Silence.
It wasn't empty, it was heavy, pressing down like gravity shifted in the room. No one moved. No one dared speak. Kaine was still on the floor, his hands limp in his lap, shoulders sagging like someone had cut the strings that once kept him dangerous. Mae stood between him and the others, her back turned, shoulders squared, chest rising and falling in steady breaths. She looked calm.But nothing felt calm. Riven blinked slowly, stepping forward with careful hesitation, like a man approaching a god who hadn't yet decided if she was merciful. "Mae?" She turned. Her eyes were still glowing faintly blue, but it was fading,settling back into her human skin.
Her voice came soft, but layered in something powerful. "He had to be rewired. I didn't choose to, I was chosen to." Lucien stood slowly from where he'd been crouched in case of a fight. "That wasn't just power," he murmured, voice half breath. "That was law. You changed the laws of his spirit." Sethis crossed his arms, nodding in quiet agreement. "That's not control. That's origin-magic. Genesis-tier." Mae's eyes dropped to the floor briefly, her body beginning to tremble, not from fear, but from exhaustion. It hit her like a delayed wave. Ashar caught her just before her knees gave out.
She didn't protest, simply leaned into him with a tired sigh, the glow from her skin now gone completely. He held her firmly, but carefully, like she might still vanish. Riven stepped closer on the other side. "Are you okay?" he asked. "I'm not sure," Mae whispered. No one asked Kaine anything. He remained where he'd fallen, head bowed, silently processing what had just become his new reality. Sethis finally moved toward him, nudging him upright with a boot. "Get up," he said. "You can walk. You're still alive. That's more mercy than you deserve." Kaine stood, slower than usual, face blank. "I can't feel it anymore," he said quietly. "The part that, wanted to win. The part that thought she was a threat." Mae didn't look at him. She didn't have to.
She simply said, "You don't get to have that part anymore." Lucien stepped between them, shielding her now. "You don't get to be near her anymore either." Ashar shifted Mae against his side. "He's not allowed in her gravity. Not unless she says so."
"I won't," Mae said firmly. "Not again." Riven exhaled hard, half in disbelief. "You rewrote him," he said again, mostly to himself. "Like code. Like he was a system glitch."
"No," Ashar said quietly. "She restored him. To what he could have been, before all this." Everyone was quiet again. Even Kaine. Lucien finally broke the stillness with a slow shake of his head.
"We knew she was something powerful. But this? This isn't anomaly. This is design. This is intention." Mae pulled away from Ashar just enough to stand on her own again. Her legs were weak, but her voice wasn't. "I didn't ask for this, but I'm done being afraid of it."
"If I can rewrite Kaine, then maybe I can rewrite everything we've lost." No one disagreed. Not this time. Mae didn't even make it halfway across the room. She was walking toward the couch, slow and unsteady, when her body suddenly seized. Her eyes rolled back, and her knees gave out. "Damnit!" Lucien caught her just as she fell, lowering her to the floor with practiced speed. "Is this how that happens now?"
Ashar and Riven barely moved, their silence sharp, their eyes already knowing. They simply nodded. Lucien swore under his breath and carried her to the couch, his arms tense but careful. "This isn't just a power crash. It's like she's, pulling from too many threads at once."
"She's accessing more than she's ready to hold," Sethis muttered from the corner, watching with wary eyes. It didn't take long this time. Only minutes passed before Mae stirred, lashes fluttering, body tensing like someone waking from a nightmare they couldn't quite grasp. Her chest rose fast, then slow, her gaze unfocused until it landed on them all hovering nearby. Riven was the first to kneel beside her. "Mae? Can you hear me?" She blinked hard. "Yeah, I, what happened?"
Ashar leaned forward, watching her carefully. "Do you remember what you just did?" Mae's eyes narrowed slightly. "What I did?" Lucien exchanged a look with Sethis. Riven's tone was gentler. "The last thing you remember, what was it?" Mae looked up at the ceiling. Her lips parted, then closed. She blinked again, slower this time. "The tracker," she said finally. "I heard Kaine had a tracker. I remember walking outside." She looked around the room, brows furrowed deeper now.
"Wait, why are you all looking at me like that? What happened after?" No one answered right away. She looked at Ashar. Then Riven. Lucien. Her pulse quickened at the tightness in their expressions. "Why do I feel like something happened to me?" Riven gently took her hand. "Because something did."
"You passed out," Lucien said carefully. "You had another surge."
"But more than that," Ashar added. "You,. rewired Kaine. You touched his core. You, changed him." Mae's face went pale. "I don't remember that," she whispered. "I don't remember any of it."
"That's probably for the best," Sethis said from the back, tone uncharacteristically soft. "It looked like it hurt." Ashar leaned forward slightly. "You weren't screaming, but your energy was." Mae curled into herself slightly, her voice a whisper. "So I blacked out, and woke up after all of that." Riven squeezed her hand. "You came back to us. That's what matters."
"No," Mae said, a little stronger. "What matters is, I don't remember. That means I don't know what I'm capable of when I'm like that." Ashar's expression remained unreadable, but something in his jaw tightened. Lucien looked to him. "This is getting worse, not better. We can't let it keep taking her under like this." Sethis nodded. "We need to start training her. Not just to use the power, but to remember what she does with it." Everyone turned to Ashar. But it was Mae who spoke first. "Then let's start tomorrow."
"Before I forget who I am entirely."