I moved into a forest.
Not walking. Just suddenly present, the way you exist in dreams, my body like a living fla suspended in a place it had no right to be. Visible to myself, invisible to them. My eyes wide open. Watching.
Four won sat in a tight circle on the forest floor, knees touching, hands joined. Ancient trees rose around them, thick trunks wrapped in moss, moonlight slicing through the canopy in silver blades that painted the fallen leaves in cold blue-white.
Eleanor’s face, younger, but unmistakably her, tight with exhaustion. Sophia Vale sat directly across from her, the sa composed mask I had seen in her oval office. Even here, surrounded by dying legacies, her posture stayed ruler-straight, shoulders squared beneath dark robes.
The woman with short white hair and skin that looked untouched by ti nodded slowly. "I think I’m the last Veyron."
"I’m so sorry, Monica," Sophia said, her voice low.
Monica Veyron. Which left the woman with striking blue locks as Riya Belmonte.
"We thought we were doing right," Eleanor’s voice whispered directly into my ear, narrating what I was seeing, her real-world fingers still tight between mine in the tub. "We genuinely believed it."
"The only way not to die is enslaving ability users until the awakening," Sophia said, grip tightening visibly around the hands she held.
"How?" Riya asked. Her blue hair shifted as she leaned forward, leaves crunching under her knee. "They’re powerful now. They can contend with us."
"And nobody knows when the awakening cos," Monica added, white hair catching a slash of moonlight. "This could take centuries. How do we keep ability users contained until then?"
"Are we not rushing this?" Eleanor’s younger self said, voice cracking at the edges. "This decision needs the n."
Sophia laughed, short, sharp, without humor. "The families are dying, Eleanor. We need a plan."
"So what is the plan?" Eleanor asked.
"We create an infection," Sophia said. Her fingers flexed once around the circle of hands. "Sothing that spreads fast and spreads wide. We offer the ability users protection from it. They co to us willingly."
"No infection catches ability users," Eleanor countered.
"Not individually," Sophia replied, eyes gleaming. "But if we unite."
The four of them looked at each other across the circle, moonlight carving sharp shadows under their cheekbones and along their clasped hands. The leaves around them rustled once in a breeze that didn’t touch my fla-like presence.
"We thought we were doing right," Eleanor’s present-day voice said again in my ear, quieter this ti, almost regretful. "That was the last decision we all made together."
The four of them stripped off their ancient dresses in one fluid motion. Fabric whispered down bare skin and pooled on the mossy forest floor. Naked now, moonlight sliding silver across shoulders, breasts, and the curves of hips. Riya turned to Monica. Sophia turned to Eleanor.
I watched everything.
Riya’s hand slid between Monica’s thighs first, fingers pressing firm, parting slick folds, then pumping in slow, deliberate strokes. Monica’s hips rolled forward to et each thrust, short white hair falling across her face as her mouth opened on a silent gasp.
At the sa ti, Sophia’s fingers found Eleanor, two fingers pushing deep, curling, pumping with steady rhythm while Eleanor’s thighs parted wider, knees sinking deeper into the leaves.
Breasts pressed together. Wet sounds rose, slick, rhythmic, obscene against the quiet forest. Hips rocked in sync. Fingers pumped faster. Eleanor’s head tipped back, black hair cascading down her spine as Sophia’s hand worked between her legs, thumb circling her clit with every thrust. Riya’s fingers drove deeper into Monica, the white-haired woman’s thighs trembling, muscles flexing visibly with each plunge.
Everything dissolved. Daylight now. Years later, maybe decades. Sunlight filtered through the branches of a massive tree.
Eleanor stood beneath it in a short dress that barely reached mid-thigh, fabric clinging to her body from the heat. Her head was bowed. Hands clasped tightly behind her back. The man beside her, tall, broad-shouldered, face twisted with rage, suddenly lashed out.
His boot slamd into the tree trunk with brutal force. Wood cracked like thunder. The entire massive tree shuddered, then toppled with a groaning crash, branches whipping through the air as it fell away from them, slamming into the ground in a cloud of dust and broken leaves.
Eleanor didn’t flinch. She kept her head down, hands still locked behind her back, the short dress riding slightly higher on her thighs from the impact tremor that ran through the earth.
"This was all your doing?" The man’s voice carried the raw weight of soone who had loved deeply and was now staring at the wreckage that love had beco. "I’m so disappointed in you, Ele."
"We were dying, Ethan," Eleanor said, her voice cracking. "We were dying."
"What’s wrong with dying?" he replied, stepping closer. "All people die."
She broke.
Her shoulders crumpled first. Then her knees. The specific shattering of soone hearing the truth she needed sixty years too late, with no way to undo what she had done.
Ethan caught her before she hit the ground, pulling her hard against his chest. His arms locked around her back, one hand cradling the back of her head as she pressed her face into his shirt.
"It’s okay to die," he whispered, voice rough against her hair. "It’s better than those walls they raised."
She clung to him, fingers digging into the fabric of his shirt, body trembling against his.
"The awakening will kill everyone," he continued, quieter now. "Sophia knows it. She just believes the world belongs to four families and always will."
"That was my brother," Eleanor’s present-day voice whispered directly into my ear while the vision played on, her real fingers tightening around mine in the tub. "Ability users are being kept for the awakening. Their bodies will host dead mbers of the primordial families. The plan is to remove all people and begin the world again. The walls are hatching the egg."
Her grip on my hands squeezed harder.
In the vision, Eleanor stayed pressed against Ethan’s chest, breathing him in like he might disappear.
"What do we do?" she asked, voice muffled against him.
"Were you involved in the making?" Ethan asked. "Did you release?"
She nodded once, small and ashad.
He breathed in slow and deep, chest expanding against her cheek as he absorbed the weight of it.
"I need one thing from you," he said finally. "I’m going to create a system. I’ll find a woman outside the walls and pour into her. The son she carries will awaken the system at his death." He paused, arms still locked around her. "Don’t release again until you et the boy. When he extracts from you at the right ti, he’ll carry what he needs to mark the primordial won when he pours into them. That’s the only way to stop the awakening."
"And what happens to you?" Eleanor asked, pulling back just enough to look up at his face.
He didn’t answer. She already knew. A primordial man pouring everything into a mortal woman was a one-way transaction. Whatever life went into the child had to co from sowhere.
It ca from him.
****
I ripped out of the Libra breathing hard, chest heaving, water sloshing violently around my ribs.
Eleanor was breathing just as hard across from in the tub, dark hair plastered to her wet shoulders, eyes slowly refocusing on mine. Her fingers stayed locked tight between my own.
"Who are you?" I asked, voice rough.
She looked at steadily, water dripping from her lashes.
"I’m Eleanor," she said. "From the house of Nadez."
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