Violet
I was dazed. Everything felt surreal, like I was in between reality and a dream. I found it terrifying. It had also gotten colder.
And through it all, I felt the pull in my chest yanking harder than ever, as if the eclipse had amplified whatever force was calling to .
My syzygy exploded into chaos.
The dual energies that I had managed to balance were suddenly at war. I could feel them distinctly now, two separate forces wrenching in opposite directions, each trying to overpower the other.
The lunar side surged with the eclipse, feeding on the moon’s dominance over the sun and growing stronger and more aggressive with each passing second. It clawed at my insides, demanding control and submission to strange pull.
The solar side did the sa, but not as strongly as the other.
The battle raged through my body like a storm, and I gasped, doubling over from the intensity of it. Heat and cold warred beneath my skin, making shiver and sweat simultaneously. My hands trembled violently.
That was when I realized I was gripping sothing.
I looked down slowly, my vision swimming, and saw my hand clenched so tightly around the tal of my grandmother’s pendant that it had cut into my palm. Blood welled between my fingers, dark and thick, dripping down my wrist.
The pain should have been sharp, imdiate, but it felt distant, muted by the greater agony of the warring energies inside .
I tried to loosen my grip, but my hand wouldn’t obey. The pendant felt like the only solid thing in a world that had gone liquid and strange, the only anchor keeping from being swept away entirely.
Why did I even take it in the first place?
My movents were suddenly sluggish as I turned slowly to look back at the castle.
My heart sunk with fear as it lood in the distance, impossibly far away. Too far.
Just how long had I been walking?
What was happening to ?
Where was I going and why was the eclipse affecting like this?!
My body suddenly beca feverish. My skin felt too tight, my blood too hot, and my bones aching with a deep, fundantal wrongness that made want to crawl out of my own flesh.
The pull yanked again, harder, and more insistent.
And this ti, like before, I started to feel my consciousness slipping away again.
No. No, I needed to stay awake. I—
The world tilted sideways.
I was dimly aware of my legs moving again, carrying forward. I was vaguely aware of what was happening, but the lack of control I had over my body made scared.
Through the haze, I registered changes in my surroundings. The paved streets of the city giving way to dirt paths. The buildings thinning out, replaced by trees. The sounds of the city fading behind , replaced by the whisper of wind through leaves.
I was leaving the capital and walking into the woods beyond it.
And I couldn’t stop myself.
Ti beca aningless again. Hours might have passed, or minutes. I had no way of knowing.
When full awareness and control returned, I found myself standing in a forest.
My feet were bare. I looked down, confused, and saw that my shoes were gone. I wasn’t sure if I had even worn or removed them in the first place.
My dress was torn, the beautiful blue fabric shredded in places, hanging in tatters around my legs. Scratches covered my arms and legs, so shallow, so deep enough to bleed. Branches had clawed at as I walked, and I hadn’t noticed or cared.
My hair was a wild tangle of leaves, twigs and dirt.
And blood dripped steadily from my clenched fist, pattering onto the forest floor in a rhythm that matched my racing heartbeat.
Panic slamd into with the force of a physical blow, worse than before.
I had no idea where I was, how far I had walked, or what forest this was.
I turned in a slow circle, trying to orient myself, trying to find so landmark I recognized.
Nothing looked familiar. Trees stretched in every direction, their trunks dark and their branches reaching toward the eclipsed sky like skeletal fingers. The strange ring of light around the moon filtered through the canopy in fragnts, casting everything in terrifying patterns.
I tried to sense the direction of the capital, tried to reach for so internal compass that would tell which way was back where I had co from.
But my syzygy was still in chaos, still fighting itself, and making it impossible for to focus on anything else.
I needed to get it under control before they tore apart from the inside.
I reached inward, trying to grasp the threads of power and will them into submission.
The mont I attempted it, my syzygy flared violently in response.
Pain exploded through my chest, so intense it drove to my knees. I gasped but liquid filled my mouth instead of air.
Blood.
I was coughing up blood. The thick dark liquid splattered on the ground in front of . More blood trickled from my nose and stread down my face. I could taste it, and I could also feel wetness trickling from my ears that I knew wasn’t sweat.
My body was bleeding from every orifice, rejecting the forced attempt to control what couldn’t be controlled.
I stopped imdiately, my hands bracing against the ground, shaking violently as I tried to simply breathe without choking.
The bleeding slowed but didn’t stop completely. My vision swam with dark spots, and I felt dangerously close to passing out again.
I couldn’t forcefully control this, but I also couldn’t just let it continue like this. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to survive what this was, especially when I didn’t understand it.
I looked back the way I had co, or what I thought might have been the way.
Fear coiled cold in my stomach.
I was lost, and as if in response to that realization, the pull in my chest surged again, yanking forward with renewed urgency.
My legs started to move, carrying deeper into the forest as my consciousness started slipping away again.
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