The question hung in the air like smoke.
No one moved. No one breathed. Time slowed for Aspen.
I need to run.
Every tendon in her body pulled taut. How can I get away? What can I do?
High Priestess's jaw clenched, reading Aspen's body. Her resistance. Her voice dropped low and precise.
Can you smell it? Can you smell the Omen now?
Aspen's nose twitched. She inhaled—rapid and deep. The great room smelled of peonies.
Only peonies. Nothing.
"I… I don't... it's—"
"Convenient." The word came like a blade. High Priestess flew.
Not flew—launched. Her wings beat once, hard, propelling her over the table in a blur of peony-scented air.
Fuckfuckfuck, the needles!—Aspen leaned back just an inch before High Priestess's hand clamped around her throat. The chair toppled backward. Aspen hit the floor hard, skull bouncing against wood. Stars exploded at the back of her head.
High Priestess landed on top of her, knees pinning Aspen's shoulders. Her grip was impossible.
It wasn't the grip of a killer. It was of a machine.
Flower-soaked steel pressed into her throat. Not warm this time, but a biting cold.
"Agh—ah, g—get... off."
The world shifted.
"Priestess!" Raine's scream.
"Stop!" Quinn's roar.
Neither mattered.
For a moment, the only thing that existed to Aspen was the thing before her.
The thing that continuously denied her. The thing that constrained her against her will. The thing that smelled like peonies. Like mother.
Aspen didn't scream. Her first thought came quiet, so quiet she could barely make it out.
I want to vanish.
The second thought screamed. Don't hurt me. She gripped the needles with a burning hand. Get away get away get away getaway—her hand shot up.
Her everything concentrated into a few thin sticks, aimed at a God's eye.
So God bled. A single needle made it into High Priestess's left eye. Not deep, not enough to kill. But enough to blind.
Blind Gods still burn.
High Priestess's free hand gripped Aspen's face. Aspen bit down on her thumb until blood welled. It didn't matter.
High Priestess twisted her grip, and pressed the bloody thumb to Aspen's forehead.
Finally, Aspen screamed.
Her limbs burned and her thumb shot to High Priestess's face, trying to gouge the other eye. The God-girl leaned back, pressing the bloody thumb harder. Its metallic ooze was hot, searing like a brand on her skin.
Aspen aimed lower, scratching at the woman's ribs while unhinging her jaw. Stop please stop stop go away.
And finally, High Priestess smiled.
"Spirit of Charity," her voice came ragged. Breathy. "I invoke you against my nature. I must betray my title as High Priestess for the sake of my people. I must bring your sin to light, Tith."
No. No no whatisshedoing?!
"You'll fracture!" Quinn's scream, closer.
High Priestess's sole good eye was wild. Trembling. Tears at the brim. "Spirit of Charity, witness my offering. I give my compassion. I give my mercy. I need your stee—"
Raine slammed into High Priestess from the side.
The impact knocked her off balance. Her hand slipped from Aspen's throat. Aspen gasped, rolled, scrambled backward on her elbows.
I'M FREE! OH MY GOD I'M FREE?!
But High Priestess recovered fast. She grabbed Raine by the shoulders, crunched, and shoved her aside. Raine hit the wall with a scream. Aspen got to her feet, running to a nearby wall to steady herself.
Quinn moved between them, wings spread wide. "Girl, think. We have other options to get answers. You use that charm, you lose yourself. Is that worth—"
"Yes." High Priestess rushed past her. Aspen swallowed, beads of sweat raining down her chin. Dash when she's close enough dash when she's close enough—
Green light exploded from the curtain-way.
So bright it hurt to look at.
Everyone froze.
Footsteps. Fast. Deliberate.
The curtain parted, and a figure stepped into the light.
He was a man eroded by time, yet not diminished by it. His skin was firm as bark, pulled tight over a skull that seemed too large, too regal for a human neck. Deep fissures ran down his cheeks, closer to cracks in a porcelain doll than wrinkles.
He was gaunt, sharpened by his years. His black robes hung off sharp shoulders, but he moved with liquid grace.
Aspen dropped to her knees, gravity remembered its place. She choked on the new smell. His smell.
Cold, polished steel and the stinging bite of sulfur.
It prickled her tongue. Stabbed her gums. Her canines felt as if they were elongating, sharpening into needles that scraped against her softer flesh. Her molars grew heavy and jaded. She tried to open her mouth to scream, but the phantom teeth interlocked like tight gears.
A prison of false bone.
Hierophant.
And with that name, came one word. He spoke.
"Enough."
It wasn't loud. It wasn't spoken with much effort. It didn't need to be.
It resonated. Through the wood. Through bone. Through Aspen.
His green eyes swept through the room and locked onto High Priestess. Her whole body went rigid.
Hierophant crossed the room in three strides. He didn't touch her—just stood close enough that his presence became a wall. "Step away from the Hermit. Find Wister to help you heal."
High Priestess's jaw clenched. Blood still dripped from her thumb. "Hierophant, she's—"
"I know what she is." His voice was flat. Nearly simple. "And I know what you were about to do. Step away."
For a moment, Aspen thought High Priestess might refuse.
But the woman's shoulders sagged. Her wings folded.
She stepped back.
Hierophant glanced at her as he walked to Aspen. "Grace whispered warning before you called. I know enough." He gestured to the curtain leading outside. "Rip it. We'll need Grace's full attention."
High Priestess bit her lip but moved to the curtain. Her hand hesitated for only a moment. She tore it.
The air changed. Thicker. Heavier. The mushrooms pulsed brighter. The shadows danced. The wood grain shifted, acknowledging the entrance to the great machine. To heaven on earth.
To Hinter.
The necklace cracked. The world came full force for half a second.
Aspen's vision tunneled, more than it did with High Priestess. The world didn't go dark; it went irrelevant. The sprawling room, the breathing walls, the crushing weight of the new world—scrubbed from her retina. Censored by the gem to keep her from breaking.
She was suddenly floating in a void, suspended in cloudy sensory inputs, with the only spotlight she could perceive being the man in front of her. She could count the cracks in his skin. She could see the dust in his lashes.
And his voice echoed through every part of her body.
"This will not be comfortable." As he stood before her, the green light traced veins along his temples.
She didn't say a word. Didn't even nod. Barely thought. But he knew. His hands moved to her head.
"Spirit of Grace," his voice sparked a thousand screams in her chest, "witness the Hermit of Hinter."
Tears spilled from her eyes. Her vision blurred.
"Our connection to the Omen. Show me its mark, show me where it hides. Illuminate its cowardice, how it lurks in the darkness."
His palms pressed against her temples. She didn't register the temperature.
"For I am Hierophant. Bearer of your truth."
And then the green light poured in.
It didn't flood. It threaded.
Aspen gasped as she felt it. Thin, icy filaments sliding through her skull like needles through fabric. They wove between neurons, slipped through synapses. Hooked into something deeper.
Her vision went white. They dug into something in her soul. They searched through her memor—no.
No.
No.
No.
They were killed along the way.
The connection snapped shut like a fist.
Hierophant recoiled. Not a step, but a convulsion—as if the "fist" had struck him physically. He stumbled, feet skidding on wood, and gasped a ragged, wet breath.
His left hand flew to his temple, fingers digging into the skin as if trying to hold his skull together. But his eyes were fixed on his right hand, the one that had touched her. The fingers were curled into a rigid claw, trembling violently, as if he had just thrust them into an open furnace.
Aspen doubled over. There was no fighting it. Her stomach spasmed, heaving as if her gut was rejecting the intrusion. She retched, splashing bile and the ghost of blue jelly onto the ancient wood. Her throat tingled.
She tried to inhale, but there was no air left in the room. The floor rushed up to meet her face. Her knees hit the wood, then her shoulder.
The world narrowed to a pinprick of blue light. And from somewhere far above, she heard Hierophant's voice.
"It is chained to her."
Then, nothing.