I never meant to kill them.
The first one just stopped breathing the moment I looked at him. The second convulsed, eyes burning from the inside out. The third tried to run.
But I caught his hand.
And he screamed until his lungs stopped existing.
Then there was silence.
Too complete. Too loud.
My hands… my cursed hands…
They glowed.
Not with light.
But with stolen essence.
I could feel them inside me—the Rift Hunters. Their memories, sharp and incomplete, churned behind my ribs like hornets in a jar. Rage. Orders. A hunger not their own.
A name whispered over and over again in the recess of their bones.
Mine.
I doubled over, retching nothing. No blood, no bile—just light. A black light. A starless pulse radiating from my core outward through my limbs.
Lyra stumbled back, drawing her blade but not pointing it. Her eyes weren't angry. They were… afraid.
Kael didn't move.
He was waiting. Watching.
Like he'd seen this before.
Only Aeris made a sound—a low, confused whimper. He stepped toward me slowly, as if I might catch fire again.
And I might've.
Because the ground under me was scorched. The stones cracked in a circle. The trees were silent, too afraid to whisper their lies.
I stood up, shaking.
"I didn't mean to," I said.
No one responded.
The corpses of the Rift Hunters—if they could even be called that now—were dissolving. Dust. Ash. Then nothing. No trace they ever existed.
Only their essence remained.
Inside me.
My fingers pulsed with residual power. I could feel them twitch, autonomous, twitching with memory that wasn't mine. Each movement a flicker of someone else's muscle memory. Sword swings. Arcane gestures. Even the curl of a finger to pull a trigger—these didn't belong to me.
And yet they obeyed me now.
"I felt them die," I whispered. "I felt their souls scream as they were... pulled into me."
Lyra dropped her blade. It hit the moss with a muted thud.
Kael exhaled. Just once. A soldier's breath.
"You're evolving," he said.
"Into what?" I snapped.
He didn't answer.
Aeris looked up at me and murmured, "You absorbed their flux. That's... not supposed to be possible."
Lyra recovered her voice. "Unless… unless the Rift isn't just tearing reality apart. Maybe it's... trying to rewrite it through you."
My heart slammed against my ribs.
"No. No, I don't want this. I never asked for this."
"That's the point," Kael said. "Neither did they."
He gestured to the dark spots where the Hunters had fallen. "They were just tools. Made to kill you. And now you carry them. Their memories. Their pain."
"I don't want to carry their pain," I whispered.
"But you do." Kael's voice was low, cold. "That's what evolution means for you. You don't just survive—you inherit. You consume."
He stepped forward. Slowly.
"This is what they fear," he said. "Not your death. But your becoming."
I staggered back. The wind caught on something old—maybe a truth, maybe a lie—and hissed through the trees like laughter.
Lyra picked up her sword.
"We need to move," she said. "Others will have felt this."
"This?" I asked.
She didn't flinch.
"This wasn't a fight," she said. "It was a flare. You just screamed across every thread of the Rift. They'll come now. Not soldiers. Not assassins."
Her eyes glinted.
"Predators."
Kael nodded. "They'll know the Starfall Prince has started waking."
I felt something cold and ancient crawl up my spine.
"Don't call me that," I said.
"But you are," Aeris murmured. "Or at least… you were."
The wind twisted again.
Branches cracked in the distance.
We ran.
Hours passed under shadows and moonlight. I didn't speak. Not once. I was afraid of what my voice might carry.
But in the silence of my skull, I could hear them.
Three voices.
Not loud.
But persistent.
Fragments of dying thoughts. One was reliving a childhood memory. Another cursed a god's name I didn't know. The third just kept screaming—one long, endless scream with no lungs behind it.
I wanted to claw my own ears out.
Instead, I clenched my fists until the glow faded.
And even then…
I still heard them.
By nightfall, we reached a ridge overlooking a valley of dead trees. The forest below us looked burned from the inside out. Not a single trunk stood straight. No birds. No mist. Just dry, coiled remains of something once alive.
"This is where you fought the Pale Choir," Kael said softly.
I blinked. "What?"
He nodded. "In your second life. The one before the frost."
I stared into the valley.
Faint memories stirred.
Not full images—just impressions.
Whispers of fire. The clang of impossible bells. A child's cry split open by silence.
"I don't remember," I admitted.
"You will," Kael said. "The more you evolve... the more comes back."
I turned to him. My voice cracked.
"And what if I don't want to come back?"
He paused.
Then: "Too late."
A long silence.
Then Lyra said something that made the fire in my veins stutter.
"Next time you absorb someone," she said, "try to remember this: You're still you. But barely."
I didn't sleep that night.
But I dreamed.
Not of fire. Or war. Or even thrones.
I dreamed of a mirror.
Cracked.
Bleeding.
And in it, I saw my reflection staring back...
Except he had no eyes.
Just orbs of shifting essence, swirling with stolen memory.