Flicker of Hope

I'm tired.

The thought arrives without being asked for and settles into my bones like frost. My body aches. My mind is coming apart at the edges. The chains dig deeper with every breath and the whispers have not stopped since I got here.

Maybe they're right. Maybe this is what I was for. A weapon. A vessel. Something to be used and then put down.

I close my eyes. Or they were already closed. I can't tell the difference anymore.

The dark takes me without comment. It doesn't judge. It doesn't ask for anything.

I let myself sink.

Deeper.

Deeper than that.

Until.

Warmth.

It reaches my face first. Then my hands. Then my chest. Like sunlight coming through cloud, impossible in this place and there anyway.

I try to open my eyes and they are very heavy. The warmth stays. With it comes light. Soft and gold, flickering at the edges of my vision.

A shape forms. Blurred, then less so.

A woman is standing in front of me.

Her hair falls in waves, dark and familiar. Her eyes are warm brown, the kind that fold at the corners when she smiles. She is wearing a simple dress, the kind I remember from photographs, and she looks older than the photographs. Not old. Just as though time had passed and had been gentle about it.

My breath catches.

No.

She smiles. That smile. The one I had assumed was gone, buried under a decade of getting through things.

"Look at you,"

she says. Her voice is exactly as I remember it.

"All grown up and still such a crybaby."

Something breaks in my chest.

"Mom?"

My voice goes. The tears come before I have any say in it, hot and continuous, and my whole body starts shaking. The chains are still there. They are still cutting into my wrists.

I do not care about the chains.

"Mom, I—"

I cannot get the rest of it out. The sobs come up through me raw, and every wall I have built since I was five years old comes down at the same time.

I am five years old. Small and frightened and completely alone in a house that had stopped being safe.

She steps closer. Her hand comes out and I cannot feel it, not really, but the warmth intensifies where it should be.

"Shh. It's alright, sweetheart. I'm here."

"You can't be—"

The words choke out between sobs.

"You died. You left. I was alone and Dad—"

"I know."

Her voice cracks very slightly on it.

"I know what you went through. And I am so sorry I wasn't able to protect you from it."

"I tried to be strong."

I am gasping now.

"I tried so hard. And I kept failing. I keep losing people. I keep—"

"Yuu."

She says my name with something in it that hurts more than the chains do.

"Look at me."

I force my eyes open through the blur.

"You didn't fail. You survived. And you found people who love you. Kaelra. Talen. You built something worth fighting for out of nothing at all."

"They took me. They're going to use me to—"

"Then don't let them."

Her smile does not move.

"You're my son. You're stronger than you have any idea about. Stronger than they can account for."

"I'm scared."

The admission comes out of me before I can stop it.

"I'm scared I'll hurt them. That I'll turn into whatever it is they want."

"You won't."

She leans closer. Her eyes are fierce.

"Because you already know what matters and it isn't power and it isn't destiny. It's the people you love and the life you picked. That is the whole of it."

I am still crying. Something shifts anyway. The despair loosens by a fraction.

"I'm so proud of you,"

she says.

"You have been through more than anyone should and you are still here. Still fighting. Still caring about people. That isn't weakness, sweetheart. That is the other thing."

"I miss you."

It comes out barely audible.

"I miss you so much."

"I know. And I am always with you. In every choice you make. Every person you protect. Every time you decide not to stop."

Her smile widens.

"And right now there are people waiting for you."

Kaelra's face comes up in my mind. The determination in it. The way she does not let go of things.

Talen's grin. His terrible jokes. The fact that he came back for me when he could barely stand.

"They're looking for you,"

she says.

"Don't make them wait longer than you have to."

The warmth starts to go. Panic comes up in me fast.

"Wait. Don't. Please—"

"I'm not going anywhere."

Her voice is further away and no less warm.

"I am always with you. Now go. Fight. Live. Make me proud."

"I will."

It comes out fierce.

"I promise."

The light dims. Her shape blurs. The smile is the last part to go.

And then she is gone.

The dark comes back and it is not the same dark.

The chains still hold me. The whispers are still going. Something inside has moved.

I am not giving up.

Not on Kaelra. Not on Talen. Not on the life I put together out of nothing in a world that never wanted me in it.

They want to use me. They want to break me first.

They can try.

I close my fists and the chains bite deeper and the pain is useful. It tells me where I am. It tells me I am still in a body that can feel things.

Still here.

"I'm coming back,"

I say into the dark.

"Wait for me."

And for the first time since they took me, I believe it.

***

The air changed before the ruins came into view.

Kaelra felt it first. Not a smell and not a sound. Pressure. A tightening under the ribs, as though the world had taken a breath and had not let it out again.

The eastern hills were quiet. Even the wind seemed reluctant to come across the broken ground.

Behind her, armored boots moved carefully over loose gravel. Talen walked at her side with his eyes on the treeline. The squad spread into formation without needing to be told. Nobody spoke. The weight of what had happened to Solard was still on all of them like ash they had not managed to wash off.

The temple came up out of the earth gradually. Towering white stone once. Now a collapsed spine of pillars and fractured arches, moss in the cracks, vines through the old carvings.

Time had tried to remove the place and had not finished the job.

Kaelra slowed.

"You feel it,"

Talen murmured.

She nodded.

Mana. Dense and layered. Not chaotic. Coiled.

The cult had been here recently.

They advanced between fallen columns. The air got heavier the further in they went. At the centre was what had been a sanctum. The roof was gone. The circular floor had survived.

There were symbols carved into it.

Fresh ones.

Talen crouched and brushed dirt off one of the markings. His jaw tightened.

"These aren't summoning sigils."

Kaelra studied them. The lines curved inward, spiraling toward a hollow at the centre.

They were not calling something down.

They were preparing for something to come up.

A tremor went through the ground. The squad shifted.

Then the world flickered.

It was subtle at first. The light dimmed for half a heartbeat and returned. A soldier near the back muttered something.

Kaelra turned.

The temple was gone.

They were standing in Solard's main square.

Smoke coming off broken rooftops. The fountain shattered. The smell of burning wood in her throat.

Her heart went hard against her ribs.

"No,"

she whispered.

Talen took her arm.

"This isn't real."

Across the square, figures moved through the haze. Citizens. Guardians. Bodies.

A child was crying somewhere she could not see.

She knew this square. She knew every stone of it. And something in it was wrong.

The shadows fell in the wrong direction.

The smoke did not move with the wind.

She made herself breathe.

"It's reading us."

Talen's gaze sharpened.

"Not projecting. Reflecting."

They had been expected. The illusion was not generic.

It had been built out of memory.

A figure came forward through the smoke.

Veyren.

He stood at the centre of the square exactly as he had that night. Calm. Silent. Watching.

Then another figure appeared opposite him.

Seraphis. Radiant armor, blade drawn, holy light spilling across the broken stone.

Kaelra's stomach turned.

She remembered it too clearly to watch it comfortably.

The illusion replayed the moment in complete silence.

Seraphis lunged. His blade went through the air with absolute authority. The force behind it should have split something.

It passed through Veyren without touching him.

Again.

And again.

Every strike flawless. Every strike missing.

Veyren did not move and did not defend himself. He simply existed somewhere the blade was not.

Kaelra felt the same cold thing she had felt on the night.

What had she actually watched that day.

Justice.

Or fear.

The illusion shifted.

Now Yuu was standing where Veyren had been.

Alone.

Seraphis faced him. The blade came up.

Talen swore under his breath.

"It's baiting us."

Kaelra could not look away.

Seraphis's voice went across the square.

"The boy is no concern of yours."

The words were not shouted. They were measured, and they were final.

Yuu did not answer.

The blade came down.

Kaelra stepped forward before she had decided to.

The square shattered.

Stone dissolved into dust. The smoke vanished. The ruins came back.

Several soldiers staggered. One went to his knees with both hands against his head.

"It's still active,"

Talen said.

"Stay grounded. Don't react to it."

Kaelra forced her breathing steady.

The illusion had not shown them lies. It had shown them fear.

Hers, that Seraphis would put a blade through Yuu the way he had tried to put one through Veyren.

Talen's, that they were already too late.

The cult was not trying to confuse them.

It was testing where they cracked.

A laugh came through the sanctum. Not loud. Not mocking.

Satisfied.

Kaelra's hand tightened on her daggers.

"Show yourself."

A figure stepped out from behind a collapsed pillar. Deep crimson robes. Face obscured.

"You came quickly,"

the cultist said.

"Faster than predicted."

Talen's eyes narrowed.

"You were expecting us."

"Of course."

He gestured to the sigils on the floor.

"You are not the only people capable of observing a pattern."

Mana pulsed faintly from the hollow at the centre.

"Where is he,"

Kaelra said.

The cultist tilted his head.

"You ask as though he can be retrieved."

Rage went up her throat and she held it down.

"You're stalling,"

Talen said.

"Yes,"

the cultist said, evenly.

"We are."

The ground trembled again. Something beneath them answered it.

The cultist kept talking, in the tone of someone making conversation at a table.

"A thousand years ago mankind slaughtered what it did not understand. Not for survival. Out of fear. The world shifted that day. Balance was not restored afterward. It was scarred over."

Kaelra did not lower her blade.

"You intend to bring them back."

"We intend to correct a mistake."

"Using Yuu."

A pause. The gaze behind the hood sharpened.

"He is compatible."

Talen's jaw tightened.

"You'll destroy the continent."

"If the foundation has to crack for the truth to come up, that is acceptable."

The sigils flared.

The illusion came back and this time it was not Solard.

It was the continent.

Mountains splitting along their length. Seas pulling back from the coast. Cities going under light.