The hunger was not empty like the marrow’s endless craving. It was sharper, hungrier for sothing specific.
Elena doubled over as the third fla’s pulse ripped through her chest. Images flooded her—mouths opening in silence, faces dissolving into dust, Mira’s skin splintering into orbiting shards. The visions weren’t warnings. They were instructions.
“Do you feel it?” Mira’s voice was ragged, feverish. Her eyes were wide, pupils consud by light. “It wants out. Not to feed—” she pressed her hand against the flaming core, “—to grow.”
Elena staggered backward. The void shivered, its black bone walls cracking with each heartbeat of the newborn light. Growth ant expansion. Expansion ant invasion. The marrow had devoured; this thing wanted to beco.
“Mira, stop.” Elena grabbed her wrist, pulling her hand away from the fla. Their contact made the light shudder, sparks splitting off into the void. They flickered into brief shapes—hands, faces, fragnts of things not yet real—before dissolving back into raw brilliance.
“It’s choosing,” Mira whispered, her voice laced with awe. “Do you understand? It doesn’t just consu. It remakes. It can burn us into sothing else.”
“Or burn us out,” Elena snapped. Her ember surged, instinctively resisting. She could feel it straining to keep her body her own, clawing against the tide of the third fla. Yet the resistance weakened with every pulse.
The vessel’s cracked body flickered at the edge of the void, smaller now, fading into shadow. Its hollow face tilted once, as if nodding, before it dissolved completely. No guide. No anchor. Just them and the newborn hunger.
The fla pulsed again. Mira convulsed, her glass shards whipping outward like orbiting blades. They carved lines of white fire into the darkness, fracturing the void. For a mont, Elena saw beyond—cities she didn’t recognize, skies scorched in colors that didn’t belong to Earth, and shapes moving within them, faceless but watching. The fla’s hunger wasn’t bound to this place. It wanted worlds.
“No,” Elena growled, clutching Mira’s shoulders. “We’re not seeds. We’re not vessels.”
Mira’s lips trembled. “Then why does it feel like ho?”
The words cut deeper than the hunger itself. Elena saw it in Mira’s trembling body—the shards weren’t killing her, they were sustaining her. The fla wasn’t draining her; it was filling her. She looked less like a woman breaking apart and more like sothing being assembled.
Elena’s ember flared, furious and wild, desperate to protect her from that transformation. Fire roared through her veins, demanding she burn the third fla out before it rooted too deep.
But when she lifted her hand, ready to scorch it, the fla pulsed one more ti—sliding between her and Mira, forcing itself into their grip.
This ti, it spoke not with hunger alone.
It spoke with need.
The words ford inside her skull, raw and unfinished, yet undeniable.
“Carry. Break. Beco.”
Elena’s knees buckled. Mira’s tears glowed as they stread down her face.
And the void began to collapse, dragging them both into the fla’s demand.
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