The power answered—a sun igniting in the void of my mind. The door Dionadair showed me didn't just appear;it erupted into being, a colossal edifice of light and searing heat, covered in runes of a forgotten language that burned with my own fury. I reached for it, my consciousness stretching to grasp the handle, to finally, finally claim what was mine.
A voice roared through my skull—not Ash's mocking baritone. It was raw, strained, and laced with a pain so profound it struck me like a physical blow.
"Tafukt, don't!"
It was Dreck's voice.
My will faltered. The door flickered, its brilliant light dimming for a terrifying second.
"Dreck?" The thought was a desperate, trembling whisper. "Is that really you?"
The void shifted, and his form coalesced from the chaos—a phantom made of memory and anguish, rushing forward. His hands, solid and real despite their translucence, grasped mine, pulling them back from the burning handle.
"It's me, Taty. Look at me. Just look at me," he urged, his voice shaking with the effort of holding onto this connection. "Do not open that door."
"I have to!" The protest was a sob torn from my very soul. The door's pull was a physical ache, a siren's call woven into my blood. "It's the only way. I can feel it… the power to break your chains, to get you out—"
"No," he said, his voice firm yet gentle, a rock in my psychic storm. "You think it's freedom on the other side? It's a cage. A different kind of chain. One you will never escape."
"But I can save you," I whispered, my vision blurring with tears that had no place in this mental realm. "I can't leave you with him. I won't."
His image flickered, a wave of agony passing over his features. "Taty, listen to me. The only thing that needs saving right now is you. He's using my face, my voice, but this… this pain you feel from me? It's real. It's the cost of holding this link open. Every second you stand near that thing, it's tearing me apart."
His words were a dagger to my heart. I faltered, the grand design of my rebellion crumbling to dust. "I didn't know… I would never want to hurt you."
"I know," he said, his voice softening. The ghost of a smile touched his lips. "That's why you have to stop. You have to turn away. For me."
His eyes, so full of stone-steady certainty and a fear I'd never seen in him before, locked on mine. They were an anchor, pulling me back from the blaze of my own ambition.
"He's lying!" Dionadair's scream was a distant, fading echo, drowned out by the truth in Dreck's gaze.
My breath hitched. Every instinct, every furious impulse screamed at me to seize the power, to burn it all down. But his hands on mine were the only real thing in this void.
"I am here, Taty," he whispered, his voice a lifeline. "Right here. Not in some promised future behind that door. Come back to me. Please."
The plea shattered my last resolve. I raised a trembling hand, my consciousness brushing against the apparition of his cheek.
For a moment, it was warm. Familiar. Real. I felt the rough stubble, the solid line of his jaw, the overwhelming, heartbreaking rightness of him.
But then his skin rippled beneath my touch. The warmth curdled into something colder, alien. His outline fractured, flickered—Dreck's phantom smiled a sad, final smile as if to say I tried, before it dissolved into nothing.
And in his place stood a man.
Tall, sharp-lined, his presence burned in a way that was neither cruel nor kind—something darker, something that pulled me in even as it unsettled me. His eyes, no longer Dreck's, burned with an intensity that felt like fire pressed against ice.
His hand now held mine. His cheek leaned into my touch as if claiming it.
"You always reach for him," Ash said softly, his voice low, intimate, almost reverent. "And yet… here I am."
The runes flared violently, the door roaring at my back. But I couldn't look away from him. My heart clenched, torn between dread and something far more dangerous.
I couldn't make his exact appearance between my rage and his shadows.
I reached for Diona, but there was no answer. Only him.
Then—he pushed.
His push wasn't violent. It was a relinquishing of hold, a gentle shove into a deep, waiting pool. The psychic scream of the door, the searing heat of the runes—it all vanished, replaced by an instant, shocking cold.
Water.
It swallowed me whole, a silent, heavy blanket. There was no splash, only the sudden, complete embrace of the deep. Panic, a sharp and familiar fiend, tried to claw its way up my throat. I fought it, my limbs flailing in the thick, resistant darkness, my lungs already burning for an air that wasn't there.
This is it, a part of me whispered, the part that was always tired. This is how it ends. Not in fire, but in silence.
The fight began to seep out of me, drawn away by the chilling water. My struggles grew slower, heavier. The ache in my lungs softened from a sharp burn to a dull, full pressure. It wasn't pleasant, but it was… numbing. The surface was a distant, shimmering idea far above, a world away. To reach for it seemed like more effort than it was worth.
A strange tranquility began to bleed into the edges of the panic. The water was no longer an enemy; it was a cradle. It held me, rocking gently in a current I couldn't feel. The cold became a simple fact, not a threat. The need to breathe… faded. It was a forgotten urgency, like a dream upon waking.
Let go, the water seemed to murmur. It's easier this way. Just let go.
My eyes were open, staring up through the murky green light at the shattered moon of the surface. My hair floated around my face like a dark halo. Bubbles, the last of my air, escaped my lips in a slow, silver chain, drifting upward toward a life I no longer had the strength to want.
This was peace. This was surrender. It was a slow, quiet drowning, and I welcomed it.
Then, a disturbance.
A darker shape against the dark water, moving with purpose against the languid drift. It cut through the water, not with panic, but with a powerful, undeniable intent.
Arms, solid and real, slid around me. One across my chest, the other hooking under my knees, pulling me from my watery cradle. The tranquility shattered. The sensation was jarring, an invasion of the quiet death I had chosen.
I was moving. Up.
We broke the surface with a gasp that was his, not mine. I merely choked, water streaming from my nose and mouth, my body convulsing against the sudden, brutal return of air to my starving lungs. The world rushed back in a roar of sound—the lap of water, the sigh of wind in the trees, my own ragged, painful coughing.
He held me against his chest, his grip firm and unyielding, keeping my head above the water as he waded toward the shore. I could feel the powerful beat of his heart against my back, a steady, living drum chasing away the silence of the deep.
He didn't speak. He simply carried me, laying me down on the cool, mossy bank of the pond as gently as one would place a precious, broken thing. The forest air was shockingly cold on my wet skin.
I curled onto my side, coughing, shivering, weeping without sound. The peace was gone, replaced by the raw, aching shock of being alive.
A shadow fell over me. He knelt, his own clothes soaked through, his unruly curls plastered to his forehead. He didn't touch me. He just watched, his intense eyes missing nothing—the violent shivers, the tears mixing with pond water, the ragged pull of each new breath.
Finally, when my coughing had subsided into hiccupping tremors, he reached out. He didn't brush my cheek or claim my touch. Instead, with a startling tenderness, he pushed the sodden hair from my forehead, his fingers lingering for a brief second to feel the feverish chill of my skin.
"Sorry, but you were too hot for me to handle," he whispered.
" wh..what" my voice failed me.
" Your fire. I had to put it down," he smirked.
I started shivering, it was cold. Too cold.
But then something shifted.
His features blurred, shadows moving beneath his skin. The warmth in his eyes drained, replaced by something deeper, unreadable, like an ocean with no floor
"Enough training. Go to sleep." His eyes flickered with purple light and my eyes grew heavy, and I fell into darkness.