, stretching my narrative until I couldn’t tell if I was still Fern, or something else entirely. I blinked, and the world faded to grayscale. Blinking again, it snapped back—only now the plaza stones were scorched black, the fire pillars rising twice as high, and the students were mostly gone, scattered like so much ash in the wind.

I could hear the Eventide staff shouting, but the words melted together, a soup of panic and protocol. The only phrase that made it through:

“It’s Sere. What’s Sere?”

I tried to laugh, but my mouth wouldn’t move.

At the edge of my hearing, a whisper—so quiet it could have been my own thought, if I still had any left.

“You’ll learn,” it said, amused, low, and utterly unforgiving.

I recognized the voice. It was Lioren, of course.

And as the next mythquake wave hit, flattening the world to an endless, horizonless plain of white heat, I realized he wasn’t talking to the crowd.

He was talking to me.

I let the pressure roll over me, let it compress my ribs and hollow out my lungs, and didn’t resist when the sky bent down and swallowed me whole.

If this was Sere, I was going to meet it with my eyes open.

And maybe, if I got lucky, with my teeth in its throat.

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