I straightened, glancing down at Santiago. “Button her up.”
He didn’t hesitate. His jaw was tight as he covered her again.
I drained the last of my glass in one swallow and set it down with a quiet click, leaving the room without another word. The door shut behind me, sealing the weight of what I’d seen where it belonged—in shadow.
13
Aurelia
The air held a heavy quiet,yet it pulsed with energy—humming beneath my skin. I stood barefoot on nothing and everything at once, the ground a vast stretch of star-kissed dark that rippled like water but held firm beneath my feet. Constellations shimmered below the surface, their glow shifting through colors I couldn’t name. Warm one moment, icy the next.
Above me—no, below—Nyxarra sprawled across the horizon like a blackened crown nestled in endless dusk. Fog coiled at its border, thick tendrils curling and shifting, circling the city. Its towers rose like jagged teeth, obsidian spires reaching toward the sky with desperate hunger.
From this height, Nyxarra looked like a wound carved into the world.
A shiver ran down my spine, and I turned.
To the south, Synnex, home to Nerissa’s tides, rose in a burst of color and warmth. Pale stone buildings with terracotta roofs hugged the cliffs above a sapphire sea, golden vines blooming along their balconies and winding streets. Lanterns hung betweenbuildings, casting a soft amber glow that wrapped around the city. I could almost hear laughter—faint and distant, but real. Alive. The sound stirred an ache in me, for a wholeness I’d only ever imagined but still somehow mourned as though it had once been mine.
Home.
The place where Mama taught me to braid my hair, and where Pa read to us beneath the lemon trees. Where Aeryn and I chased fireflies in the garden before the night everything changed.
I stepped forward, and the sky beneath me rippled in response. Another realm came into view.
A land scorched in fire and ruin—yet scattered with fields of flowers that glimmered faintly against the blackened earth, their silver-red petals trembling as if caught between bloom and ash.
This had to be Kaerani’s realm.
I could feel her essence woven into every flame, every jagged stone. She was the destroyer and the rebuilder. The fire that burned away weakness and left only what was strong enough to survive.
To the west bloomed another realm, so ethereal I almost doubted it was real.
Sylvara’s Wilds pulsed with magic unlike anything I’d ever known. Archaic, quiet, deeply alive. I heard no voices, but felt the thrum of life in the leaves, the soil, the very air. The scent of moss and wild jasmine filled my lungs, and a warm breeze kissed my skin.
Something caught my eye further northwest, between Nyxarra to the north and the Wilds to the west.
A fifth realm.
Unlike the others, it didn’t scream its nature. It whispered.
Its borders shimmered, flickering like candlelight in the wind. One moment it looked lush, fertile, even beautiful—twistingvines and silver streams beneath a golden sky. The next, it was hollow and haunting—fog swallowing the trees, the streams dried to dust, and the vines curling in decay.
Its light dimmed, wavered, and threatened to extinguish.
I stepped closer, my heart thudding with quiet recognition. This place… it didn’t feel foreign. It felt familiar in a way that sank into my bones.
The shadows here didn’t threaten. They welcomed. The light didn’t blind. It warmed.
Something ancient stirred beneath the surface of this place. Not a goddess like the others, but something that felt older. Something forgotten.
I thought of the myths—those whispered stories Mama used to tell when the lamps burned low, the ones she warned us never to repeat outside our walls. Stories of things erased from history altogether.
Eryndis. The goddess of thresholds and secrets. Once upon a time, Nyxarra was her home. Until she was pushed out.
My hand drifted to my chest, fingers brushing the scar that created a map around my body. It ached now, faintly.
Truth is not given freely. It is earned. It is bled for.