The way into Seryana’s Wound is clearer this ti. Those wet, grasping strands of her hair lining the gaping hole in the world have mostly rotted away, leaving lesions in the walls where green embers burrow into necrotic flesh. The remaining strands of living residue are weak and withered enough that they snap away the mont they curl around and try to grip. This ti, when the tunnel opens up, I touch down on the floor with only a few clumpy strands of dry, dead hair trailing off my sleeves to show for the fall. There are no grasping limbs of twine to set down gently, but my cane steadies through the impact.
Seryana stands just ahead, hunched over the curio cabinet in the center of the room. She’s reached through its still-broken windows and picked out a single filthy photo.
Her voice has a wet scratchiness to it, as if she’s forcing out every sound through a terrible cough.
She traces one frayed finger gingerly over the photo fra… then hurls it at with all her might. I flinch as it whizzes just past my head, crashing into the wall behind .
she wails. A shiver wracks her body as a coil of rope, the third arm she sprouted earlier, drops off her and hits the ground with a sick wet plop.
She pushes off the cabinet and wobbles upright, her mask’s eyes seeming to widen as she stares at .
While she rambles, I take stock of my surroundings. This is the sa room Shona nearly burned down, and it hasn’t changed much since then. All that remains of the original room’s walls are its four corners holding up the ceiling like pillars. Beyond that, it’s just as ruined and more — the steady, creeping rot of my magic still spreads through everything, eating away at the walls and furniture of the surrounding rooms. A window in the next room over is frosted over with black mist.
Off to the right, the jagged hole in the floor we last escaped through is still there. Seryana’s made a token effort to fence it off, with three sideways chairs arranged unevenly around its edges, but if I wanted to leave, I wouldn’t even need to step over them. There’s a gap in the fence I could easily squeeze through.
Following my gaze, Seryana glances between and the hole. She lets out a short, sharp shriek, like the strings of a hundred instrunts snapping at once, and slams a balled fist into one of her cabinet’s intact windows, embedding bits of glass between the knots of her fingers.
As she cracks open fra after fra and rips apart the pictures inside, the Wound tears around us. The walls of the surrounding rooms are ripped horizontally across their middle like tissue paper as their shared floors and ceilings twist in opposite directions. The whole Wound flips on to its side in a sudden and violent rotation, flinging , beds, stools, footrests, and woven-hair dolls into the air. The furniture plumts into the rift that’s been split in the walls, falling into a familiar void of that vague, dingy impression of light coming from sowhere else; the sa dim glow I saw in the gaps between Seryana’s hair-covered windows.
I burn so of my health on reflex and thrust out a hand to grab hold of so of the filthy hair strewn across the rotting wooden floors. It tears in my grip, but gives just enough leverage for just enough ti that I can manage to control my trajectory. I roll my body along the quickly steepening slope of the floor and fall into a V-shaped crook: the base of one of the original room’s corners, now all that remains of its walls.
Seryana begins to furiously ball up the scraps of the shredded photographs into a single chaotic wad, and everything bends and deforms, the world folding over us into a new arrangent — one where the space I landed in no longer exists. I pick myself up as the notch I managed to catch myself on blurs into a newly shaped floor.
When the distortion settles, the rooms have… stretched over each other, rging into a single endless tunnel that sohow looks like more of a disaster than even the blasted, broken room we were in a mont ago. It’s cluttered with too much random furniture to traverse without stepping over or onto it. Footrests with all the stuffing torn out and replaced with matted blonde hair. A two-legged table with a huge chunk of its surface simply disappeared from the side with the legs. Beds with half-rotten chairs spliced impossibly through the middle of their fras. On one of those, the chair impales the hair-effigy lying on it in two places.
she laughs, throwing her arms wide.
“…Why?” I ask. I’d guess she reacted to looking at the hole Shona had blown through the floor, but I just got here. I ca in on my own. I’m not going to run away when neither of us had done anything.
Seryana says nothing, only twirling and laughing like she’s playing in the snow.
There’s so many of those hair-dolls, scattered through the opened Wound. Maybe a dozen in sight from here, counting the one whose photo-face she smashed during her tantrum right before Shona and I left this place. How long has she been doing this? How many “one and only true loves” had she been through before I found her?
And if this is how she acts when sothing doesn’t go to plan… how did she even last this long?
Seryana snarls. Her body lts, then bubbles back up from the floor right in front of . Scrawled tears and black gunk ooze through her mask. She clutches my cheek in one ragged hand before I can dart away, squeezing painfully, and as she ets my gaze again, the sa dark gunk creeps over the corners of my eyes, as if it’s leaking out from my own skull—
~~~
A hand slams into my cheek with enough force to knock over. My wrist twists as I try and fail to break my fall, crumpling to the ground like a discarded doll. Sotis that feels like all I am, on days like this, but it’s okay. It’s just how it is. Sotis he just gets upset. If this is what he needs, I can handle it.
Those sa rough hands pull up by my hair, screaming into my face. I can live with the pain, for him. The words, those are the worst part, and worse than ever today. They feel like knives tearing tiny bits of my soul away, sliver by sliver.
Flecks of spittle pour out of him with every word, his voice a storm of rage and pain spoken in a distorted blur of noise, like I’m hearing them underwater. It still sounds familiar, though. It sounds like… my father’s? The outline of the man holding up matches the one who left on the seventh floor, but everything is so wet and blurry, and his face… it’s scratched out of reality, hidden behind a scribbly black veil.
Finally, he drops again. I collapse uselessly to my knees as he backs away. He stares down at what’s left of . Ti falls away from us, but when he finally speaks again, it’s… different. Quieter. He apologizes. He tells he’s no good. He says he shouldn’t be here anymore. He storms off upstairs without another word.
I don’t want that, though. He’s a complicated person, yes, but that’s just how he is. I still love him. All of him. And if he didn’t have , how much worse would it be? For him, for , for everyone? And he’s… all I have.
So I go to him. To hold him, to tell him so, to pull the misery out of him so we can carry it together. No one person can carry all the weight inside them, after all.
And I find him
his empty shell, hanging from the ceiling
blood on his fingers, clawmarks on his neck, scratching, scratching
and everything I am leaks out like blood through the wounds he left with.
Only… through it all, beneath the weight of the end of everything, another voice whispers. My voice. None of this matches, she says. None of it makes sense. The events, the feelings behind them, none of them fit the version of Dad in my mind. That version is… he’s hardly really there. He’s barely ever given this much attention at all. And in the tis he did, the only reason it hurt was because I knew I would have to ration out that little mote of love for who knows how long until the next.
Why him? Why is he here?
Because he’s just the closest thing she can find when she looks into . Because this pain is not mine. This life is not mine. None of it matters to . There’s no reason for to drown in it, no reason to feel it at all.
So I vomit it up like I have so much pollution before.
~~~
I return to the Wound, to myself, on my knees over a fresh puddle of dark ichor, wreathed in cold mist like breaths on a winter day. Seryana stands over , her face buried in her hands, weeping in rough, choked sobs.
And in her tears, her desperation as she throws every horrible thing she can think of at , I see the answer to my own question.
It makes sense how she did what she did. The sa way it’s taken so long to get this far. She hid, slowly gnawing away on one person at a ti until they couldn’t take it anymore — and who could? I doubt I could live through an endless torrent of this, if I didn’t already know she was dying.
When she finished her al, she’d vanish, find a new anchor, and repeat the cycle sowhere completely different, doing it all through disposable effigies of herself ant to be broken and destroyed over and over. In exchange for rendering Seryana practically untouchable in a direct confrontation, the effigies couldn’t actually do anything impressive on their own, couldn’t even move away from the anchor, but… they didn’t take much investnt. Seryana could eat up her anchor’s aggression without a care in the world, certain she was getting more than she lost. Her effigies had probably even been swallowing up my plague, only to be amputated before the infection could be transferred to Seryana’s whole – at least enough for it to stick.
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For a normal human, or even Shona blindly blasting Seryana’s sock-puppets away, there was nothing at all they could do. In truth, though, she probably wasn’t any stronger than Irakkia or Esonei were, given how similar their tricks were; maybe weaker, even. I was probably just the first Keeper to sll her out and get her attention, and I spent days coming at her the wrong way. Playing the ga she set up to play. That was her gimmick all along.
But here, where the real Seryana lives… she overextended this afternoon when she first dragged into her heart, allowing my infection into her sanctum. Now she’s done it again, and I can already see her world falling apart with no new effort from .
I can’t pretend to understand why she would expose herself like that in the first place, but maybe it’s simply the common sense of a demon who feeds on hurting others until they hurt her back as hard as possible. To Seryana, that’s what love is, and for her, love is everything.
Suddenly, she straightens up, beaming through her oozing tears, and sweeps a rotting hand over the chamber.
A new curio cabinet falls abruptly through the ceiling, crashing to the floor a few feet away from us. It rattles unsteadily as it touches down, until Seryana runs to it and hugs it, holding it desperately in place.
she gurgles.
…You know what? Fine. It can’t be any worse than that blood-blending machine Yurfaln made for . Strangely enough, I actually feel nearly as calm as that sentint sounds. I’m still on edge, of course, still ready for any last surprises Seryana throws at , but… now that I’ve begun to unravel her, I feel more confident than against any Harbinger I’ve ever faced. As the Wound continues to crack and peel around , deep inside, I know this is already over.
My rot is already closing in on her heart, so I can tell: whatever special sothing let Aulunla pour everything it was and could ever be into one last frenzied struggle… Seryana just doesn’t have.
This cabinet Seryana is so eager to show looks brighter and cleaner than the others, at a glance, but that’s just because there’s no thick film of old hair caked around it. Only rings of wet locks of hair decorated with little black feathers around each window.
And the frad pictures inside are all of .
rescuing Seryana’s last victim, rotting her to nothing in the process. in his house, dangling from the edge of a room that no longer existed. in the shower with Seryana draping herself around from behind, at Missing Lake screaming while she needled about the woman I left to die, in her Wound jumping into Shona’s lightning.
She opens a window near the bottom and pulls out the photo inside, sighing happily as she stares at it. Through the fraying thumb of her rope-hand, she traces over it, I can make it out: this one is of holding Banva on the floor.
She giggles at her words, and while there’s a faint undercurrent of nervous energy to the sound… it’s enough to make want to take that picture and smash it over her head. To smash all of them before I waste her away to nothing.
But Banva’s alive. She’s lived through a nightmare and it’s all my fault, but she did live. She’ll recover. Because, from the start, Seryana really was that weak, and could only lash out against the people around so much. It wouldn’t change anything to give Seryana what she clearly wants.
And if that’s the best she has left, we’re finished here.
“I don’t care,” I say, laughing to myself.
Seryana says. She freezes, photo fra still in hand, her voice drained of its sickly-sweet affect.
“I don’t care what else you have to show . There’s nothing I even need to do here anymore, and I don’t think you can make stay.” She’s already dying. All I have to do is let her.
Experintally, I sink a burst of death into the filthy floor beside us. My power gnaws through the layer of gri and into the surface beneath, a hundred years of rot eating into the wooden boards in a span of seconds. Soon, there’s a yawning black pit in the ground, big enough for to slip through and still steadily expanding.
Seryana seethes. Just another tantrum. She throws the photo away and grabs my shoulders, staring at through her mask with eyes caked in dark ooze, but… that’s all. I’ve seen what she can do now, what she wanted so badly to shove into my mind. It’s only a little harder to keep her out than it is to shield myself from everyday diseases.
Because for everything broken and horrible about , all the damage I’ve done, I’m nothing like her. I don’t have to exist the way she does, circling around in a prison of my own pain, and I’ve already done everything I need to here. I’m done with her, and very soon, whatever’s left of her will help along my own way.
Seryana scratches frantically at her own arms, moving as if to peel herself open the way she did when she opened her Wound.
“Do it. I’ll wait.”
And I hop through my hole, dropping back into the void between Wound and world.
~~~
I step out into the night. A cool breeze passes by, rushing through my newly whitened hair. Behind , Seryana slaps the earth with her too-long arms of woven blonde hair, gibbering out a chain of shrill curses that stopped making any sense so ti ago. I ignore her.
Instead, I take note of my surroundings. We’re still in front of that demolished house with the overgrown lawn Aisling’s information led to, but looking at it now, it’s in a bit of a strange place for it to be. This isn’t exactly a residential area, but more of a city block, with businesses closed at this hour surrounding the torn down house on all sides. On the opposite side of the street, there’s a wall of high-rise buildings lined up next to each other; they’re far from skyscrapers, but they’re more than tall enough to cast a long shadow over the remnants of what was once soone’s ho.
The place where Seryana was born might have been a holdover from pre-war Claris that just hadn’t been removed yet. That’s probably why it was torn down so quickly. My walk to get here might have taken longer than I thought, because everything around us is surprisingly vacant, but that’s for the best when a Keeper is facing down a Harbinger in its death throes. Everything is bundled in an air of stillness and silence – all except for Seryana, wailing into the void.
And that’s when a cold sweat trickles down my spine.
The atmosphere becos heavy, as if I’ve suddenly been thrust to the bottom of the sea. There’s a pressure so intense that it sends tremors through my body. My stomach drops. The hairs on my neck rise. My heart quakes in my chest.
And it’s not because of a Harbinger.
Even Seryana’s voice deadens in the air as I turn back from the demolished house to face her. She’s raised one of her braided arms as if to lash out and strike , but in the mont that new presence crashes over us like a tidal wave dragging us into its depths, she hesitates for just an instant, as if overwheld by panic too quickly for her to comprehend.
There’s no ti for either of us to react.
A flash of scarlet. A shaft made of red light cuts through the air above Seryana. Its glare against the windows of the high-rise building behind her looks almost like a tilapse of the twilight sun falling beneath the horizon.
The spear touches down, skewering straight through Seryana – not piercing through her other end and into the ground, but instead seeming to imbed itself deep within her.
The Harbinger’s shriek of agony rings out through the night, raking against my eardrums.
The spear of light sheds its crimson glow, dispelling the shadows which pool at the foot of the tower blocks. I expect Seryana’s form to crumble away and reappear elsewhere, but she doesn’t. She simply writhes and flails in place like an insect that’s been pinned alive. For so reason, she can’t escape.
Up above, a floating figure appears out of thin air and gradually descends from on high. As if erging from nowhere, his body seems to co into tangible focus bit by bit the nearer he draws to the spear’s light, starting from his greaved boots and quickly working up to the sharp, angular visor of his mask, until I can see him in his entirety.
Hooded in a studded white mantle trimd with red, a thin layer of tallic plating armoring his torso and limbs. His almost priestlike coat flutters gently as he hovers downward.
“Well now. Fancy eting you out here, Ill Wind.”
It’s none other than the Stardust Seraph in the flesh, addressing directly.
Points of light appear all around him and begin to swiftly swirl through the air, swarming in a formation like two tornadoes sprouting from his back. Those cinder-spark motes mold themselves into the shape of feathers, and as they spiral around in twin vortexes, they begin to arrange themselves into a pattern and stick together, soon creating two great wings ford entirely from crimson light, spreading brilliantly at the Seraph’s sides. They shine off the windows of the building behind him, haloing him in their radiance.
Given the sheer force of his aura, at first I thought he was flaring, but now I realize this oppressive sensation is concentrated entirely on the spot. There’s nothing about his presence that resounds beyond the imdiate area, it’s just blaring down on and Seryana without a care. When a giant walks, their footfalls shake the earth by default.
“See, I sensed sothing nasty tugging on my feathers, so I ca to investigate,” he says, his mask tilting from to Seryana.
As if on cue, the Harbinger howls, glaring up at him with all her fury.
For a mont, he freezes, hanging in mid-air. I almost move to intervene, but then I hear the echo of his tongue clicking in his mask.
“So that’s your deal, huh? Bad move, though. The only thing shoving a dead person in my face is going to do…”
A gleam kindles a third of the way down the length of the spear Seryana is impaled upon. Its glow diffuses in opposite directions, intersecting horizontally through the red lance to form a crucifix of light. I’m not entirely sure what’s happening just by looking, but the Seraph is concentrating his magic at that point and matching it to Seryana sohow, similar to how he first pinned her in place.
“…is piss off.”
A pathetic choking gasp escapes from Seryana’s body, then a strangled snarl, followed by a screech of pure agony as she’s forcibly pried open. It’s just like every ti she tried to swallow into her Wound, but this ti, she never stops opening.
Flesh begins to regurgitate out of the hole that is Seryana like a frog heaving out its entire gut. Everything within is being forced outside. Black ooze gushes from the eyeholes of her mask.
Just like every ti before now, this Seryana was just another effigy… but every effigy I’ve encountered was connected to the sa source, the sa heart. The Seraph’s spear has punctured through the effigy and all the way into her Wound, so now she can’t just cast off the effigy like a lizard discarding its tail and escape.
Pieces of rotten furniture – chair legs, torn pillows, and shredded bed fras – all begin to spew out from inside Seryana as she’s ripped asunder and folded inside out. They spill all around her flailing, gurgling body in a heap of gradually accumulating debris, until at long last, she coughs up one final, lone intact object:
A curio cabinet, of course.
It’s launched through the air and lands with a clatter in the middle of the street between the Seraph and . Our eyes follow its trajectory, drawn to it the mont we see it.
A collection of photos is strewn about inside, but all the faces are scribbled out. There’s only one photo with a fra, and it has two people in, a man and a woman standing on a pier before a beautiful sunset, holding each other close.
The woman’s face has a wide, strained smile scribbled on in a way that looks just like Seryana’s own.
The man’s face is cut out of the photo entirely.
I don’t know if it’s been the sa cabinet I’ve always seen whenever I entered Seryana’s Wound, since the form and contents have been slightly different each ti, but it doesn’t matter. Both the Seraph and I know what this is just by looking.
And as Seryana whimpers pleadingly, stretching out one desperately grasping arm of braided hair towards the curio cabinet, the Seraph holds one hand up, spreading out his fingers, and then slowly lowers it, inch by inch. As he does, the curio cabinet begins to rattle against the street. Not a second later, cracks rive across its glass windows, first in long, singular streaks, then in an all-encompassing web of fractures.
The cabinet seems to blur as if enveloped in a heat haze, and then fluidly flattens against the ground as though made of rubber. The distortion disappears, and all at once, the cabinet collapses in on itself as if it were being crushed beneath an invisible hydraulic press. Wood splinters against the ground down to mulch. Glass crumbles from the sheer force until it’s nothing but dust. The particles are pressed through the photos, which practically liquify from the strain. And it all happens in an instant. With the slightest of motions, the cabinet is utterly destroyed.
Seryana’s arm freezes in the air, then goes limp along with the rest of her mangled form. Her mask cracks down the middle, then falls to the ground and shatters into chunks of stone. Where Seryana’s scribbled-on face once was, there’s nothing that remains.
The crucifix of red light dissipates with a sharp, hollow pop, and Seryana’s carcass topples to the cold street. Her entire body and the rubble wreathing it is soon enveloped in grey and crumbles away in clumps of ash. Only one thing rises from the dust as it fades from our reality and into nothingness: an orb of musculature like two hearts packed together into a rough sphere, glowing with sourceless black light.
The Stardust Seraph touches down on the pavent across the street. Seryana’s heart floats between us, considerably closer to him than .
“It’s a pleasure to finally et you, Eyna. If that’s even your na.”
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