Shift was working to find a way out of the suppression rune they'd become hopelessly tangled in when Zoe screamed Athira's name and ripped through every bit of focus he'd scraped together.

"Thira!"

Shift heard the fear in it. The pain. The desperation.

It still didn't prepare him for the sight of Karma's dagger in Athira's chest.

His heart dropped, every thought emptying out of his head as dread washed through him.

Because Athira — Athira was bleeding.

"I will end you, Karma!" yelled Zoe, straining against the Blue strands that bound her. Even with the suppression rune binding her Yellow, her glow increased tenfold, forcing Shift to look away or be blinded. "You hear me? Let her go, or I swear to the spirits that I will put a laser through your head!"

Zoe's light was more than just bright now. It was hot — painfully hot — and Shift felt his own copied Yellow healing him as his skin blistered, but her Yellow wasn't just burning him. It was scorching the ground where the suppression rune was etched, and after a few agonising moments, the rune broke.

The Blue strands binding them snapped and vanished. Shift stumbled forward, Zoe with him as they set their sights on Athira. They were free. Now they just had to get to her, to hope there was something they could still do before—

Karma removed the dagger from Athira and stepped back, vanishing in a flicker of Blue.

That was the moment Shift understood.

Karma had never intended to kill Athira.

Athira's gaze turned towards them. Her eyes went from Zoe to Shift, who already knew what was about to happen. Shift turned, grabbing for Zoe's arm to pull her back, knowing that they'd never get far enough to survive.

"Run."

He'd seen the Black heal Athira in the past, sealing cuts and bruises in a flicker of Colour she couldn't stop, even if she tried. She was always grumpy afterwards, because it gave her Black an out and made it harder to keep contained.

But this wasn't a cut. This was a fatal wound, in the presence of Sleepers, without Talon — and there would be no holding it back this time.

Shift did the only thing he could. He braced himself in front of Zoe in the hopes of absorbing enough of the Black to protect her when Zoe stepped one foot forward and went supernova.

Zoe's light split the darkness as it raced towards them in a thick, solid wall. Hands forward, the excruciating brilliance erupted from her palms. It radiated off her hair and skin with a heat so intense it blistered Shift's skin.

Even that wasn't enough to stop the Black entirely. It bit into Zoe, taking chunks out of her arms and sides. The injuries healed in explosions of light that kept her standing, shielding Shift from the worst of it while the buildings and Sleepers around them were disintegrated.

It was maybe ten seconds that felt like an eternity when the darkness finally passed.

The ground beneath them gave way and crumbled. Both Shift and Zoe went tumbling with the pile of rock and broken tiles, landing on the slope of the crater the Black had left behind.

"Please tell me that wasn't your breaking point or Raph's gonna kill me," said Shift, taking a relieved breath as the last of his shifted Yellow healed his burns.

Zoe shook her head. She was still glowing, though nowhere near its previously painful intensity. "My Yellow's just amped up like crazy. With the armband's drain and then the suppression rune, I just didn't realise how much."

"At least we know the Warden's little experiment worked," said Shift, helping Zoe up to her feet as together, they looked towards the centre of the crater.

In the swirling Black mist, a figure stood.

Logically, Shift knew it was Athira, but the silhouette was all wrong. Her slim frame was jagged from the spines along her arms, her legs, her waist. A thick, spiked tail protruded from her lower back. Her runes were gone, replaced by dark, gleaming scales that covered most of her skin, now tinged with a crimson under-glow that permeated through the mist around her.

Shift hated himself for even thinking it, but as her chin lifted and the light caught on the sharp edges of the plate-like scales that now swept upwards from the sides of her face, there was only one, uneasy thought going through his mind.

She looks like Rathe.

When Zoe started towards Athira, Shift caught her arm.

"Zo, her runes broke," he said quietly, keeping his eyes on Athira. "That might not be her anymore."

"And what if it is?" said Zoe. "I'm guessing she told you about the monster she turned into once. Did she tell you what those people were doing to her before she killed them?"

"She said she got angry," said Shift, surprised at the venom in Zoe's words. "She didn't say anything about why."

Zoe's expression turned dark. "Let's just say that anyone would have snapped from what she went through. I don't think she forgot what happened because of some monster taking over. I think it was because of the trauma, and if I'm right, and we just leave her—" Zoe cut off with a sharp shake of her head. "I'm not leaving her. Not when she needs me the most."

Shift hesitated.

He'd promised Athira that if her runes broke, he'd run. That he'd take Zoe with him to spare whatever part of Athira remained the guilt of knowing she'd hurt them. Because even if Rathe got loose and the monster took over, if Athira hadn't hurt Zoe, Rathe hadn't truly won.

Snuff out the light. Those were the words Rathe had said to her, over and over and over, the words that terrified her because they were the one thing that might finally break her in the end.

But Zoe was still alive. She was still glowing, and if there was anyone who stood a chance of bringing Athira back, it was her sister.

Athira might be ready to give up on herself, but it didn't mean they were.

Shift let go of her arm. "Go get her, Zo."

*+*+*+*

It might have been a minute or a year when some fragment of consciousness bobbed to the surface of an endless, inky void and blinked.

The world around her was monochrome, robbed of its colour by the wave she hadn't been able to hold back. The wave that had destroyed her, wrecked her, shredding her to scraps that now drifted aimlessly amongst the Black drowning her mindscape. She was vaguely aware of their presence, but they felt distant. Foreign, like they'd been part of someone else who no longer existed.

"Thira?"

The word sparked something. A name — her name — or at least, the name that'd belonged to whatever she'd been before.

"It's Zoe," said the voice again, and this time, Athira looked up. A girl a little taller than she was stood a few metres away, surrounded by an aura that was almost pure in a world of grey and black. "Can you hear me?"

"What do you want?" snapped Athira. There was a pressure in her chest, slowly seeping into the rest of her body. It was hot, prickling with a tension that felt like it might explode if she didn't find a way to let it out.

The girl's voice remained soft, kind. Her hands were lowered, her steps slow as she approached. "I wanted to make sure you're okay. You did just get stabbed."

A little of the pressure building in Athira's body eased, though she didn't understand why. "I'm... fine."

"That's good to hear," said the girl with a smile. "I just thought I'd check. You look a little different is all."

Athira glanced down at herself. She noted the spines and scales as she turned over her hand, examining her armour-like claws with indifference. They felt strong. Powerful. "Is that bad or something?"

"Not bad," said the girl. "Just different, like I said." The girl glanced back over her shoulder, directing a look at someone else — a male with a similar kind of greyish-white aura about him, though his was nowhere near as overpowering — before turning her gaze back to Athira. "We need to get out of here. Do you think you could help us?"

Athira considered it for a moment. Perhaps it was an idea to stay with this girl who made the pressure in her chest subside, at least for the moment. "What do you need?"

The girl beamed, the white aura around her increasing. "Well, first we need to find—" Her eyes locked on something in the distance and went wide. "No, don't—!"

Something sharp caught Athira on the shoulder. She snarled as she ripped a harpoon from her scales and whirled around, locating her attackers rushing down the side of the crater. All seven of them appeared a faint, dirty white through the monochrome, and as Athira watched them approach, the pressure in her chest ignited.

Destroy them.

The harpoon snapped in her hand.

"Thira," said the girl, a desperate note in her voice as she threw her arms around Athira and squeezed. This close, the girl's aura was blinding. It overpowered the rest of the world in a sheet of white so bright it hurt to look at. "Please, don't—"

Athira shoved the girl away with a hiss. The girl fell backwards, hitting the ground with a solid thud. A flicker of satisfaction curled through Athira as the girl's aura dulled enough to reveal the shock on her face.

A rasping growl that could have been mistaken for a laugh echoed through her mind.

You feel it. The anger. The strength it gives you.

Athira turned her gaze back to her attackers, some long-buried instinct rising to the surface.

Feed it.

Athira met them with brutal force. She grabbed the central one by the chest, her claws slicing through the fabric of their suit as she threw them into the two on the left hard enough to send all three of them skittering across the crater. The remaining four fired a barrage of off-white projectiles at her. She swiped them aside and launched herself at them.

With half of the harpoon in each hand, she returned the earlier favour and drove it through their flesh. She aimed for their shoulders, their knees, whirling around them in a savage storm of spines and strikes that none of them could withstand for long. They spread out, retreating, two of them attempting to drag the girl with the white aura away, but it didn't matter. Even if they made it out, there was nowhere far enough to save them from her, from this burning in her chest that roared every time the impact of her strikes echoed up her arms.

Your Wrath is glorious.

Wrath — that's what this burning feeling inside her chest was. This need to punish, to inflict pain on those who had dared attack her. The answer wasn't to relieve or suppress it but to embrace it, revel in it, to let it drive her forward and pace her breaths because this strength — this power that made her feel invincible — it was intoxicating. Euphoric.

Yet the more she gave herself to it, the more it demanded. It wasn't long before the same backhand from her armoured fist lacked the same satisfaction as the first. A maddening kind of impatience began to crawl through her insides like some beast at the bottom of a pit, threatening to consume her instead if she didn't find a way to appease it.

More.

She grabbed one of her attackers by the throat and lifted them up, holding him in front of her. His feet scraped against the ground as she tilted her head, considering. He was still bleeding from where she'd last jammed the harpoon into his shoulder, where he'd struck the ground after she'd thrown him, but that wouldn't be enough this time. She needed something else. Something more.

How easily he would snap beneath your claws.

Her grip tightened, drawing pinpricks of blood as she imagined it. This voice that felt like sandpaper against her mind resonated with her. It seemed to know her wrath, how to sate it. Perhaps—

Sharp, slicing pain unlike anything she'd felt so far raked down her back.

She hissed, dropping the man in her claws as she turned to find the source.

It was a newcomer — a male whose skin appeared a similar off-white as the other attackers. He readied the bladed whip he'd struck her with for a second strike as the wrath within her bubbled to a boiling point.

"Minion of Rathe!" announced the newcomer. "I am the Red Spectrum, one of seven destined to bring about the downfall of your master. Face me if you dare!"

He dares attack you?

She struck. When his whip came towards her, she grabbed it by the blade. It cut into her fingers with that same, unfamiliar pain as before. The others she'd fought before had been annoying at best, flies buzzing around her head, but when this male's attacks connected, they hurt.

She gripped the blade harder, the pain spiralling her fury into frenzy. She couldn't hear past the blood pounding in her ears as she drove her fist straight through his shield and into his stomach. She couldn't think past the roaring that consumed her thoughts, more a loose collection of anger and a goal encased in a hard, spiny shell than any true being of flesh and blood.

The whip turned to knives which soon devolved into desperate, misshapen blocks. It didn't matter. There was only room for the next blow, the next hit, the next rush as her target staggered, stumbled, and finally, fell.

End him.

She stood over him, the sandpaper voice and victory in her ear, ready to follow its command when the blinding white overtook her sight.

"Thira, stop! This isn't you!"

She recognised the girl's voice, the one with the aura. She swiped her claws through the stinging, blinding white that made her whole body feel like it was on fire, her anger boiling higher every time she found nothing but air.

Find her.

"You're Athira. You're clever, and you're kind—even if you'll never admit it—and you are so much stronger than whatever Rathe is telling you right now."

She followed the girl's voice, pushing through the endless white that scalded her, that pierced through her scales and seared the wrath inside until she spotted the girl — straight-backed and haloed by the same, white aura that burned so brightly in this world full of grey.

Break her.

The monster attacked.

The girl met it, replying to every blow with a blast of blinding white. When the monster's claws tore into her flesh the girl barely stumbled, her wounds healing as quickly as they'd appeared.

"Don't you remember?" continued the girl, dodging what she could and enduring the rest. "You used to read to me before bed. I thought the cover looked cool, but the letters kept getting jumbled around and I couldn't read it. We used to hide under the blankets and read with my Yellow until mum caught us."

The monster barely heard the words, landing a strike on the girl's side and knocking her down. The girl recovered quickly, rolling to her feet and firing back.

The exchange should have resulted in at least some satisfaction, some sense of vicious glee — yet it only served to double every rising frustration as the wrath — the thing that lurked within — tore its first bite out of her mind.

Snuff out the light.

"You protected us so many times, Thira," continued the girl. Her voice was softer now, like her words were just for them. "You never fought because you wanted to or because you enjoyed it. You fought because you were protecting us—protecting me, even when you thought I was gone."

They kept going, monster and girl bound together in some strange, lethal kind of dance choreographed by rage and a growing desperation.

But no matter what happened, no matter how many hits she took, the girl refused to go down.

The sandpaper voice roared as its fury reached a peak.

Enough of this.

The sandpaper voice — the wrath — shoved something towards her. She felt it the same as if a weapon had been placed in her grip, smooth and sleek like the haft of a spear with death tethered at the end.

Finish it.

Weapon in hand, the monster wrapped her fingers around it and struck.

The Black spine that erupted from the ground caught the girl through the chest. The white halo flickered but held as her boots were lifted off the ground. She coughed once, twice, attempting to push herself backwards off the spine to no avail.

The monster waited — waited for that moment of anger, the moment of defeat when the girl's expression would crack and everything would feel right, only it never came.

Instead, the girl reached into the collar of her shirt and pulled out a small locket engraved with a flower. She tugged it, snapping the chain with one last piece of effort, then reached down the spine and squeezed the monster's hand. 

Not with anger. Not with rage or hate or the intention to hurt — but something gentler, kinder.

"I'll always be here for you, Thira," said the girl, pressing the locket into the monster's palm. Her voice was different now. Breathier, weaker. "I don't have anything else to give you except my love and my life—so if you need them, take them. They've always been yours."

Something distant flickered in the back of the monster's head, a light in the centre of the abyss slowly draining out of her mind.

"Zoe," said Athira slowly, blinking, remembering, piecing it together. She took Zoe's hand in her own, returning her gentle grip, the locket pressed between their hands. "Zoe?"

Then she saw the spine. The blood. The fading Yellow glow that surrounded her as the world flickered between monochrome and colour and realised exactly what she'd done.

Athira immediately grabbed for the Black, trying to rein it in, to destroy the spine that had lifted Zoe clear off the ground, but she couldn't. The Black refused to budge as someone — something else held it firmly in their claws.

Snuff out the light.

Shift rushed over. He grabbed Zoe, trying to lift her off the spike she was impaled on, yelling at Athira to get rid of it as she tried. She scrambled, desperately trying to rip back control of the Black from Rathe and failed.

Zoe's grip lost its strength and finally slipped out of Athira's.

The bloodied locket fell, hitting the floor with a near-silent, world-breaking clink.

No.

With reckless abandon, Athira threw herself into her mindscape.

Rathe was waiting for her in the crushed branches of the gold-lit tree that had grown significantly since she'd last seen it. She launched herself at him with a roar, crossing the ocean of Black that still flooded so much of her mindscape. Claw met scale as Athira tore into Rathe's hide with everything she had, spilling his lava-blood throughout her mindscape until at some point, the balance shifted. She felt it more than saw it as Rathe's grip loosened on the Black, and Athira didn't hesitate to seize it.

A rare relief crashed through Athira at the feeling of the Black in her control. She reined it in and destroyed the spike, but as she attempted to leave her mindscape, she found that instead of the Black, Rathe's claws were now wrapped around something else.

Her.

In her desperation to save Zoe, Rathe had forced Athira to fight in the one place she was vulnerable. The place where he didn't have to restrain her to seize control of her, because this place was her. Her mindscape was her thoughts, her being, her everything — and when his blood — his essence — had spilled and sunk in, Rathe had laid claim to it all.

Mine.

Crimson fissures tore through the ground beneath the Black ocean's surface, spewing lava from the depths below as Rathe took over. Athira tried to resist, to hold onto the ground she'd lost, but it was futile. Rathe plucked her from the tangled root of the tree she'd collapsed on and with her clutched in his claws, he shoved her into the inky waters and drowned her.

*+*+*+*

A/N - Two chapters left ~ 

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