“You could end this,” Mirael murmured. “All that pain, all that loss—you could stop it. Just say yes. Let the Hollow in. Let it use you.”
He spat blood at her feet.
She sighed. “Still so stubborn.”
Then, as always, she left him alone.
The darkness swallowed her. And left him. Alone.With grief. With guilt.
He didn’t cry. Not anymore. There were no tears left. Just the rotted echo of who he used to be.
Until hefeltit.
Not in the air. Not in the crumbling stone. Not in the dark that clung to his skin like rot.
In his chest.
A ripple. A break. Like something sacred had clawed its way through the veil of death and cracked open the place where his heart should’ve been.
It wasn’t pain. It washer.
A whisper, faint as a breath against his neck.
“Cassian.”
His name—her voice.
Not conjured by the Hollow. Not some cruel mimicry meant to unravel him.Real.
His fingers twitched against the stone. His throat worked around a sob, but no sound came out.
“I’m coming.”
The words hit like lightning. Like fire in his blood. Like the echo of a promise forged in flesh and love and everything they hadn’t had time to say.
The illusions didn’t shatter all at once. Theycracked.
Cassian staggered back from the brink. Eyes wide, chest heaving.
The vision of Seraphine lying dead at his feet dissolved into ash.
The bindings. The invisible ones that had shackled him to hopelessness, to surrender—they strained. Frayed.
But they didn’t break.
His body wouldn’t move. His magic pulsed wild beneath his skin, but it was buried. Buried under shadow and grief and lies so thick they had become marrow-deep.
She’s alive.
He dug his nails into the ground. Blood welled. The Hollow whispered louder—She's gone, she's gone, she’s gone—but hefelther. Like a tether tied to his ribs, yanking him back to the world.
Cassian grit his teeth and pushed.
Stormfire coiled inside him, furious and caged.
“No,” he rasped. “Not like this.”
The shadows bit deeper. Mirael’s enchantments tried to smother the spark. His lungs burned. His bones groaned. The Hollowscreamed.
