1. Agnes
With a crack, the world shatters—not the literal stones underfoot, but something deeper. A split through the heart of my reality. I feel it first in my chest, a fissure of soul.
The night is ink-thick and heavy with silence. Around me, cloaked figures gather. Their faces are hidden, but their horns gleam like bone. The torches in their hands flicker against the mist, casting phantoms that dance and leer. Smoke curls in a language of its own.
They believe this is an end.
But I know better.
This is only the beginning.
The stars above are witnesses—no, accomplices—scattered across the sky like shards from some great celestial mirror.
I kneel, palms pressed to the damp earth, and whisper my final devotion. “Dagon,” I breathe, and the name carries power. It trembles against the stones.
He steps from the dark like he’s always belonged there—an outline first, then flesh and shadow twined. Dagon, my tether and undoing. A god cloaked in wrath and sorrow.
His voice is a storm swallowed in gravel. “Say the word and I will take you from this place.”
I rise to my feet. We’re so close our breath becomes shared air. His presence curls around me, ancient and hungry, but softened at the edges when he speaks.
“Do not save me,” I whisper, my fingers brushing his. “Not this time.”
“You ask too much,” he growls. “They will chase us beyond the veil, Agnes. You know what they fear—what we are.”
“Let them chase,” I say. “Let them burn their feet on the path we carved. But it is not for me to be spared.”
Dagon’s expression twists into something pained, and for once, mortal. “You would make me live without you again?”
“I would make you find me,” I whisper. “In another life. Another time.”
He trembles like a fault line about to break. “I will burn this world to ash before I forget you.”
Our kiss is not sweet. It’s carved from centuries, stitched from salt and shadow. It tastes like sorrow and fury, but also something achingly tender. The world pauses for that kiss.
Then the circle closes.
And then, I wake.
I gasp like I’ve surfaced from the bottom of the ocean.
The bed beneath me is too soft. The air is too still. The silence is wrong. I jolt upright, heart thrashing, as if the fire’s still burning beneath my skin.
The dream—vision—memory—whatever it is, it clings like salt on my tongue. The kiss, the flames, the promise.
I blink up at the ceiling—smooth plaster, unfamiliar, high and sloped like the bones of an old cathedral. A faded mural of stars arcs across it. Not the cracked ceiling of my room at Mundi.
But I remember now.
Dagon didn’t say where exactly we were, only that it was safe. I’m ninety percent sure that were at Pemberly.
But nothing feels safe when your past lives are haunting you like a ghost pressing warm lips to yours.
The sheets are twisted around my legs. I press a hand to my chest, but it doesn’t steady anything. The ache is still there. The memory of Agnes’s final breath still wrapped around my lungs.
He’s already watching.
Of course he is.
Dagon sits in the armchair by the fire, shirtless, shadows curling around his spine like they belong there. His eyes—ancient, knowing, mine—glow faintly in the low light.
He doesn’t ask what I saw.
He already knows.
I wrap the blanket tighter around my body, like I’m suddenly cold. “It was her again.”
He hums softly. “It’s always her.”
“She burned for you,” I whisper. “She chose to burn.”
His jaw clenches, a flicker of guilt crossing his face. “She thought it would break the cycle.”
“And did it?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.
I rub my hands over my arms, trying to ground myself in this version of reality. “How long was I under?”
“A few hours. You said my name before you went still.”
“Dagon?”
He nods once.
Not Zig. Not the boy I used to know.
He’s real now. Made of flesh and storm and the pieces I remember too well.
I glance toward the window. The curtains are drawn, but faint light bleeds through them. Not sunlight. Moonlight. Blue and silver.
Cold.
“I felt everything,” I say. “Like I was there. Like I was her.”
“You were her.” His voice is too calm. “You still are.”
“Then why do I feel like I’m betraying myself?”
He rises slowly, graceful as the tide, and crosses the room. When he kneels in front of me, I swear I feel the ocean in his skin—salt, sorrow, power coiled and waiting.
“You’re not betraying anyone,” he says. “You’re remembering. That’s different.”
My hands tremble. He takes them gently, fingers rough and reverent.
“Every lifetime,” he murmurs, “you come back to me.”
“Every lifetime,” I whisper back, “I die for you.”
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t apologize. Doesn’t lie.
“That’s what terrifies me the most,” I say. “That I’ll do it again.”
Dagon lifts one of my hands to his lips. The kiss is soft. Not possessive. Not demanding. Just a promise: I’m still here.
“And if this time,” he says carefully, “we rewrite the ending?”
I look at him. The man. The god. The monster.
The only constant in every version of me.
“I don’t know if we’re capable of endings that don’t burn.”
Dagon’s smile is slow, sad, and strangely beautiful. “Then let’s learn to rise from the ash together.”
I want to believe him.
But I’m still tasting smoke.
2. Dagon
She murmurs my name in her sleep. Not Zig’s.
Mine.
And it wrecks me.
I should be used to it by now. Watching her remember. Watching her break.
But I never get used to this part.
The moment when she opens her eyes and forgets, just for a second, who she is. Who I am.
What we’ve done.
What we’ve lost.
I sit in the dark, watching the fire fight to stay lit in the hearth. It reminds me of her—fragile in appearance, but every flicker laced with fury.
She’s trembling beneath the blanket, murmuring the words of another lifetime. Agnes, Ishara, Scarlet—no name can hold all the versions of her.
And still, she keeps finding her way back to me.
Even when it kills her.
Especially when it kills her.
I grip the arm of the chair until the wood groans under my hand. I could snap it in half. I could snap this whole house in half, brick by brick, stone by stone, just to keep her from slipping into the fire again.
But she always chooses the flame.
Her breathing stutters, and I move before I even think.
By the time I’m kneeling beside the bed, she’s already awake.
Eyes wide. Haunted.
Beautiful.
She looks at me like I’m both sanctuary and curse. She’s not wrong.
I know she sees it now—the full truth. That the dream wasn’t fiction. That she didn’t just imagine a life where she kissed me goodbye and walked willingly into death.
That it was real.
And that I let it happen.
She says my name like it’s a question. Like she still doesn’t know if I’m the monster or the man.
Truth is… I’m both.
But not to her. Never to her.
To her, I’ve only ever wanted to be a home.
She says she saw Agnes again. She doesn’t realize what it costs me, hearing her say it like she’s someone else. As if I didn’t kneel at that pyre and scream her name into the void. As if her death didn’t carve a hole in my existence that even eternity couldn’t fill.
She doesn’t remember that part yet.
She doesn’t remember how I begged her not to leave me.
I want to touch her—drag my hand along the curve of her neck, hold her until the tremors fade—but I don’t.
Not yet.
Not until she asks.
Because this version of her deserves consent in every form.
“Every lifetime,” she whispers, “I die for you.”
And I want to deny it. Gods, I want to scream and rage and beg her not to say it like it’s a prophecy.
But it is.
She’s always the one who chooses the fire. And I’m always the one who arrives too late to stop it.
Not this time.
I have my body back. My strength. My mind. My name.
I will not let this be another lifetime where I lose her.
So I say the only thing I can:
“Then let’s learn to rise from the ash together.”
She doesn’t believe me yet.
But she will.
Even if it takes breaking the sky to prove it.
3. Zig
The echoes of my footsteps down the sterile, white corridor sound like a funeral march. Each one taps out a rhythm of dread I can’t silence.
The terror crawling through my mind carries a single question—Am I still his?
The walls press in with a kind of cold that feels too deliberate—like they know what I’ve been, what I might still be. A single whitewashed door waits at the end, quiet and unassuming. But it hums with unspoken secrets.
I’m not sure I want to remember.
Thoughts fracture like shattered glass, sharp slivers of memory catching the light and slicing as they turn. Every step forward drags chains of darkness through my mind. I can still feel him. Dagon.
Even now.
His touch lingers in the corners of my thoughts, like fingerprints I can’t scrub clean.
Scarlet’s face flashes behind my eyes—those eyes that saw me, even when I couldn’t. Eyes that still haunt me. Did she know it wasn’t always me?
Sometimes I hear my voice, speaking things I never meant.
A dark passenger, guiding my hands. Steering my will.
I raise my hand—shaking—and knock.
The door opens before my knuckles connect again.
Joe.
His face stops me cold. Lines I don’t remember etch his skin, years carved into him like someone took a blade to his life and kept slicing. The silver in his hair shines like truth in the harsh hallway light.
He looks ten years older.
Gods. How long was I gone?
“Joe,” I manage. My voice is a ghost in my own throat.
His eyes move over me—dark, deep, and wary. Not with suspicion, not yet. With grief. With hope he doesn’t trust.
And then I feel it. His magic.
Subtle. Controlled. A veil in the air around me, like he’s testing for fractures in my soul.
“It’s me,” I say quickly, the words trembling with a fear I don’t let reach my face. “It’s really me.”
He doesn’t move.
“I want to believe you,” Joe says. His voice is quiet steel. “But I can’t afford to be wrong.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small square of chocolate.
Witch’s chocolate.
It looks harmless—just a bite. Dark. Bitter. Deadly.
Laced with enough poison to burn a spirit from its shell.
I stare at it, motionless. That tiny square weighs more than a mountain.
If he’s wrong, it’ll kill me.
If he’s right, it’ll prove I’m finally free.
I don’t know which I’m hoping for.
My fingers close around the chocolate. It’s cold in my palm.
And suddenly, I’m not sure.
Not sure if some trace of him—of Dagon—still claws at my mind. If he left pieces behind, waiting for their chance to bloom again.
A voice slithers up from the depths of my thoughts. Not loud. Not cruel. Just... present.
Witches always think their poison makes them safe.
It’s my voice. But not mine.
I meet Joe’s gaze, force my expression steady.
And I eat it.
The bitterness explodes on my tongue. It tastes like metal and regret.
Like magic trying to decide if I’m still something that needs killing.
“Satisfied?” I ask, my words thick with defiance—and chocolate.
Joe watches me for a beat that stretches too long.
Then he exhales and steps forward, arms open. His hug hits me like a punch to the chest.
Gods.
Joe hugs me like I’m not a danger. Like I’m someone worth saving.
Like I’m still his Zig.
When he learns everything—when he knows what I’ve done, what’s still inside me—he might never want to touch me again.
So I hold him back. Tight.
For just a second longer.
He pulls away slowly and opens the door wider. “Come in, Zig,” he says, voice thick with something that sounds like hope.
I step over the threshold like it might burn me.
Because maybe it should.
Inside is quiet. Dim. Familiar in the way old nightmares are.
I don’t know what waits beyond this room. What I’ll learn. Who I’ll trust.
But I know one thing:
I didn’t die.
And sometimes, I wish I had.
4. Marcus
Something shifts.
It’s not magic exactly—not the kind you cast. It’s older. Heavier. It settles behind my ribcage like a skipped heartbeat, like the breath before a scream.
I drop the old book in my hands.
The pages thump against the table, scattering half-burned candles and the chalk I’d been using for binding runes.
Something’s wrong.
Or maybe… something’s changed.
Mundi is quiet this time of night. Too quiet. I should be meditating, studying, researching anything that might help me find her.
Scarlet.
Gods, it’s been months. And still, I wake up from dreams where she’s just around the corner, waiting. I reach for her—always just a second too late.
And Zig.
My brother. My stupid, impulsive, reckless brother. The one who left me with silence and guilt and more questions than I can name.
I haven’t heard from him. Not really. A few leads that led nowhere. Azeltha says he’s gone, but that doesn’t mean what she thinks it does. Zig’s too stubborn to die.
And Scarlet… she wouldn’t just disappear. Not unless she thought she had to.
Not unless someone made her.
Footsteps echo down the hall. Slow. Purposeful. Familiar.
I don’t need to turn around to know it’s Azeltha.
I say nothing until she’s standing in the doorway.
She doesn’t speak either. Just leans on her cane, watching me with that unreadable expression she’s perfected over a century of dealing with idiots like me.
Finally, I break. “You’re here late.”
“I never left,” she replies. “Time just stopped meaning anything to you.”
“Don’t start with the riddles.”
Azeltha steps into the room, slow and deliberate. The shadows bend around her, respectful. “I’ve come to tell you what you’ve been begging to know.”
I freeze.
“Scarlet?”
She nods once.
I push back from the table so fast my chair skitters. “Where is she? Is she alive?”
“She’s alive.”
The relief hits me like a punch.
But it doesn’t last.
Azeltha’s eyes soften, and that’s worse than anything she could say.
“She’s with Dagon,” she says.
The silence between us grows teeth.
“No,” I say automatically. “No. That’s not possible. He—he was in Zig. You said he was in Zig’s body. She wouldn’t—”
“She chose him.” Azeltha’s voice is soft. Not unkind. “Willingly.”
My knees go weak. I brace myself against the edge of the table, trying to find air. “No. You don’t understand. He’s—he’s not himself. He’s a god. A monster. He manipulated her—he used her.”
“I watched her walk into the desert and take his hand,” Azeltha says gently. “I watched her stay.”
The words gut me.
Scarlet. My Scarlet.
She left with him.
And Zig—Zig didn’t fight her.
“Where was he?” I ask, my voice cracking. “Where the hell was Zig while this was happening?”
Azeltha doesn’t answer right away.
And then she says, “Zig’s back.”
I look up so fast it hurts my neck. “What?”
“He’s passed the test.”
My head spins. “So he’s alive. Dagon’s gone from him?”
She nods. “It appears so.”
I sink back into the chair. My mind won’t stop spinning.
Zig is back.
Scarlet is gone.
She chose Dagon.
And I didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye.
Azeltha reaches into her satchel and slides a piece of parchment across the table. “This is where they were last seen. The warding is strong. You won’t be able to find her unless she wants to be found.”
I stare at the paper.
Then I shove it aside. “I don’t care what she wants.”
Azeltha raises an eyebrow.
“I’m going after her,” I say. “Even if I have to burn half the realm to do it.”
Azeltha sighs. “You sound like him.”
I don’t ask who she means.
I already know.
5. Scarlet
Something shifts.
It’s not magic exactly—not the kind you cast. It’s older. Heavier. It settles behind my ribcage like a skipped heartbeat, like the breath before a scream.
I drop the old book in my hands.
The pages thump against the table, scattering half-burned candles and the chalk I’d been using for binding runes.
Something’s wrong.
Or maybe… something’s changed.
Mundi is quiet this time of night. Too quiet. I should be meditating, studying, researching anything that might help me find her.
Scarlet.
Gods, it’s been months. And still, I wake up from dreams where she’s just around the corner, waiting. I reach for her—always just a second too late.
And Zig.
My brother. My stupid, impulsive, reckless brother. The one who left me with silence and guilt and more questions than I can name.
I haven’t heard from him. Not really. A few leads that led nowhere. Azeltha says he’s gone, but that doesn’t mean what she thinks it does. Zig’s too stubborn to die.
And Scarlet… she wouldn’t just disappear. Not unless she thought she had to.
Not unless someone made her.
Footsteps echo down the hall. I don’t need to turn around to know it’s Azeltha.
