Forward.
Toward the Hollow. Toward Cassian. Toward whatever salvation or ruin waited at the end of this fight.
If the Houses didn’t answer?
She’d burn the gates down herself.
THIRTY-EIGHT
CASSIAN
He didn’t know how long he’d been here.
He’d screamed once, at the beginning—when Mirael had first bound him in chains made of shadow and silence.
He didn’t scream anymore.
He just watched Seraphine die.
Again. And again.
Sometimes it was a blade to the chest, blood flowering across her armor like crushed roses. Other times, she burned—Whitefire consuming her from the inside out, her eyes pleading as she reached for him. Once, he watched her fall from the edge of the world, her body shattered against obsidian rocks.
Always just out of reach.
Always his fault.
Cassian knelt in the dark, wrists raw from fighting bindings he couldn’t see, couldn’t name. They weren’t physical. Not really. The Hollow didn't work that way.
This place didn’t need chains to trap you.
It just needed doubt.
“You look tired,” Mirael purred.
Her voice came from nowhere and everywhere. A breath against his ear, a whisper beneath his skin. Sometimes she appeared. Sometimes she didn’t.
This time, she stepped from the wall—like a shadow peeled from stone. Tall, beautiful, in a way that made your stomach turn. Her eyes were empty wells. No light. No soul.
He didn’t lift his head.
She knelt in front of him, tilting her head.
“Are you ready to stop fighting yet?”
He didn’t answer.
She smiled. “You were always going to break, Cassian. I was just curious when.”
“I’m not broken,” he rasped.
She laughed. “You will be.”
Then she showed him another vision.
Seraphine screaming. Calling for him as Vaela held her down, as her father raised his blade. Whitefire igniting too late, too fast, consuming her like kindling. And her last word was his name.
He flinched, teeth gritted hard enough to crack. The image faded—but the scent, the sound, stayed. Burnt blood. Her voice.
