Page 104 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
Her skin glitched.
For a second, her hands were her own. Then not. Fingers too long, joints wrong, glow pouring out of her nail beds. She clenched her fists.
Ahead, a figure waited.
She didn’t recognize it, but it knew her shape. Female. Desert-burned. Her same boots. Her same body.
But her eyes…
Her eyes were empty holes filled with light.
“You wanted this,” it said, in her voice. “To be chosen. To belong.”
Nora’s heart slammed against her ribs. “You’re not me.”
“No,” the figure said. “But I’m what you’ll be. If you don’t hold on.”
The ground rumbled beneath her.
The figure smiled—and cracked. A bloom opened in the center of its chest. Not petals. Teeth.
Nora turned and ran.
***
Asher’s world didn’t fall.
It sank.
The rift swallowed him in silence, and he let it. Arms wide, body loose, ready to descend. He had done this before, long ago, in another form. He knew what waited at the bottom.
He landed hard, knees hitting cold rock. He stood into darkness so thick it pressed against his chest. The walls of the chamber weren’t walls. They were roots, wet and tangled, pulsing faintly with desert heat.
It smelled like old rain and crushed blossoms.
And somewhere in the dark, something wept.
“You should’ve stayed buried,” said a voice.
His voice.
He turned—and faced himself.
Not as he was now, but as he had been: human, trembling, still soft around the eyes.
The version of him who had first been bound.
“This is your fault,” the other Asher said, voice cold as wind through stone. “She’s here because of you. You didn’t stop her. You let her burn.”
Asher staggered under the words. They were the wound that would never stop bleeding.
“You were supposed to protect her,” the voice pressed. “And you failed.”
He dropped to his knees. The ground pulsed beneath him. The vines tightened, hungry.
For a moment, he believed it.
But then, he remembered her voice. Calling him. Choosing him.
