....
"Do not mock," Vordi said sternly. "I will eat you whole."
"You're bluffing," Kail said. "You have teeth, not manners."
They trained until their voices frayed. The monsters came at night in waves, testing the temporary safety of the spring. Each assault was worse than the last. They learned to fall back, to use Vordi as a battering ram, to make Aiden's blade the wedge that opened paths. They learned which creatures hated flame and which learned to close their eyes against it. They learned how to stitch wounds with strips of cloth and spit and cursed prayers.
After one brutal run, Lizz woke with a clarity that made Kail's chest tighten. "I saw the inside of it," she whispered. "Not like before. It felt hollow? Waiting? Like I was an empty cup and it wanted to be poured into."
"You have to be careful," Aiden warned. "We don't want you pouring it into the wrong thing."
"Who would be wrong? Like who?" Lizz asked, voice thin.
"Anything alive that doesn't have consent," Aiden said. "Or things already carrying the island's rot. The power would be corrupted."
"I get that," Lizz said. "I don't know how you get consent from a snake, but okay." She laughed, a tiny, spluttering sound.
"Maybe it's a transfer," Kail said suddenly, the idea forming like a bruise. "You can't become a phoenix because the thing you tried to be is not for owning. It needs an index. A target. Someone who takes it and completes it. Maybe it's like giving someone a name. It needs someone else to accept it."
"Poetic again," Aiden muttered. "And again unhelpful."
"Shut up," Kail said. "I'm tired of your riddles."
They kept practicing. Each successful spark was smaller than the last attempt at full transformation, but it stitched Lizz back together a little. The burns clotted. Her breath steadied. Her color returned in soft shades. They celebrated each tiny win with bad jokes and worse awards, an imagined crown of seaweed, a ceremony of two thumbs up. It was pitiful and pure and it made them feel like people again.
But the island did not relent. The beasts kept coming. The colossus watched, patient as an executioner. The nights grew colder in the gaps between screams. Kail dreamed of being clean. She dreamed of a couch. A normal soft couch with a stupid throw blanket and remote controls.
One dusk, during a lull that felt obscene, Lizz turned to them. "I think I can do something bigger," she said, voice steady for the first time in days.
"Don't tempt fate," Aiden warned. "We learned our lesson."
"This isn't like before," Lizz said. "I think the power listens when I'm not asking it to fill me. When I'm asking it to give."
"Give to who?" Kail demanded.
"Vordi," Lizz said. "She saved us. She held us. If anyone deserves wings, it's Vordi."
Kail stared. "A snake? On a phoenix? You're serious?"
"Very," Aiden said, and there was a softness in his voice that made Kail's stomach drop. "If it works, it'll be dangerous. But it's the best shot we have."
Kail looked at Vordi, asleep, steaming gently. "Are we ready to hand our fate over to a giant lizard bird hybrid?"
"We're ready to hand fate a wedgie," Kail said, and even she had to laugh.
They prepared. The ritual, if it could be called that, was clumsy. Lizz rested palms on Vordi's flank, eyes closed, breath shallow. Her voice whispered nonsense syllables and remembered songs. Kail and Aiden hummed tunelessly in the background like terrible backup vocalists. The island hummed too, a low vibration as if the earth listened.
For a long time… nothing. Then a small heat built in Lizz's palms, warm and sweet and not like burning. It humored the air, made sand steam faintly. Vordi's scales shivered. Kail felt a prickling down her spine like static.
"Now," Lizz breathed.
Vordi's scales brightened, like oil on water. For a second Kail thought she could see the outline of wings forming along Vordi's back, like sketches drawn in light.
"Do it slowly," Aiden said. "Don't pull it. Let it take."
Lizz's voice cracked, then steadied. The warmth built into a pressure, a swell. Kail's hands clenched into fists. If this failed, if Lizz failed, then there'd be nothing left but the long, empty silence.
A sound rose, low and ancient, almost like a song from the bottom of the sea. Sand lifted in a column around them. Vordi's coils shuddered. A sheen grew over her, then sparks, then little feathers like cinders.
Kail wanted to cry. She wanted to laugh. Her chest felt like it would explode.
Then Vordi's head jerked up, eyes wide. For a moment she reared, steam pouring from her nostrils, and Kail thought with a greedy suddenness that maybe this was it.
Vordi's body convulsed and then something pulled at Lizz. Her grip tightened as if she were holding a rope. Pain flashed over Lizz's face. Her knuckles went white. Kail lunged to help and Aiden stopped her with a hard look.
"Don't take it from her," he said. "Let it go."
Lizz's lips parted, a sound like an offering. The air between them flattened; for a second Kail saw threads of light like fishing line pass from Lizz's palm into Vordi's scales.
Vordi screamed, a sound that was not just a hiss but a keening, like a beast trying on a song. Feathers flared, then smoke, then pure light. The coils unspooled and where there had been scales, something like flame brokered feathers glowed. For a breath, Kail thought she saw wings.
And then
The air snapped.
Lizz slumped, as if someone had cut the rope between her chest and the world. Her hands fell away. Her face was ashen. She inhaled in a ragged, massive gulp and then went limp, not from exhaustion but from something else, like she had given everything away and had nothing left.
Vordi's form shimmered, half scale, half feather, grotesque and beautiful in between. The feathers were not yet full wings, they were shards of light and heat and wet. Vordi opened a single eye and looked at them, at Kail, at Aiden, at Lizz, and the expression was unreadable.
"Did it," Kail began, but her voice failed. She crawled to Lizz and cradled her head like a child. "Lizz, oh my god. Lizz, talk to me. Are you okay? Can you hear me?"
Lizz did not answer. Her chest rose and fell slowly, painfully, like machine pistons grinding. She breathed. She lived.
Vordi shook, a low, tortured sound, like a great bird that had an ache it didn't know how to soothe. "I am not whole," she said. Her voice had the brittle edge of someone who'd been assembled from storms. "I am fire laced serpent. I taste feathers in my mouth."
"She did it," Aiden whispered, and there was wonder in it, and grief, and the kind of complicated relief that tastes like salt.
"But she's…" Kail said. "She gave herself. She looks like a ghost."
"Time heals," Aiden said, and his voice held a tired promise. "Given enough… time."
Kail pressed her forehead to Lizz's and felt the faint warmth of breath. "Okay," she said. "Okay. We wait. We heal. We fight when we must. We rest when…"
The Island groaned. The colossus turned its terrible head and the shadow passed like a judgment.
"You sure we should leave her here?" Kail asked suddenly. "We can't just wait around with our only friend half dead and our new bird lizard half made."
Aiden looked at Lizz, at Vordi, and then at Kail. "We hide. We rest. We gather strength. When she wakes, we will take her away. But not yet. Not until she can stand."
Kail nodded, and though her hands shook she tried to make them steady. "Fine. But if anyone touches her while I'm not looking…"
"I will eat them," Vordi promised, and the threat was both fierce and oddly maternal.
Night came. They made a crude shelter with broken branches, wrapped Lizz better, fed her what they could, talked in low, messy voices. They shared memories that had no business being spoken in a place like this.
Kail ranted about fries and neon signs and that one time Lizz got lost in a parking lot for an hour because she couldn't remember where she parked her car. Aiden didn't laugh, not out loud, but his mouth tilted at the edges like maybe he remembered what laughing felt like.
"Why are we talking about cars?" he muttered.
"Because it's better than talking about giant centipedes eating our faces," Kail snapped, hugging her knees to her chest. "If I stop talking, I'll start thinking, and if I start thinking, I'll probably scream until my throat gives out."
"You're already half screaming," Aiden said.
"Shut up," she muttered, but her voice wavered, softer now.
Lizz stirred in her sleep. Her lips moved like she was mumbling a prayer, though Kail knew Lizz didn't pray. Maybe it was a song, maybe it was a dream.
"You think she'll make it?" Kail whispered. She didn't want to ask, but it clawed out of her throat anyway.
"Yes," Aiden said.
"You don't know that."
"I do," he said firmly. His eyes didn't move from Lizz's chest rising and falling.
Kail stared at him, trying to decide if he really believed that or if he was just good at lying. She decided she didn't care. She needed someone to say yes.
Vordi lay coiled around them, smoke trailing from her nostrils, scales flickering faint light like dying embers. She hadn't spoken again, but her body heat wrapped them like a wall. Kail leaned back against her coils and closed her eyes.
For a while, there was almost peace.
Then the night screamed again.
The beasts returned. Smaller ones at first, chittering shadows creeping into the glow of their little campfire. Kail jumped to her feet, blades ready, cursing under her breath.
"Not again," she whispered. "Not while she's like this."
Aiden rose too, sword dripping with past blood. He met her eyes. "We hold them."
"Yeah," Kail said, swallowing hard. "We hold them. Until she's ready. Until she…" She glanced back at Lizz, pale and still. "Until she wakes."
The first Insect lunged. Kail met it head on, blades cutting messy arcs. She screamed when it splattered across her chest, black fluid burning her arms. She kept moving anyway.
Aiden fought with no wasted motion, slicing, pivoting, kicking another beast into the fire. For every one they killed, another two crawled out of the shadows.
"Why don't they quit?" Kail yelled, half in fury, half in fear.
"Because they know we're breaking," Aiden said grimly. He stabbed a wolf through the eye and wrenched his sword free. "And they want us gone before she can rise again."
Kail slashed and cursed and stumbled. Her arms ached, her eyes stung, and every part of her body begged to lie down, but she wouldn't. Not yet. Not while Lizz breathed.
The swarm pressed closer.
"Kail!" Aiden shouted.
"I see it!" She whirled and caught a lizard mid pounce, her blade slicing its throat open. She spat blood and grit from her mouth. "I'm not blind!"
"You're reckless," Aiden snapped, but he still moved to cover her side. Their movements were jagged, messy, but somehow they kept each other standing.
Behind them, Lizz groaned. Her fingers twitched, and a faint glow pulsed against the bandages on her chest.
Kail spun, nearly dropping her blade. "Lizz?"
The glow flickered, weak and stubborn. Lizz's eyes cracked open for a heartbeat. She tried to lift her hand, but it trembled and fell back.
"Kail," she whispered, voice so faint it was barely there.
"I'm here," Kail said, choking on relief. "Don't move, okay? Just… just breathe."
Lizz's lips curved in the faintest smile. "I can't… do it. Not me."
Kail's heart stuttered. "What do you mean? You don't have to do anything right now."
Her hand twitched again, pointing weakly toward Vordi. "It's not mine. It's hers. I… give it."
Kail's throat tightened. She didn't understand all of it, but she didn't need to. She heard enough. Lizz couldn't become the phoenix herself. But she could give it.
Aiden's blade clashed with another beast. "What did she say?"
Kail swallowed. "She… she thinks it's for Vordi. Not her. She can't hold it. She has to pass it on."
"Then that's what she'll do," Aiden said, not missing a beat, cutting down another attacker.
"She'll die if she pushes again," Kail snapped, fury in her voice.
"She'll die if she doesn't," Aiden countered, grim and sharp.
Vordi hissed, smoke thickening in the air. Her coils shifted as if she already knew what they were saying.
Lizz's eyes fluttered closed again, her chest rising and falling too slow, too shallow.
Kail dropped to her knees beside her, clutching her hand. "Don't you dare leave me. You hear me? You don't get to quit before the finale."
Her only answer was the thunder of claws around them, the shrieks of monsters, and the looming shadow of the colossus in the distance, still watching, still waiting.
And in the middle of it all, Lizz's hand squeezed, just once, before falling slack again.
Kail froze, panic screaming inside her chest. "Lizz?"
The beasts howled louder, like they'd heard the silence too.