I wake up to screaming.
It's not the alarm bell. It's not the warning horn. It's the raw, wet sound of panic, the kind that rips right through your ears and punches you in the gut. Before I'm even awake, I'm dressed, the shadow energy coiling around my hands like it's more alive than I am. The curse always wakes up faster.
The village square is a nightmare.
Three void entities—huge, bigger than any I've seen—are just there. Not at the wards, not in the forest. They're in the middle of everything, as if they just punched a hole in the air and stepped through.
Kaela is already moving, a blur of steel, but even she's on the defensive. These things are fast, and they're smart. They're coordinating. Lysara is by the well, hands glowing as she shoves a barrier over a cluster of kids who didn't get out in time.
I don't think. I move.
Shadows stream from my hands, wrapping around the closest one. It writhes, and I feel its hunger. It's not just mindless consumption; it's focused. It's trying to reach me.
"Ren!" Dren's voice cuts through the din. "Don't let it touch you!"
Too late.
It lunges, impossibly fast. Its form hits my hand, and a coldness shoots up my arm. It's not pain. It's a feeling of wrongness, like my bones are trying to rearrange themselves, like my body wants to become something else.
The curse surges to meet it. Suddenly, I'm fighting the entity and myself at the same time. The void corruption wants the curse. It wants to merge.
And God help me, some deep part of me recognizes it. Like family.
"No," I grit out, forcing the shadow energy solid. I twist my will, shaping the shadows into chains, physically hauling the thing away from me. It screams—a thin, tearing sound—and dissolves into ash.
The other two are still active.
Kaela takes a hit meant for a civilian. Her reinforcement magic flares, but claws rake her arm. Blood sprays. She doesn't even slow down. Lysara's barrier cracks, splintering like glass. She's pouring everything into it, but it's failing.
I stop thinking and just pull. I draw on power I didn't even know I had. A wave of shadow explodes from me, slamming both entities off their feet and into the stone walls of the houses.
Everything freezes.
The things reform, damaged but not gone. Kaela is bleeding. Lysara is shaking from exertion. I'm just standing there, a storm of shadows swirling around me, and I can feel every eye in the village.
They've seen me use the curse. They've never seen this.
I don't look human.
Dren is beside me, blade out. "Together. On three."
We hit them. Kaela from the left, Dren from the right. I just unleash everything I have from the center, and Lysara somehow finds the strength to reinforce our attacks, focusing the energy.
The entities are gone.
The square is silent, except for our breathing. That's when I see my reflection in a water barrel.
My eyes are glowing. Not just a little. They're blazing. Shadows are moving under my skin. The darkness wrapped around my hands won't go away.
I look like a monster.
In the healing house, Miren stitches Kaela's arm while Lysara and I just stand there, numb.
"Three entities inside the wards... it shouldn't be possible," Lysara says, her voice quiet, already clicking back into analyst mode. "The defensive grid should have stopped them. Unless—"
"Unless someone let them in," I finish.
"Sera," Kaela hisses through her teeth as Miren pulls a stitch tight. "The infiltrator. She must have sabotaged the wards before we caught her."
"Maybe," Lysara says. "But the timing... it's your birthday, Ren. That's not a coincidence."
The air goes cold. They knew. They timed an attack for my twelfth birthday, a convergence threshold. They were trying to break me.
"The cult," Dren says from the doorway. "They've been tracking you. An attack on a threshold birthday... they hoped it would destabilize your integration."
"Did it work?" I ask. My voice sounds small.
Everyone looks at me.
"It touched me. It tried to merge." I look at my hands. The shadows are still there, faint, but moving. "I don't know if I fought it off."
Miren pulls me over next. She runs her tests, her face grim.
"Your integration has deepened," she says finally. "Significantly. But it's not unstable. It's like the attack just... accelerated things. You're becoming more curse, but you're still in control."
"I don't feel in control," I whisper.
"No one ever does during transformation," she says gently.
They still hold the celebration. Maybe because of the attack. It feels defiant, but it's brittle. People bring food and light candles, but the songs are too loud.
I see how they look at me. The villagers who used to ruffle my hair now avoid my eyes. The kids I used to play with stay on the other side of the square.
I saved them. And I terrified them.
Elder Stoneheart makes a speech. "Ren Amaki has lived with us for twelve years. He has defended this village. Today, he did so again. We celebrate his choice to use his power for protection."
It's a political speech. He's telling them it's okay. That I'm not a threat.
Kaela and Lysara pull me away from the crowd.
Kaela's gift is a blade. It's forged from shadow-steel, dark and cold, and it hums in my hand. "So you can channel your power," she says. "Dren had it commissioned weeks ago. After this morning... it seemed like the right time."
The shadow energy flows into it like it's part of me.
Lysara's gift is a book she made herself. It's full of her notes on void mechanics and stabilization. But tucked between the diagrams are... observations. Notes on watching me grow. Questions about identity.
On the last page, she wrote: For Ren, who will always be Ren, regardless of what form that takes. Identity is not bound by flesh. You are more yourself than you've ever been.
I can't speak. I just look at them.
"We needed you to know," Kaela says, her voice rough. "That we see you. Not what you look like. We see you."
Lysara takes my hand. "The village might be scared. We're not. We're proud of who you're becoming."
On the rooftop, it's quiet. The air is different.
"I was scared this morning," Kaela admits, her voice barely a whisper. "When that thing touched you. I thought... I thought we were going to lose you."
"I was terrified," Lysara says. "I've studied what consumption does. For a second, I thought it had you."
"You didn't lose me," I say.
"But we could have," Kaela snaps, and I see her hand is shaking. "And realizing that... that you can be hurt, that you might be gone... that's not okay."
Lysara turns to me. "We love you. Both of us. Not as friends. We love you."
The words just hang there.
"I love you both, too," I say, and it feels like the truest thing I've ever said.
Kaela reaches out, her hands framing my face. Her eyes are fierce. "Then you need to understand. You are not alone in this. Whatever happens, whatever you become, we are with you."
Lysara takes my other hand. "We're choosing this. We're choosing you."
And then Kaela kisses me.
It's fast, just a press of her lips. Quick and clumsy and... real.
When she pulls back, Lysara is watching us, and then she leans in and kisses me too, just as gentle.
"We're together in this," Lysara says. "All three of us."
We sit there for a long time, hands linked. Below us, the village sleeps. The cult is out there. The void is out there. And I'm changing.
But on the roof, for the first time, I don't feel like a monster. I don't even feel alone.