Chapter 116: A Mouth Full of Stars
Dusk
They heard the knocking again. Three taps. Measured. Deliberate.
Not the wind.
Not a branch.
Not the echo of something imagined.
But this time, when Selene opened the door—
No one stood there. Just a smear of blood. And flowers.
They had been placed — arranged, almost lovingly — at the threshold. Wilted roses leaned against the frame. A scatter of black dahlias lay in a half - circle, like a warning. And at the center, something stranger: white poppies.
But their petals didn't open like most flowers.
They curled inward.
Tight.
As if folding into a mouth mid-sentence. As if they had been speaking when the sentence was cut short, the words choked back into the root.
Selene didn't cross the threshold.
Not yet.
The hall beyond the door stretched longer than it should have. Or maybe that was the dusk playing tricks again — elongating shadows, warping lines.
The air was heavy — iron - thick, copper - sweet. But beneath the rot, there was something else. Sugar. Honey. A perfume too old to be worn, too rich to be natural.
Ancient beauty, made seductive by decay.
She stepped forward. Her breath left her lips in a slow cloud, too visible, too heavy. She raised a hand, fingers brushing the air near the bouquet.
A shimmer.
Light bent strangely, the same way heat blurs vision on cracked pavement. A ripple moved along the frame, over the blood, between the petals. It shimmered like water — but refused to move like it.
Then the frost came.
Sudden. Silent.
It began at her fingertips and webbed outward. Lacing the edges of the door in a pale rim. Thin veins of ice spread down the wall like silver cracks in glass. The flowers stiffened.
And then —
She burned them.
Not with fire, not really. The flame she called into her palm was low, deliberate. Controlled.
But it wasn't the heat that destroyed them.
It was the cold beneath it.
The stems cracked — split from the inside out, frozen and then fractured. The petals curled tighter before collapsing entirely. The blood sizzled on contact. The perfume broke into smoke.
Still, Selene said nothing.
Inside the apartment, Aria was already seated on the floor, cross - legged in the center of the room like she'd been waiting for hours.
She didn't open her eyes.
Her hands rested gently on her knees, palms turned up.
Her lips moved — but no sound followed.
Just breath. Rhythm.
Selene had seen Aria quiet before. Had seen her focused. Guarded. Even stubborn in the face of her own exhaustion.
But this wasn't that. This was something else. This was trance.
Aria's mouth moved like the shape of a wave folding backward on itself. Like she was exhaling stars into new constellations. Like her breath was a language older than words.
Not prayer. Not speaking. Something older.
"Where did you learn that?" Selene asked. Voice low.
It felt like the question itself might break something. Like it might wake something that wanted to stay sleeping.
Aria opened her eyes slowly, the motion thick with weight. Dreamlike. Her gaze took a moment to land on Selene.
"I didn't," she whispered. "It's just… there. Like it's always been."
Then came the sound.
A scraping. Outside.
Along the wall. Long. Dragging.
Not nails. Not metal. Something softer. Wetter.
Like kelp on stone. Or bone across damp shell.
The scent followed. Saltwater.
But not fresh. Not sea - spray or surf.
This was ancient brine — trapped - in - rock, fossil - slick, deep - ocean pressure. The smell of drowned cities. Of tide - washed altars. Of oaths never buried deep enough.
It filled the room, crawled into the vents, laced itself into the walls. It saturated everything.
Selene's pulse slowed.
She raised her hand again, without hesitation.
Her weapon shimmered into being — not metal, not quite ice — but something between. A blade forged of cold memory and darker magic. It flickered in her grip like light reflecting off a frozen lake.
She whispered her breath into it.
It came out frozen.
The lights overhead flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then —
Darkness.
Not power failure.
Not absence of light.
But something more precise.
An excision.
As though the light had been removed, purposefully. As though something had reached in and stolen it, rewound it into silence.
Selene didn't flinch.
Her vision adjusted too quickly. In the dark, she saw everything she needed.
The edge of the rug.
The dust on the bookshelf.
The soft glint in Aria's eyes.
They were glowing.
Faint gold.
Like candlelight behind amber. Like molten threads woven through glass.
Selene froze.
Not in fear.
But in recognition.
Something inside her bones responded. A deep, quiet resonance. As if her past lives were shifting in their sleep. As if she'd dreamed this once. Or been warned.
The air changed.
Gained weight.
Bent.
Time didn't stop.
But it slowed. Warped. As if something old had just exhaled beneath the floorboards.
Selene reached out — slowly, deliberately — and touched the hardwood. Her free hand met ice. It curled out from beneath her palm like breath condensing on ancient stone. It spread through the cracks in the floor.
A grounding.
A ward.
Then the ceiling —
Did not collapse.
It peeled.
Split open — not physically, but perceptually. The sky ruptured in the space above them. Light poured in. Not fire. Not moonlight. Something else.
Raw. Violent. Sacred.
It struck Aria first.
She arched backward, gasping.
Her body jerked, spine bowing like a harp string drawn too tight.
Selene lunged forward.
Caught her by the wrist.
The contact burned.
Aria's skin was molten — glowing from within, alive with some quiet fire that didn't belong to this world.
But Selene didn't let go.
She inhaled.
Called the cold deeper into herself. Let it spiral from her lungs into her palm. She wasn't trying to extinguish Aria. She was trying to hold her together.
To contain the unraveling.
Aria slumped forward into her chest.
Unconscious.
Shimmering faintly like frost at sunrise.
The floor beneath them shook once.
Not violently.
But deeply.
A resonant tremor.
Like a bell struck far beneath the world.
Then —
The whisper.
Not a voice.
Not a word.
A presence.
It moved through the room.
Didn't pause.
Didn't ask.
Just passed through them.
Oceanic. Hungry. Timeless.
Selene's breath caught.
She felt it pass through her chest — cold and massive and gentle and wrong. Not malicious. Not kind. Just infinite.
The world bent around it.
Then —
Silence.
Light gone.
Ceiling whole.
The room returned.
But everything was different now.
The air was not just still.
It was listening.
The salt remained, laced through the walls, threaded into the breath between them.
The flowers outside were ash.
And Aria —
She stirred in Selene's arms.
Her skin still warm. Still pulsing faintly beneath the surface, like veins of starlight folded into flesh.
Selene touched her cheek. Gently. Reverently. Her fingers moved slowly — afraid too much contact might undo the fragile silence holding the moment together.
She didn't ask what Aria had done.
She didn't want to know.
Some truths arrived like tidewater — inevitable and not meant to be held.
She just stood.
Lifted Aria carefully.
Her breath still fogged the air.
The frost melted beneath their feet as she carried her to the couch, the blade vanishing from her hand.
She lay Aria down gently, brushing a curl from her cheek.
And watched.
Aria's breathing was steady now. Rhythmic. Soft.
But the shimmer —
The one Selene had seen in her eyes —
Hadn't left.
She wasn't glowing anymore.
But something inside her was.
Selene sat beside her. Leaned in.
Listened.
And heard it —
The echo of something whispered not by lips but by stars.
The same rhythm Aria had been breathing earlier.
The same song she hadn't meant to sing.
A language buried too deep.
Too vast.
The stars still shimmered behind her eyes.
And Selene —
Selene began to wonder if this was what Aphrodite had feared.
Not destruction.
Not death.
But memory.
Returning.
Through Aria.
Through them.
Through a mouth full of stars.