The god still stood motionless, swallowed by Heathrine’s domain of living shadow, arms of night covering its eyes, ears, and mouth, as if reality itself wished to silence it. But despite the binding hands, the being grinned.

  Its smile did not fade.

  It widened and it waited.

  ...

  Far across the fields, Enoch, a streak of light against the pitch-crimson air, rushed toward the domain's edge. The god’s magic clung to the air like mold, thick and foul. But he did not flinch. He had felt this kind of wrongness once before. And now, it had his daughter. His boots crashed into the dirt, his momentum stopping cold as a figure stumbled into his path.

  Someone… running?

  A girl, much smaller than him, clutching someone in her arms.

  Regna.

  Kassie. Her arms trembled under the weight of Regna’s unconscious body, her own limbs barely holding together. Her eyes were bloodshot, stained from the heat, the fear, and whatever she had seen in the god’s presence. She nearly collapsed when she saw Enoch, panic etched into every line on her face. He caught her by the shoulders.

  “Where is she?” he asked, voice steady but tight.

  “Where’s Rayne?”

  Kassie opened her mouth to speak, but before she could answer, Regna twitched.

  Then again.

  And then her voice, slurred and cracked, like teeth grinding glass:

  “...Rayne... I saw her hands. They were melting into me... she... she smiled and said it was okay.”

  Her fingers curled into Kassie’s shirt.

  “She’s still smiling at me... even when it's my fault...”

  Kassie stiffened.

  “She’s been like this since I pulled her out. She’s- she’s not fully awake, but she keeps talking.”

  Enoch’s body tensed. He looked at Regna more closely now, the strange girl from the first day of school. The one with the eyes like mirrors. The one whose presence that day had filled his gut with a dull, creeping dread. And now that feeling returned, stronger. Regna whimpered, curled inward, as if trying to disappear inside her own body. Then suddenly: her eyes opened.

  Wide. Bloodshot. Unseeing.

  She sobbed.

  “I didn’t mean to bury her with me.”

  Her voice sounded small. Childish. Echoing.

  “I just- she was warm. So warm. I wanted to keep her.”

  Kassie froze. Enoch took a step back, instinctively putting a hand on his axe.

  “I see her... still. Her fingers around my heart. Smiling. Forgiving.”

  Regna’s head lolled back. Her mouth moved slowly, no longer sobbing, but smiling faintly.

  “Do you think... if I prayed for her hard enough... she would come back?”

  “Do you think she’d still love me... if I wasn’t me?”

  Her voice broke into a laugh, then a hiccup, then a sob again. The moon glared down from above, painting them all in a bleeding shade of red. Kassie looked up at Enoch, voice hoarse.

  “She’s breaking,” she said. “I don’t think she knows what’s real anymore.”

  Enoch didn’t speak at first. He couldn’t. Because part of him saw it, not just madness. Something else. Something ancient and wrong moving just behind Regna’s skin, like a shadow mimicking her expressions too late. And still… even in her collapse, even half-destroyed… She whispered Rayne’s name like a prayer.

  “Rayne... Rayne... don’t go yet. I made a place for you. I made a place inside me, stay there. Stay with me forever."

  Enoch narrowed his eyes toward the distant dome, its pulsing crimson glow looming like a second, bleeding sun. The scream of something unnatural echoed far across the fields, followed by a thunderous crack, as if the very air had been torn. He turned toward Kassie, who was still cradling Regna, now eerily quiet in her arms.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “Get her out of here,” Enoch said, voice low and grim.

  Kassie blinked, “Wait wh–what? What do you mean—”

  He reached into the inside pocket of his coat and handed her a glowing, palm-sized sigil stone, warm to the touch.

  “Give this to the woman driving the bus. Her name’s Genova Yule. She’ll understand.”

  Kassie stared at the stone.

  “But what about—”

  Enoch placed a firm hand on her shoulder.

  “I’ll find my daughter.”

  No hesitation. And then, with a burst of wind, he leapt into the air, light flaring off his shoulders, his axe gleaming like a falling star as he launched toward the dome.

  ...

  Back at the bus, Genova had just climbed into the driver's seat, her cigarette still smoldering in her mouth, her eyes flicking over the sluggish console. She turned the ignition.

  Click.

  She turned it again.

  Click.

  She glared at the dashboard like it had personally insulted her.

  "Fucking piece of back-alley Veritas scrap,” she muttered.

  She rolled up her sleeve with a grunt, and then, with a whirring hiss, the flesh of her forearm split open, revealing the seamless curve of metal, gears, and conduits woven with sinew. A mechanical socket extended from her wrist like a key. The kids gasped. Without another word, she slammed her mechanical arm into the console, twisting it slightly. The dashboard flickered, then burst into full light as the engine roared back to life, smoother than it had ever run.

  The bus wasn’t just starting.

  It was syncing.

  “Stay seated,” Genova snapped at the wide-eyed children, flicking ash out the window.

  “We’re moving out in five.”

  But before she could throw the gear into drive, a voice piped up from behind.

  “Wait! Miss- uh- Miss Driver Lady! Wait!”

  Genova let out a long sigh, and turned her head slowly.

  “What now?”

  A girl stood on the seat, pointing out the window.

  “There’s someone! She's coming this way!”

  Genova followed his finger. Across the field, just barely visible through the heat haze and crimson tint of the dome, a silhouette stumbled toward them.

  Kassie.

  Her uniform was torn, her body dragging, her arms still gripping the unconscious Regna as if she weighed nothing. Behind her, shadowy shapes flickered in the distance, slow, shuffling. The air was growing colder. Heavier. Genova narrowed her eyes.

  “Get the door open,” she muttered, slamming her hand against the console again.

  “Looks like we’ve got one last pickup.”

  ...

  Inside the suffocating walls of Heathrine’s shadow domain, the god remained still, its grin unbroken, despite the darkness that coiled around its limbs like a cocoon of judgment. Mikhail held his breath, his white flame dimmed now, wary. Heathrine stood behind the deity, unreadable in the pitch, her shadows twitching like breathless predators waiting for command. They didn’t notice. They couldn’t.

  Far beyond the dome, back in the center of the field scorched by light, blood, and madness, something was moving. The charred remains of the failed resurrection twitched.

  Then cracked.

  The corpse, a burnt, blackened shell of a form that once looked vaguely human, split down its center like a rotting husk. Inside, there was no blood. No bones. Only movement. Something writhed just beneath the surface, slimy, hungry, alive. It gurgled and groaned.

  Then convulsed.

  Suddenly, the husk burst apart in a spray of steaming gore, and flesh poured out, slow at first, then faster, like a living tide of pink sinew and white tissue, dragging itself free from its failed cocoon. It didn’t spread across the ground, it curled inward, feeding itself into itself, coiling and knotting like butchered muscle kneading its own rebirth.

  There was no blood.

  Only steam.

  Only heat.

  Nerves began to stretch, snapping into place like marionette strings being yanked by unseen fingers. Tendons slithered into sockets, knitting across a newborn ribcage. Organs inflated like diseased lungs filling for the first time, wet and unnatural. The sound of splitting cartilage, cracking vertebrae, and weeping meat filled the air.

  The form was small. Childlike.

  The mass of gore began to take shape.

  Limbs formed. Slender. Feminine.

  A spine arched backward like a bow strung too tight, then cracked itself forward with a sickening pop. Fingers twitched. Delicate digits, forming from tangled bundles of nerve endings, glistened under the crimson sky. Then...

  Hair.

  White.

  Thread by thread, it bled out from a still-morphing scalp. Long. Silken. The color of her birth. Of her second life. Of the snowstorm that nearly claimed her. It clung wet to her malformed shoulders as her body continued to build itself, sinew layering under soft skin like a butcher shaping clay. And then, slowly, the face.

  A patch of flesh peeled back.

  Cheeks.

  A nose.

  And at last, the eyes.

  Lavender. Wide. Wet.

  And blank.

  Rayne’s face had returned, not animated, not expressive, but present. Like a puppet’s mimicry of something once human. Her lips trembled. Not in emotion, but in calibration. The moon pulsed as she inhaled. A shudder of air passed through the unfinished lungs, and something like a breath hissed from her throat. Then another, until it became steady. She sat, legs folded underneath her, as her body’s formation slowed, white skin almost translucent, hair hanging in thick strands like angelic spider-silk, the faint glow of unknown magic seeping into the cracks of her perfect frame.

  She was not Rayne.

  Not truly.

  But she wore her shape.

  The crimson dome itself shivered, as if something inside it had registered her completion. And a distance away, inside Heathrine’s void, the god’s grin twitched in acknowledgment.

  “There she is,” they whispered to no one.

  “My unfinished song.”