Page 58 of Mane Squeeze
The wind stilled. The temperature dropped. Then, from the thick mist coiled between the trees, a figure emerged.
She was barely there—smoke and starlight, a shifting silhouette with eyes like twin galaxies. The scent of old roses clung to her like a memory, something once beautiful now wilted and left to rot. One of the Echo Spirits. And not just any.
The oldest.
“You trade love for chains,” the spirit murmured, circling her with slow, soundless steps. “You bargain your fire for flesh.”
“I bargain for him,” Lillith spat, jaw tight.
The spirit halted inches from her. “You still lie to yourself, child.”
Her knees nearly buckled beneath the weight of truth.
“Please,” she whispered, the word trembling. “He’s in danger. I feel it—Iknowit. I can’t—” her voice broke, the breath hitching like glass in her throat, “I can’t lose him.”
The spirit’s eyes narrowed.
“Then let go of your fear. You cannot save what you deny. You cannot win while cursing your own joy.”
A deep pulse echoed outward from the circle. The trees bowed. The ground cracked beneath her feet.
Lillith pressed her palms harder to the stone, as though it could anchor her to this moment, tohim. “I’m not afraid of loving him.”
The spirit raised one brow. “Then say it.”
She hesitated.
“SAY IT,” the forest screamed.
Lightning crackled above.
“I love him!” she cried, voice raw, splintering into the night.
The woodsexploded.
Runes ignited in violent arcs of gold and obsidian across the circle. The air trembled. Her magic—once carefully controlled, precision-laced—now surged like a storm unchained. It flooded through her chest, up her spine, out her fingertips. She wasn’t just casting.
She wasbecoming.
The ley lines answered her call, binding her to them like a stitch woven by destiny itself. Gold laced with starlight spilled from her skin in delicate threads, like veins made of fire.
Snap.
She felt him.
Not the familiar pulse of the bond. This washim—Dominic—raw, open, screaming with silent agony through the veil that separated realms. His pain struck her like a blade to the chest.
“No,” she gasped. “No, no—come back to me?—”
The spirit stepped forward, and with a whisper as cold as the grave, pressed her lips to Lillith’s brow.
“Thentake him.”
Light burst from Lillith’s chest.
She didn’t walk. Shesplitthrough time and space.
Reality tore like paper as she cut through it, not with finesse but withneed. Her scream fractured the dream-realm wide open. Shadows bled away as she fell through, a meteor of wild fury, fury born from love and fear and every ounce of power she’d denied herself for too long.
