Page 165 of She Who Devours the Stars

The ground underfoot changed, too. It went from forest dirt to ancient tile to a flexdeck sidewalk that could only have come from three centuries ago, the kind they’d used on Earth before anyone realized it would outlive the people walking on it. My boots left prints in the dust, but when I looked back, the prints were gone. Like the world was erasing every record of mypassage, as if to say: “You were never here, and nobody’s going to remember you anyway.”

I could have lived with that.

But then the time slip started. At first, it was just a lag in my own perception, like a bad AR stream. Then, it was a full-on desync: the sense that my body was three seconds behind my own thoughts, my mouth moving before my brain had even decided what to say.

“I’m not afraid of this,” I said, voice pitched low and cold.

But that wasn’t me.

That was Lioren, the original flavor, running diagnostics in my skull. He liked to pop up at moments like this. Maybe it made him feel important.

“I know you’re not,” Zevelune replied, but she hadn’t been there a second before. She was just… beside me now, walking at my pace, not touching but close enough I could feel the field of her hunger scraping at my mythprint. “But you should be.”

I tried to ignore her, but my own hands betrayed me: they curled into fists, knuckles popping, just like Lioren used to do in the holos. My stride lengthened. I started to stalk, not walk, each step a threat.

“Why are we here?” I asked, and this time it was my own voice, high and brittle. “What’s the fucking point, Zevelune?”

She smiled, but there was no joy in it. “You’re fracturing, darling. Good. The Ruins love a little drama.”

The world flickered. For a split second, I was in the Eventide quad again, the air full of fire and song, the faces of students all turned to me in awe or terror or both. Then I was back in the Ruins, standing in a patch of dead grass, the sky overhead a swirl of black and neon orange.

I touched my face. It felt wrong—too angular, too old. For a moment, I wasn’t Fern at all. I was Lioren, standing at the edge of his own apocalypse, waiting for the universe to flinch.

Zevelune watched, eyes narrow, reading every microtremor in my expression.

“You’re losing the thread,” she said, and this time her voice was soft, almost pitying. “Do you want to be him that badly?”

“I don’t want to be anyone,” I spat, but it came out as a whisper. “I just want to be done.”

She shook her head. “You don’t get to be done, not here. The Ruins eat quitters.”

I laughed, sharp and ugly, and for a second the world doubled: Fern and Lioren, standing shoulder to shoulder in the same skin, both sneering at her.

“Then what’s your plan, Sovereign?” Lioren’s voice, filtered through my teeth, low and velvety. “Break me until I shatter? Get in line.”

Zevelune stopped. I kept walking, but she was suddenly in front of me, blocking the path. She moved like liquid, her dress a smear of impossible color.

She leaned in, close enough I could smell her perfume—blood, and the memory of rain on burnt stone. Her mouth brushed my ear.

“This is the part where you choose,” she murmured. “Or break for real.”

Something snapped in the Ruins. The air pressure dropped, and my ears popped hard enough to make me stagger. The ground fractured under my feet, lines of blue mythlight threading the cracks, racing out in every direction.

I tried to run, but my legs wouldn’t cooperate. I looked down and saw my feet had changed—one was mine, pale and freckled, the other was Lioren’s, booted and scorched and built for war. I started to panic, but Lioren’s calm bled through, a cold fire in my veins.

“Which are you?” Zevelune asked, and her face was right in front of mine, eyes wide and hungry. “Fern? Lioren? Or just another ghost for the Ruins to gnaw?”

“None of the above,” I tried, but my voice split, echoing in two registers. “Or maybe all of them. Who cares?”

The sky overhead started to rotate, the sun peeling away in bands of purple and green. The trees bent toward us, their branches now tongues, each one lashing the air for a taste.

Zevelune grinned, savage and perfect. “You either write this story,” she said, her fingers curling under my jaw, forcing my eyes to hers, “or the story writes you.”

I tried to pull away, but she held tight.

“You think you’re special, Fern? You think you’re the first to spiral out here?”

She let go, and I staggered back, tripping over nothing. The world bent, the light going hard and mean. The Ruins laughed, a sound like glass in a blender.