We didn't stay to watch the ruins breathe.
Rowan had us moving before the echo of my collapse faded, his urgency sharp enough to cut through the questions burning my throat. The night pressed close around us, thick with listening shadows, every step forward feeling like a betrayal of the life I had just lost.
"They'll track the resonance," Rowan said as we moved. "The old marks don't sleep forever."
"Resonance," I repeated. "That's what you call it when the world reacts to me?"
He glanced back once. "That's what it is."
Elara said nothing. Her silence was heavier than any answer. It followed us like a fourth presence, shaped by regret and fear.
By dawn, the land changed.
The trees thinned, their bark pale and twisted, leaves whispering even when the wind was still. The ground dipped and rose unnaturally, as though the earth itself had been reshaped and never quite healed. I felt it immediately—a pressure behind my eyes, a tightening in my chest.
This place remembered.
"Don't touch anything," Elara said. Her voice was barely more than breath.
Too late.
A hum vibrated beneath my boots, subtle but insistent. My heartbeat matched it before I realized what was happening. With each step, the air grew warmer, brighter, as if I were walking toward something that had been waiting for me.
Figures emerged from the mist.
They were not soldiers, not creatures from nightmares. They looked human—wrapped in ash-colored cloaks, faces etched with symbols that glimmered faintly when they moved. Their eyes fixed on me immediately, not with surprise, but with confirmation.
One of them stepped forward.
"So the lie finally failed," she said.
Rowan drew his blade.
"Elara," the woman continued calmly, "you should have run farther."
Elara trembled. "She was a child."
"And now she is a return," the woman replied, gaze never leaving mine. "We felt her the moment the earth broke."
I felt it too—the pull between us, like gravity remembering its shape.
"Who are you?" I asked.
The woman smiled, thin and knowing. "We are the ones who remember what it cost to end her."
Nyxara's name burned behind my eyes.
The ground shuddered. Not violently—intentionally. The symbols carved into the figures' cloaks flared as the land reacted to my rising pulse. Fire curled at my fingertips without heat, without pain.
Rowan swore under his breath. "Ariana—control it."
"I'm not doing anything," I said.
"That," the woman corrected, "is the most dangerous part."
The mist thickened, closing around us, cutting off escape. I could feel the world bending closer, listening for a command I didn't yet know how to give.
I met the woman's gaze.
"You ended her," I said quietly. "Did it work?"
For the first time, her confidence faltered.
"No," she admitted. "It delayed her."
Something inside me smiled.
Because for the first time since the lies broke, I understood the truth clearly.
They weren't afraid of what I could do.
They were afraid of what was coming back.