After existing for millennia as formless consciousness, the physical world crashed into her awareness with brutal intensity. Too loud. Too bright. Too solid.

  She tried to lift her hand, marvelling as fingers obeyed her command, flexing and curling. Not her fingers, though. This wasn’t her form, not truly.

  Memory rippled through her. She fought through disorientation, through the roar of physical sensation. Each heartbeat pounded in her ears. Each breath felt like fire.

  Then, cutting through the chaos, came a single thought.

  Threnody.

  Not the Echo. Not a fragment. Not a relic imprisoned in stone.

  Threnody. Her name. Her identity. Reclaimed after an eternity of being nothing but a vessel for memory. For magic.

  A sudden surge of emotion nearly overwhelmed her. Joy, terror, grief so ancient it had calcified within her very essence.

  She tried to move again, but her limbs refused to obey. Confusion gave way to understanding as she felt the cold magic binding her. Shadow magic. It wrapped around her, pressing into the flesh she now inhabited, restricting movement.

  Threnody?

  A voice broke through the disorientation. Small, frightened, but insistent.

  What’s happening? Where am I? Why can’t I move?

  The name rose from somewhere deep within. Vesper. Accompanied by a flood of unfamiliar memories that weren’t Threnody’s own. Images of books on shelves, of a life lived in quiet corners. A library. Grey rain. Loneliness.

  What have you done to me?

  The voice came from inside. Threnody reached toward it and found another awareness pressed close.

  Get out! This is my body!

  Vesper. Still here. Still aware. Trapped within her own body while Threnody controlled it.

  Please, I’m scared.

  The woman’s fear rippled through their shared nervous system, tightening muscles Threnody was only beginning to understand.

  I don’t understand what’s happening.

  Threnody struggled to form a response, to shape thought into communication that wasn’t sound. How strange to speak without speaking. She pushed her awareness toward the frightened consciousness.

  You freed me.

  She felt Vesper’s confusion, her terror and disbelief.

  Why am I still here? It’s not possible. That can’t⁠—

  It is possible. It has happened.

  Memories surfaced—not hers, but Vesper’s. Fragments of the Echo shattering. A desperate attempt to stop something worse. Pain. Light. And then darkness.

  This isn’t real. This is a nightmare.

  I assure you, Vesper Ainsley, this is quite real. Though I understand how it might feel otherwise.

  Vesper’s consciousness recoiled at the sound of her name, at the intimate knowledge Threnody possessed of her life, her memories, and her being.

  This is my body. Get out!

  You invited me. We are the same now. You cannot hide.

  You don’t understand what’s happened, Vesper insisted, her thoughts racing with a frantic energy Threnody found disorienting. I had to merge the fragments. They were going to take you and put you in a vessel they could control. That’s why you’re awake now. They were going to use you!

  Images flashed between them, a memory so chaotic it was difficult to make sense of it. Threnody tried to grasp it, but it slipped away.

  Slow down, she commanded.

  I can’t! Tenebrae took us before I could— Vesper’s thoughts fractured, dissolving into pure terror.

  Threnody felt the girl’s fear flooding their shared bloodstream with chemicals that made their heart race and lungs constrict.

  Tenebrae? Threnody asked. She knew that name. She knew the destruction it had caused.

  A face materialised in their shared consciousness. A man made of darkness, with silver eyes flaring from within, and darkness spilling from his fingertips.

  He’s one of you, Vesper whispered inside her. Another Arcana.

  Not possible, she countered. They’re gone.

  But even as she rejected the notion, recognition stirred within her. Something about the darkness in Vesper’s memory felt familiar. Ancient. Like looking at a reflection across millennia.

  He wants your power, Vesper continued. He’s going to force you to unmake reality.

  Threnody struggled to make sense of the woman’s urgency. Time moved differently for beings like her. What did it matter if something happened now or in a thousand years?

  You need to fight, Vesper insisted. He’s coming back.

  Threnody forced her awareness outward, away from Vesper’s panicked thoughts. The darkness surrounding them wasn’t just an absence of light, but substance. Shadow magic pressed against her from all directions.

  She couldn’t see walls or a ceiling, just endless shadow that seemed to breathe and pulse. The air tasted wrong. Magic lingered on her tongue, magic she recognised…but beneath that familiar power lay something rotten, something that had festered for a long time.

  Shadows wrapped around her wrists and ankles, binding them in place. Threnody tested the restraints, tugging gently. The shadows tightened instantly, biting into her flesh.

  Pain stabbed up her arms.

  Threnody stilled, startled by the intensity of the sensation. Pain hadn’t existed for her in the Echo—not physical pain, at least. She’d been consciousness without form, memory without substance. Now every nerve ending screamed in protest as the shadows constricted further.

  Stop fighting it, she told Vesper. You’re making it worse.

  I can’t just give up, the woman shot back.

  Threnody withdrew from the struggle, allowing her awareness to sink deeper into this borrowed form. Bones that could break. Skin that could tear. Blood that could spill. Lungs that needed air.

  The fragility of it all horrified her. How could they bear this existence? This body wouldn’t survive what was coming. Not if her captor truly intended to use her power.

  Do you understand now? Vesper asked, catching the drift of Threnody’s thoughts. Why we need to escape?

  She didn’t answer. What was the death of one mortal compared to the weight of all she’d done? All she’d destroyed? One human life hardly registered against such a scale.

  And yet…

  Movement stirred in the darkness. A ripple, then a shift. Threnody’s attention snapped toward it, every sense suddenly alert despite her unfamiliarity with this borrowed flesh. The shadows parted, revealing a figure stepping through their midst.

  He moved toward her, tall, composed, his features sharp and pale against the darkness that clung to him like a second skin. Silver eyes caught what little light existed, reflecting it back with a coldness she knew.

  Tenebrae.

  The name surfaced from Vesper’s memories, accompanied by a visceral jolt of hatred and fear. Inside, Vesper’s consciousness recoiled, trying to retreat deeper into the corners of her own mind.

  Him. It’s him.

  He stopped before her, close enough that she could see the faint pattern of veins and nerves that comprised the bones of his manufactured vessel. His gaze travelled over her with satisfaction, as though he was certain of his power over her.

  “Threnody,” he said. “At last.”

  She knew him. Saw his power, his contempt. His arrogance. Her memories were still fractured, but they weren’t forgotten.

  “You’ve been asleep too long,” Tenebrae continued, reaching out to brush a finger along her jaw. She flinched, but the shadows binding her limbs prevented her from pulling away. “Dreaming your endless dream while the world forgot what we were.”

  Tenebrae moved closer, his shadow-form seeming to absorb what little light remained. His silver eyes fixed on hers, calculating.

  “You’ve been trapped so long in that prison of your own making,” he said. “All that power, all that knowledge…wasted.”

  The shadows struck at her mind. They poured into her thoughts, seeking weakness. Pain bloomed behind her eyes, transcending nerves and synapses, and reaching into the core of what she was.

  Fight back! Vesper’s voice cried out from within.

  Threnody instinctively pulled inward, drawing her consciousness tight. The shadow magic burrowed deeper, searching for cracks, for any point where she might yield.

  “You can’t resist me,” Tenebrae murmured. “You’re newly awakened. Weak. Confused. Don’t make this harder than it ought to, Threnody. This is what you wrought, after all.”

  He was right about one thing. Her thoughts were scattered and she was unable to focus, to gather any strength. The physical form she inhabited limited her, contained her in ways she hadn’t anticipated. After millennia of formless existence, she’d forgotten how to summon magic.

  The shadows dug deeper. Her memories flickered, fragments of her life rising and falling. Crystal spires gleaming in forgotten sunlight. The faces of her people before the corruption. Songs that had shaped reality.

  Tenebrae pushed harder, forcing the shadows against her will, trying to break her from within. Pressure built, a crushing force against her essence. She felt herself beginning to crack, fault lines spreading through her consciousness.

  No! Vesper’s voice rang through their shared mind. You can’t let him win! You’re the Echo! You’re the most powerful of them all!

  But Threnody was fracturing, her newly awakened self unable to withstand the onslaught.

  Her perception shattered, sending her consciousness spiralling away from the dark room and Tenebrae’s cruel touch.

  White light blazed across her vision, brighter than any sun. When it receded, she wasn’t in the shadow chamber anymore.

  Crystal spires soared upward, their translucent surfaces catching light in hues no human language had words to describe. Each facet refracted brilliance in patterns that formed living equations, mathematical poetry written in light. The structures twisted through dimensions that existed alongside the visible world.

  The sky was a canvas of shifting possibility, where stars burned during daylight and celestial bodies traced orbits through realms beyond sight.

  Arcana moved around her. Their forms were pure essence wrapped in elegant geometries of their own choosing. Humans resembled them, or did they resemble humans? It was impossible to tell what nature had wrought when it had created either species.

  Threnody saw herself among them. Younger. Unburdened. Her essence radiant with untainted power. This version of herself wore light as a garment, her form both solid and liquid, constantly shifting yet recognisably her.

  This was her world. Her people. Their golden age, when creation still sang with possibility and the corruption hadn’t begun to spread. When their song had been a harmony.

  But the vision was fragmented and incomplete. Edges of memory frayed and distorted. Parts of the scene vanished, replaced by blinding white before reforming elsewhere.

  The memory couldn’t sustain itself. Reality was already fracturing around the edges, the crystal spires beginning to blur and distort.

  Then the vision collapsed. The white light returned, blinding in its intensity. When it cleared, she was back in the shadow chamber, Tenebrae’s magic pressing against her mind, his silver eyes narrowed in concentration as he continued his assault.

  Threnody gasped, her lungs pulling in air she didn’t need but the body demanded.

  How long had she been the Echo? How long since she’d walked freely, spoken aloud, existed as more than consciousness trapped in stone?

  She remembered fragments. The corruption spreading through her people, the choice she made, and the cataclysm that ended everything, but there was a gap. A void where memory should be. She didn’t remember how she had become the Echo. That knowledge was missing, torn away or buried so deep she couldn’t reach it.

  Why can’t I remember? The thought emerged unbidden, a question that had no answer.

  What’s happening to you? Vesper’s voice broke through.

  Memories, Threnody replied. Incomplete.

  Within their shared mind, she felt Vesper’s confusion, her fear momentarily replaced by curiosity. The vision… That was your world? Before?

  Yes.

  It was beautiful, the woman whispered.

  Threnody felt something unexpected…a flicker of pride, followed immediately by grief so profound it threatened to consume her. Beautiful, yes. And lost. Destroyed.

  The shadow-bonds tightened around her wrists, pulling her back to the physical world. Tenebrae still stood before her, his silver eyes narrowed in frustration.

  Threnody, we have to get out of here. He’ll kill them all if we don’t stop him. Rafe, Blair, everyone I⁠—

  Images flashed between them. A dark-haired man with protective eyes. A woman with sharp features and a sharper mind. Others, faces blurring together, connected by threads of loyalty and affection.

  They don’t matter, Threnody responded, bewildered by Vesper’s desperation.

  They matter to me!

  Vesper’s anguish crashed against her. The emotion was so potent it momentarily disrupted Tenebrae’s assault on their shared consciousness.

  You don’t understand, Threnody said. Their lives are gone in moments. They’re born, they live briefly, they die. It’s the nature of mortality.

  That’s exactly why they matter! Vesper’s consciousness surged forward. Every moment counts because there are so few of them.

  Threnody struggled to comprehend.

  You’re the Echo, Vesper insisted. You’ve seen countless lives, countless memories. You’ve witnessed the memory of magic itself. How can you not understand what it means to love someone?

  Love. The concept stirred something deep and forgotten. Had she loved? Had she been loved? Those memories remained locked away, hidden beyond her reach.

  Tenebrae’s shadows pressed harder, probing for weakness. The pain intensified as he searched for cracks in her resistance.

  I don’t care about your mortal attachments.

  Then care about yourself, Vesper countered. About finding what you’ve lost. We can’t do that if he wins.

  Threnody felt the logic in Vesper’s argument, but more than that, she felt the girl’s determination. A force that felt as powerful and elemental as any magic. This fragile mortal, trapped within her own body, refused to surrender.

  It was unexpected. Puzzling. Almost admirable.

  The shadows tightened their grip, squeezing her borrowed flesh until pain seared along every nerve.

  “You were always our greatest achievement,” Tenebrae murmured. “The most powerful of us all. Created to reshape reality. The light of the Arcana.”

  She had not been created. None of them had been. They simply were.

  “This world is broken,” he continued. “Look what arose after you left it to rot. Mortals scratching in the dirt, barely aware of the power that surrounds them. Magic polluted and diminished, forced into ley lines that strangle progress.” His silver eyes gleamed. “You were meant to cleanse creation and begin anew.”

  Threnody remained silent, conserving what little strength she had, but Tenebrae didn’t seem to require her participation in his monologue.

  “Threnos understood,” he said.

  The name hit her. Her control wavered, the perfect stillness she’d maintained fracturing in an instant.

  Tenebrae smiled, satisfaction curving his lips. He’d found what he was looking for. He leaned closer, shadows coiling around him. “Threnos has been searching for you. Did you know? For millennia, he’s hunted any trace of your existence. He never stopped.”

  Threnos.

  She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think past the single devastating truth: Threnos was alive.

  “He has a vessel now, just as you do,” Tenebrae pressed, his voice dropping to a murmur. “Walking this world in mortal flesh, sullying his soul, seeking you even now.”

  The shadows curled tighter around her thoughts.

  “Shall I tell you what he did when he learned you might be found? Shall I describe how his face changed at the mere mention of your name?”

  Don’t listen, Vesper’s voice warned from within. He’s manipulating you.

  But Threnody couldn’t stop herself from uttering her first words. “Threnos lives?”

  “Oh yes.” Tenebrae smiled. “And soon you’ll see him again. Once you’ve fulfilled your purpose.”

  The shadows pressed harder, slithering deeper into her consciousness. Threnody felt herself slipping, her resistance crumbling under the combined weight of Tenebrae’s magic and her own exhaustion.

  Threnos is alive.

  Vesper screamed. She pushed against Threnody’s consciousness, trying to lend strength she didn’t have, trying to shore up defences she didn’t understand.

  You can’t give in, Vesper’s thoughts blazed. Not to him. Not after everything. Fight! she demanded. I know you can.

  Threnody pulled what remained of her power inward, drawing on reserves she hadn’t known still existed. She began building walls around her consciousness, barriers of pure will. Tenebrae’s shadows clawed at them, seeking cracks, trying to tear them down before they could fully form.

  “You can’t resist me forever,” Tenebrae murmured. “Why prolong this?”

  But Vesper’s defiance echoed through the shared space between them, a stubborn refusal to accept defeat. I won’t let him win, she said. And neither should you.

  But Threnody didn’t know how long she could resist. The most powerful of all the Arcana…and she was broken.

  How could she save anyone?

  Chapter 3

  Blair walked through the damaged tunnels of the Praxis sanctum, her boots crunching over debris scattered across the floor. Cracks split across the ceiling, and in several places, chunks of stone had broken away entirely, leaving jagged holes that exposed the passages above.

  The wards that had once protected this place were shattered. Their residue clung to the walls, the magical signatures twisted beyond recognition. The battle with the titan the Arcana had risen from the Darkmese, had damaged the spells beyond repair, and the merging had wiped out the rest.

  Theo would have known how to read the damage. He would have run calculations, told her exactly how long they had before structural failure. He was a skilled artificer who knew all about magical matrixes and scaffolding. He would know. The thought struck before she could stop it, and grief twisted sharp in her chest.