Ariel knelt in the center of the Wisp’s Grove, breath shallow and uneven. The last thing she remembered was the explosion of flame, the sound of her own scream echoing into eternity—and then nothing. Now, the world was still. Too still. The grove’s air hung heavy. Silent.

  She lifted her head slowly. Dew clung to the moss, the soft morning light filtering through leaves that should have been scorched but weren’t. The scent of sap and earth filled her lungs. Not smoke.

  Her palms pressed into the ground that was cool and damp. It was wrong. All of it. The fire had burned everything, she was certain. She had felt it consume her, rage incarnate, a storm she could barely control. But there was no trace left behind. Not even the whisper of ash.

  Ariel’s throat tightened. “It didn’t happen,” she murmured. Then quieter, like a secret: “But I felt it.”

  She stared down at her hands, her fingers trembling against the moss. Her skin was flushed, damp with sweat, but unburned. Her pulse beat against her wrists like something trapped. Every breath scraped the back of her throat.

  The grove swayed faintly in the wind, leaves sighing above her. But to her, it sounded like breathing. Someone else’s breathing.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head hard.

  “It’s over,” she said. “You’re here. You’re safe.”

  The words sounded hollow. Safe from what? The silence pressed closer.

  Her thoughts came in flashes: Tyna’s thin, translucent body burning to light, Holly’s voice calling her name, the fire tearing through illusion and air alike. None of it held still. It played and replayed in fragments, each memory sharper than the one before. She muttered to herself, trying to tether each image.

  “Holly’s real,” she whispered. “I saw her. She saw me.”

  The words felt fragile. The second she said them, they lost weight. She said them again, louder, as though volume could make them true.

  “Holly’s real.” Her voice cracked. The grove didn’t care. Her certainty dissolved as she said it again and again until her throat hurt, until even her own conviction sounded like a lie.

  The forest flickered at the edge of her sight. A tree twisted subtly, bark folding over itself like muscle. The shadow of a face, Tyna’s grin, blinked from the texture of a root.

  Ariel stumbled back, eyes wide. The illusion vanished as soon as she saw it. She forced herself to breathe. In, out. Again. Her heart hammered, and she pressed a trembling hand to her chest to keep it from flying apart.

  “Breathe,” she told herself, the command barely more than a whimper. “You’re fine. It’s gone.”

  But it didn’t feel gone. The memory of flame still licked at the back of her throat. It was in her heartbeat, in her sweat, in the way her fingers ached to close around a staff that wasn’t there.

  Ariel looked down at her hands again. The same hands that had burned through gods and illusions and lies. Ordinary. Human. Just skin and dirt and shaking. No light. No heat. No proof. She flexed them once, twice, as if that might conjure something.

  “Come on,” she whispered. “Just one ember.” Nothing. She tried again. Nothing.

  The quiet where her fire had been was worse than any flame. It was absence, pure and echoing.

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  “Fine,” she muttered. “Good. Maybe that’s better.”

  But she didn’t believe herself.

  The emptiness pressed against her ribs, too vast to be comforting. She wanted to feel it again: the surge, the certainty, the purpose. Instead, she felt small.

  Then her thoughts returned to that voice. The one that had cut through everything else. It wasn’t Tyna. It wasn’t cruel. It had been… certain. Absolute. A word more commandment than sound.

  Burn.

  She mouthed the word again, barely a whisper. The way it had filled her mind, filled her chest. It had felt old. Sacred. Not a voice of rage, but of protection.

  “Whose voice was that?” she asked aloud, but the grove gave her only wind for an answer. The thought chilled her. What if it hadn’t been a stranger’s voice at all? What if it had been hers? Some deeper, buried part of herself she didn’t recognize?

  Lost in thought, she almost missed the faint light shimmering between the trees. Ariel looked up, muscles tense. The Wisp floated toward her, dim and flickering, its movements uneven, like a candle fighting the wind. It should have comforted her, but something about its unsteady rhythm made her uneasy.

  “Wisp,” Ariel called softly, her voice rough. “What did I do?”

  The Wisp’s light pulsed once, then again, faint and slow. Its voice came in a broken hum, words layered over one another like echoes pulled through water: “The mind burns what it fears… you saw… what was shown… the fire remembers.”

  Ariel stood, her body swaying. “Was any of that real?”

  The Wisp dimmed, as though thinking. “Real enough… to wound.”

  Ariel’s stomach twisted. “That’s not an answer.”

  The Wisp flickered weakly. “Truth… bends before oblivion.” Its tone faltered, light trembling as though it might vanish entirely. Ariel reached out instinctively, but her fingers met only air. The Wisp steadied, just barely.

  “Not forever,” it whispered.

  The grove appeared untouched, but Ariel could smell ash faintly in the air. It clung to her as a memory. One tree near her caught her eye, its leaves were tinged red, faint veins glowing with the softest hint of ember light. She stepped closer and brushed her fingers against one leaf. It was warm. Real.

  She sank to her knees beneath it, pressing her forehead to the bark.

  “I don’t know what’s true anymore,” she said softly. “But Holly’s real. I’ll find her again.” She swallowed, her throat thick. “I’ll burn through every lie this world gives me if that’s what it takes.”

  The words trembled out of her like some half-spoken vow. The air seemed to shift. Listening.

  Acknowledging.

  Ariel stood again, wiping her face. The Wisp drifted near, its glow faint but steadying. She turned to it and whispered, “No more illusions. Not from them… not from me.”

  The Wisp halted inches from her face. Its light slowed to a deep, rhythmic pulse. For a long moment, neither moved.

  Then, quietly, the Wisp spoke: “Whoever was in your mind… left something behind.”

  Ariel stiffened. “An illusion?”

  “No,” the Wisp replied. “An imprint.”

  The Wisp’s light pulsed again, faster this time. Then faster still. Its trembling glow brightened, cycling through hues of gold and white. “It feels… familiar. Powerful.”

  Ariel took a step back. “What’s happening?”

  The Wisp’s form began to strobe violently, flashes of violet weaving through its center like lightning through storm clouds. “This energy…” the Wisp whispered, voice trembling with something close to awe. “I know it.”

  The pulsing quickened to an unbearable intensity until, suddenly... it stopped. Silence. A faint streak of purple light glowed through the Wisp’s core, pulsing in tandem with the whites and the golds.

  The Wisp hovered still, voice soft, fragile, and full of reverence.

  “Hlin?”

  “Wha…? Jordan? Where…am I?

  ……

  How long have I been here?....A week?! Augh, my head is killing me. What happened? The last thing I remember is…yelling at you…oh god. Jordan, I…I have to go. I need to get out of here. Nurse? Nurse?! Hello?! I need to leave!”