Luna's:
The moment Aezrel's hands touched my wrists, the room dissolved.
Not faded 'collapsed. Like reality had been painted on glass and someone had shattered it from the inside.
I was falling, but not through air. Through pages. Each one brushed my skin like silk and then dissolved, leaving behind whispers I couldn't hold onto long enough to understand. My breath caught as my feet hit solid ground or what passed for it. A smooth, mirror-black surface stretched in every direction, reflecting not the sky above, but an ocean boiling in reverse waves spiraling upward into a horizonless void.
This wasn't just a vision. This was memory.
It was the Codex's memory.
I should have been afraid. Instead, something in my chest uncoiled. Something that had been sleeping… waiting.
"You remember this place, don't you?" The voice was behind me, but when I turned, it wasn't a person. It was a shape tall, robed in light that bent unnaturally, its face a cascade of shifting symbols. Every time I blinked, the symbols changed, spelling things I almost understood.
My lips parted before I could stop them. "Yes."
And the truth hit me so hard my knees weakened.
I had been here before.
I didn't know how, or when, but the mirrored floor rippled under my feet, replaying flashes, my hand pressed against this same black glass, blood smeared across it, voices chanting from all sides. A name. My name. But not Luna. Something older.
"You were its keeper," the figure said. "Before you betrayed it."
The words should have burned, but instead, they fit like a scar I'd forgotten about, traced after years in the dark.
A shiver tore through me. Somewhere far above, I could feel Aezrel trying to pull me back. His voice echoed faintly, urgent, but the Codex's grip was steel.
And deep down, I wasn't sure I wanted to let go.
...
The Codex pulsed beneath me, each beat in time with my own heart. Or… maybe it was the other way around.
Every breath I took tasted metallic, sharp, like the moment before lightning strikes. Threads of light began weaving themselves across the black floor, curling upward around my legs, not restraining me but binding me in a way that felt disturbingly natural like a child's arms wrapping around a mother they hadn't seen in years.
"You've been gone too long," the figure murmured. Its voice wasn't loud, but it filled every corner of me. "And you've worn another's name for far too long."
The light coiled higher, brushing my waist, my ribs. A word pushed into my mind.
Not Luna.
Not anything human.
The sound of it made the air quiver, and though I had never heard it before, it belonged to me.
I staggered back, my pulse pounding, but the mirrored floor mirrored more than me.
It showed her.
A woman in the same place I stood, centuries ago. my face, but not my eyes. Those eyes burned like molten silver, unblinking, and when her lips moved, I felt the whisper in my bones:
"I never died."
The Codex wasn't just memory.
It was alive.
And it was trying to pull me into the body of the woman I used to be.
Aezrel's voice slammed into the space like a thrown blade. "Luna 'listen to me. If you take its name back, there's no coming back to yourself."
But the dangerous part?
I was starting to wonder if I wanted to.
...
The silver-eyed version of me reached for my face fingers brushing the air like she could slip into my skin if I let her. My knees buckled. I was falling into her.
Then the world snapped.
Aezrel's hand clamped around my arm, scorching hot, like he'd pulled it straight out of a forge. The Codex screamed not with sound, but with a violent wrench that made my vision fracture into a thousand shards.
The silver-eyed woman's mouth twisted into something between fury and a lover's smirk before she vanished.
I was slammed back into my own body.
The air was real again heavy, cold. I was lying on the marble floor, gasping like I'd drowned. Aezrel's shadow loomed over me, his chest heaving, his grip still iron on my wrist.
"You had seconds before it swallowed you whole," he growled, but his voice shook like he hated the truth of what he'd just done. "Don't ever step into that thing without me."
"You didn't give me a choice," I shot back, shoving at his arm, though the heat of his touch lingered in my veins. "You ripped me out before I could—"
"Before you could lose yourself," he cut in, his eyes like black storms. "You think you can flirt with it, Luna? That Codex doesn't give second chances."
I stared at him, and that was when I realized he wasn't just angry.
He was scared.
And nothing terrified me more than seeing fear in him.
Because if Aezrel was afraid…
maybe I should have let the Codex take me.
...
I ripped my arm free. My skin burned where his fingers had been, like he'd branded me without fire.
"You don't get to play savior," I hissed, pushing to my feet. The Codex still thrummed behind me, like it was calling my name through the marble. "You're not my keeper, Aezrel."
"Then stop acting like a child who doesn't understand the fire she's touching," he shot back. His tone was calm, but too calm like a blade so sharp you don't feel it until it cuts deep.
"You're afraid," I said, stepping closer until our breath mingled. "Not for me for you. You think if I learn what's inside that Codex, I'll stop needing you."
His jaw tightened. "Don't flatter yourself."
The words were cold, but the way his gaze dropped briefly to my mouth before snapping back told me another truth. He wasn't just fighting me. He was fighting himself.
I didn't know which one of us was going to break first.
So I took one step closer. "Maybe I don't want saving."
His hand shot out, not to grab me this time, but to cage me in against the marble wall. His body didn't touch mine, but the heat between us was enough to feel like it did.
"Then maybe I'm not saving you," he murmured, voice low enough to shake my bones. "Maybe I'm keeping you… for me."
Something deep in my chest cracked open. Not from fear. Not from anger.
From something much, much more dangerous.