“You can never take away what I am!” my father screamed. “I won’t allow it!”
His voice was broken by the static, the ebb and flow of it swelling as the sights continued to move into me.
“Fight him!”
I wanted to scream that I was trying, that I was fighting, but I didn’t know what I was fighting against. I didn’t know what was happening. It was all I could do to stay focused on the sights, to keep myself breathing.
“I won’t let you!” my father shouted again through the panic, another voice mixing alongside his.
Dramin’s sobs echoed against Ilyan’s pleas. It was noise as I watched the flash of fire, watched blood flow over rocks. My heart strained to keep up with the force of it. My mind and body was exhausted as I fought the weight that held me down.
And yet, the unfamiliar magic grew, the power grew. My power grew.
“Fight it.” The voice came again, my magic flexing alongside the unfamiliar strain pulsing into me with a frightening energy.
“Fight it!”
This time, I screamed. I screamed as I heaved. I screamed as the magic swelled, as it pushed against me. I screamed as others did, the sound so loud in my ears I couldn’t think beyond it. It was only me and noise, my body wrapped tightly like an infant, the weight a comforting staple against what I was surrounded by. What was infecting me.
And then it was gone.
Then it was silence.
I looked up with a snap, my eyes wide in expectation as my bedroom came into focus, but the blood-soaked woman was no longer there. I sat alone with Ryland, Ilyan, and Dramin frozen in the room I had left, as if they had been glued there, the tension of the environment infecting me.
I sat still, waiting for something to happen, but there was nothing except the foreign magic that continued to swell within me, winding through mine in a way that, at any other time, would feel uncomfortable. This felt right, however.
This felt strong and beautiful … and, somehow, recognizable.
The magic increased as the room stirred, a sight overlaying the space in a double vision I had seen consistently since Wyn’s first attack, since I had watched the barrier pop days before. But this time, I wasn’t lost in the shadow of past and future. This time, everything made sense, my mind open and free as it saw and understood everything with perfect clarity.
“The magic was spread too wide but has been returned.” A chorus of voices rumbled through me as my sight took me to the pool of Imdalind. My vision held as I watched the surface break and grow. A wave of movement spread over the top, and eight bodies emerged.
I caught a glimpse of their heads before the image shifted like a flipbook, flashes of hundreds of people I had never seen before swimming across my eyes. My magic whispered to me as I began to recognize them, to recognize the family line, father to son and son to father. Even though none of the faces were familiar, I knew them. I recognized a nose, the green of their eyes. I saw my family for the first time.
I gasped in shock as the sight faded to nothing other than a bright red light, the color sliding down my vision like paint.
“The son will rise, the son will fall, and all the blood will cease to flow. The time is now. It grows too late. Kill the fool before the slate.”
I gazed into the long, red drips of black and red as they moved over me. The red faded to nothing, while the black encompassed the words in my head, my own voice speaking right alongside them.
“Love no longer seeks revenge. The time has come to write your end.”
The scream stopped as the voices did, the sight fading away until I was left staring at the cracked ceiling I woke up to every morning. Time caught up and moved into overdrive as the voices flooded around me, dread and fear infecting me like some kind of noxious disease.
As I looked from Ilyan to Ryland, the overlay of sight cast itself over them with perfect clarity. My mind moved quicker than it ever had. It was as though everything was unleashed. It was as though everything was free.
Ovailia walked through the cathedral within my mind, Wyn conspicuously missing as she strode into our makeshift hospital. My magic was strong as it pulled me right to her, confirming what my sight had already revealed.
“We need to go,” I spoke over the terror, everything freezing as I sat up from where I lay in Ilyan’s lap. My sight was still focused on where Ovailia and Sain stood side-by-side. “We cannot wait.”
There was one reason they would be here. No, there was one reason they would be in that room … with all of those Chosen.
“Ilyan.” Pulling my focus from where Ovailia and Sain stood in tense conversation, I looked to my mate whose eyes were wide in shock. “We must go … before it is too late.”