Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 107720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107720 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 539(@200wpm)___ 431(@250wpm)___ 359(@300wpm)
I collapsed over Lucien, planting both hands over his metal-encased heart as the fire chose that moment to cremate him. Flames erupted in his hair with their mocking little flickers.
“No...” I clawed at his chest. “Don’t. Please don’t leave me. Stay!”
But that godawful gift inside me already knew. He was gone. I could sense his death. I could tell his spirit had fled, leaving a body empty of his soul.
A body that started disintegrating.
A tremor quaked over his chest as his shredded skin turned powdery with soot.
The fire in him reached critical, burning through whatever was left. With nothing to fuel it—with no more life to sustain it—the flames turned on the very vessel that’d housed them, destroying him from the inside out.
A fleck of ash peeled from his shoulder, drifting upward and spinning silently into the night.
Another followed...and another.
They danced on the wind with cruel mockery, stealing him right before me.
My throat closed. A sob tore free.
“No...”
The entire side of his face fractured, flitting away like charred embers, catching the polar breeze whipping around us.
“Lucien!”
My fingernails clawed into him as his body unmade itself—returning to dust like all the bones beneath us.
His arms began to fade, glowing sparks lifting free and dancing aimlessly around my head. His legs followed—dissolving into drifting particles of light and cinders.
“Stop it!” I hurled myself over him, trying to anchor all his pieces. “Stop it. Please stop it! You can’t die. You can’t!”
He didn’t obey me.
His body continued to unravel.
Piece by piece.
Fleck by fleck.
Every ashy fragment rising like a tiny sun.
I pressed my hands over his metal-trapped heart. “Stay. Stay with me. D-Don’t leave me—”
His torso hollowed beneath my palms.
My breath hitched as his face slowly vanished, breaking apart with shimmering shards...disappearing as if he’d been nothing more than a dream.
“NO!”
Lunging, I clutched what remained of him, catching flecks of swirling ash. They escaped through my fingers with mocking wisps of smoke.
His chest broke apart with a cloud of soot, revealing a charred heart as the vitalsync core fell to the ground, no longer supported by flesh or bone—
—his body exploded with a burst of light.
“No!” Glowing filaments swirled, trapping me in a cyclone as I scrambled after him, crawling, grasping.
“Come back! Lucien!”
The blizzard snatched him away.
Launching to my feet, I roared into the storm. “Give him back!”
The snow howled. The world froze.
And I couldn’t do it anymore.
I couldn’t be alone anymore.
Lost anymore.
Afraid anymore.
I’d told him I would chase him. And I would. Through death and nightmares—to the ends of the universe if necessary.
He’s mine.
Raw power detonated.
Fear and grief and horror and love.
So, so much love.
The sharpest, wickedest power in existence.
With a screech, I flung myself wide open.
Take me instead!
Give him back and you can do whatever you want with me!
The storm paused.
The world glittered in its web of frost.
And...the ice replied.
With a howl, it reversed direction and barrelled through me.
It accepted my bargain and roared.
Pain I’d never felt before tore me wide open. Every droplet of crystallised blood. Every frigid vein. Everything ruptured. I shattered into shimmering pieces as winter wove with love and time wrenched to a halt.
Fate bent.
Destiny rewrote itself as I pulled power from all those who’d perished before and defied death itself.
Murderous cold fogged with catastrophic waves. The sky rained silver. Lightning bolts cracked through suffocating snow.
And I didn’t care.
“Come back.” Tears fractured down my cheeks, half ice, half salt. “You have to come back.”
The cold deepened, feeding off my emotions, growing stronger and stronger.
The mountains cracked as ice ploughed through stone. Trees broke in half as arctic wind scythed through them. The river froze solid as the entire valley descended into a tomb of eternal winter.
And in the midst of calamity, I sank into time itself.
I felt every string holding existence together. Ancient history and extinct civilisations. Future advancements and upcoming tragedies. I held every moment that ever was or ever would be, and all it took was a simple choice to cut.
To cut the strings of time and cease life itself.
The knowledge I could tamper with the very existence of this world overwhelmed me.
I choked as my body began to break.
My skin iced over. My hair bled white.
But I couldn’t stop myself.
I called upon every forgotten, dead creature within these mountains to hunt Lucien’s soul and bring him back. Snow hung suspended like glittering stars as I closed my fist around reality and refused to let it keep ticking without him.
There was only this. This space between moments. A rewrite of everything that ever was.
I tried to reverse time the same way I’d somehow stepped through it when racing to find Lucien earlier in the night. I pictured a different reality where we’d gone to the mountain together. Where he’d never triggered this unsurvivable ascension. Where all those prisoners stayed alive and Whisper never ran off—
But...I wasn’t strong enough.