Page 114 of Aïdes the Unseen
A deeper hue now. Not just blue, but violet edged with gold.
Then I felt it. This wasn’t just a memory. This was a piece of her foundation. Memory without language. Name buried among the bones of time.
I moved to her side. “You don’t have to rush it.”
She didn’t answer me immediately. “I’m not,” she said finally. “But it’s coming back. Like an earworm, I can hear the music but not the lyrics. Not yet. I think—I think it’s singing me back to myself.”
Her hand clasped mine once more. “I think we’re getting close.”
I believed her.
She didn’t speak again. She didn’t need to. The moment she clasped my hand while holding the token she’d taken from thebark, the sigils flared even brighter at our feet. A soft light rose through the stone, a breath exhaled through the veil.
No thunder.
No earthquake.
No sudden, violent explosion.
Just complete stillness.
The vibration shivered over my ribs, into the marrow. The tremor before the lightning strikes. Not terror or warning, only presence.
The dog lifted his head. And gazed at the center of the spiral with a solemn, impossible calm.
Irina—wait. No,shestepped into the center of the design as if gravity adjusted for her to make it so. She didn’t glow. Sheresonated. The moment she crossed into the exact center, the sigils aligned and finally, I saw it all for what it was.
It wasn’t just a path. It was alock.
She was the key.
The violet-gold sigil beneath her flared, the air bent, and memory flooded the space with the density of an unseen sea.
The cloth-wrapped token in her hand crumbled like ash. From its center, a single syllable glittered into being.
I couldn’t hear it. It didn’t matter. She could. Her breath caught. She swayed, one foot back, her weight shifting and then she spoke.
A name.
It was none of the names I knew, clearly. It was something older, wilder, and composed of syllables that belong to the earth, the wind, the stars, andchoice.
When she said it, the spiral sank. The whole circle of stone and earth folded inward and descended like a slow-turning helix
Beneath the spiral, a chamber of light opened. Tangible. Warm. Cradling. Something in my chest seized. This wasn’t Olympus, the Underworld or even the mortal plane. This wasn’teven a place meant for gods. This washers. The in-between place. The liminal.
It was the breath between heartbeats. This was where her soul hid the first version of herself before anyone claimed her. She turned to me once more, and her face wasn’t shining. It was whole.
“Do you see it?” Her voice was steady despite the giddiness in her eyes
“I see you.” It was my promise. My oath.
Like she couldn’t not touch me, she linked our hands again. Then she led us down the steps into the chamber below. The dog and I both followed. As we descended into this soft light, it hit me.
This wasn’t the end of the journey.
No, this was not aboutendingsat all.
This was the first time she’d been allowed to truly come home.
