A S H R I E L

The moment her body goes slack, something in me breaks loose. I don’t think, I move. One second she’s falling, the next she’s in my arms, limp, too cold, light still bleeding through the torn glove like she’s burning from the inside out.

Her head drops against my chest. I feel the heat of her cheek for half a heartbeat before it’s swallowed by that freezing pulse tearing through her ribs. My own breath punches out of me. The “BOUND” echo is still ricocheting in my skull, scraping along bone, hooking into places it has no right to touch.

“Elle. Elowen! look at me.” Nothing. Her lashes flutter, barely. Her body jerks once like she’s fighting something inside herself and losing.

The ballroom around us is chaotic, but it feels muffled, far away. All I can hear is her breathing, too shallow, too fast and the Rift’s hum twisting through it. I shift my grip, pulling her closer, trying to keep her upright, trying to keep her here.

Don’t take her. Not like this. Not when I can still feel her heartbeat stumbling under my hand. The world around us bends like someone’s grabbed the edges and pulled. The chandeliers overhead groan, metal straining, light flickering in strange, uneven pulses that don’t match anything human-made. Cracks zigzag across the ceiling, quick and sharp, like lightning that forgot how to be in the sky.

Students scream. Some run, some freeze, some try to drag their friends toward the doors but slip on the frost spreading under their shoes. Glass breaks somewhere behind me. A mask skitters across the floor, spinning until it taps my boot.

The Hollowed move differently now. Before, they drifted, silent, hungry shadows drawn to the Seal’s noise. Now they’re crawling back toward us, toward her, like gravity’s reversed and she’s the only thing they understand. Their faces tilt toward her light. Their bodies bow. It isn’t worship. It’s fear wearing the shape of devotion.

And the cracks in the mirrors. They flex. Something presses from the other side, too large for the space it’s trying to squeeze through. I tighten my hold. My wings twitch, half-formed and painfully real. Every instinct screams the same thing:

This room is about to break. Her breath stutters against my coat, and then she jerks, sucking in air like she’s been drowning. Her eyes snap open, wide, unfocused, sharp with pain. For a second she doesn’t see me. She sees… nothing. Or maybe too much at once.

“Elle.. easy. You’re safe.”  It’s a lie and we both know it. The sigil under her skin flares again, bright enough to burn the edges of my vision. She tries to push away from me, maybe to stand, maybe to run. I don’t know but the motion sends another blast of frost ripping out from her palm.

It slams into my chest. Hard. If I weren’t braced, it would’ve thrown me back. As it is, the cold bites through coat, through skin, through bone. I grit my teeth and hold on.

“Don’t.. don’t touch me,” she gasps, terrified of herself, and that hits worse than the frost.

“I’m not letting go,” I tell her, low and rough. “You’re not hurting me.” But she is. Not the way she thinks,  in the way that makes my heart feel like it’s being peeled open from the inside.

“ELLE!”

Luke’s voice cuts through everything like a blade. I turn just in time to see him fighting his way across the marble, slipping on the frost but refusing to stop. His jacket is ripped, hair a mess, face stripped of color, but he’s still coming.

“Don’t,” I snap, because I already feel the sigil tightening, reacting to him, to his heat, to the pull he has on her without even touching her. He doesn’t listen. Of course he doesn’t. He takes one more step. The frost rears up like a living thing. It hits him in the chest and throws him backward. Hard.

He crashes into a table, sending glassware shattering. Students scream and scatter away from him. He forces himself upright, gripping the table like he needs help remembering how to stand, eyes locked on Elle with this awful, cracked-open look.

“Elle,” he says again, but it’s not a shout anymore. It’s a plea.  A broken one. His eyes flick to me holding her, her hands fisted in my coat, her body pressed against mine because she can’t stay on her feet and something in him collapses. The room doesn’t freeze this time. He does.

I can feel the Guardian Oath now, deep under my ribs, like someone’s taken a white-hot wire and threaded it through my spine. It reacts to her fear, her power, the way she’s struggling just to stay conscious. Every pulse of the sigil tugs at me, yanking something ancient and unwilling to the surface.

My wings flicker, half in, half out like my body can’t decide which form it trusts. The feathers crackle with frost. The shadows underneath them twitch like they want to separate completely.

“Stay with me,” I breathe, pushing her hair back from her face. She’s shaking. I’m shaking. I don’t know whose heartbeat is stuttering harder.

“Ash… I can’t..” Her voice splinters. She tries to lift her hand again, but the sigil blazes so bright she cries out. The “BOUND” command hits again. This time it feels like a chain cinched tight around both our throats.

She gasps. I choke. The Hollowed shudder and drop flat against the ice. I’m losing her.
I’m losing her right here, in my arms, in front of him, in front of everyone. And there’s only one thing left that might anchor her. One thing I swore I wouldn’t take from her. But vows don’t matter if she dies.

Her body jerks again, hard enough that I almost lose my grip. The sigil pulses like a second heartbeat, wild and uneven, and I feel the surge of it slamming straight into me. My vision whites out. I’m not supposed to take this much of her power, Guardians aren’t built for this kind of proximity to the Seal. Not anymore.

“Ash..” She tries to say my name but it cracks apart, thin and panicked. Tears spill hot down her cheeks only to freeze halfway. Her breath keeps stuttering, slipping out in sharp, broken sounds, and I know she’s seconds away from losing control completely.

And once she does, the Rift won’t give her back. I cup her jaw with my hand, steadying her face, steadying her eyes, steadying anything. She flinches at first, terrified of what her power will do to me, but I don’t let her pull away.

“Elle. Look at me.”  She does. Barely. But it’s enough. The Oath tightens, pulling me toward her like gravity. Like fate. Like punishment. I stop fighting it.

I lean in and kiss her. It’s not soft. It’s not gentle. It’s a collision. Heat against ice, panic against desperation. Her breath hits mine in a sharp, broken gasp, and for a second she goes rigid in my arms, every muscle locked.

Then the sigil flares, then drops. The blast of magic that was about to rip through her chest folds inward instead, slamming into me like a wave. I stagger, almost lose my footing, but I don’t break the kiss. I can’t. Her fingers curl into my coat, grabbing for something solid, and I swear I feel her choose me in that moment, not with words, but with instinct.

The frost stops expanding. The Rift’s scream warps, stutters. The Hollowed recoil like they’ve been burned. And Elowen breathes. For the first time since this began, she really breathes.

When I finally pull back, she sways forward like her body hasn’t realized the kiss ended. Her forehead presses against mine for half a second, her breath shaking, her lips parted like she’s still trying to find air. Her eyes open slow, dazed, pupils huge.

“Ash…” It’s barely a sound. More like a thought she didn’t mean to say aloud. I keep one arm tight around her waist because her knees aren’t doing their job, and honestly, mine aren’t either. My wings are out, fully out whether I meant to show them or not. The marble under my boots is cracked. My coat is dusted in frost that isn’t mine.

But she’s here. She’s awake. She’s not slipping away. The sigil has dimmed to a faint glow. Not gone but calmer. Steady. Anchored. And every part of me is shaking from the cost of holding her through it. The room is silent in that awful, loaded way that says a hundred people just watched something they were never meant to see.

And Luke. Luke is standing exactly where the frost threw him. He hasn’t gotten back up. His eyes are fixed on her mouth. On my hand still on her jaw. On her fingers curled in my coat. He looks like he’s been hollowed out from the inside. Not like the creatures around us. Worse, somehow, because he’s still human enough to feel every shard of it.

“Elle?” he says, but her name sounds… different now. Like he doesn’t recognize who he’s talking to. Who she’s leaning on. Who she just kissed in front of him. Students whisper behind him. Someone gasps. Someone else swears under their breath.

Elle turns her head toward him, slow, drained, blinking like the world hasn’t settled back into focus yet. She tries to take a step forward, but her legs give, and I steady her before she can fall again.

That’s the moment Luke’s face breaks completely.  He sees it. All of it. And he knows. He’s already lost her, even if she hasn’t realized it yet.

The floor trembles beneath us, once, twice, enough to knock a chandelier loose from its chain. It crashes down in a spray of crystal and sparks, making students scream and scatter all over again. The Rift didn’t calm. It only paused.

A new crack rips across the far wall, jagged and deep, light leaking out from inside it like the world has a pulse and it’s rupturing. Wind blasts through the ballroom, cold, sharp, metallic and every Hollowed in the room drops flat to the floor, their bodies trembling.

Something moves inside the crack. Not a person. Not a Hollowed. Something bigger. Something that bends the air around it like gravity is wrong there.

Elle clutches my coat. “Ash… what is that?” I pull her behind me, wings spreading wide, instinct overriding everything else.

“I don’t know,” I say, voice low, raw. “But it’s coming through.” The crack widens. The lights explode. The Rift screams. And the shadow steps forward.