The storm raged, and the sky cracked with lightning, but James barely registered the sound. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, drowning out everything else. His grip tightened around the stolen sword in his hand. Still, it felt useless, laughable, like holding a twig against an avalanche.

  The woman stood before him, her skin shimmered, slick like polished stone, reflecting the flickering light from the ritual circle. A perfect statue come to life. Her deep violet hair crackled as if the storm itself had woven it into existence, and her eyes were lightning. Pure, endless, shifting bolts of white-blue electricity burned and sparked with every movement.

  She exhaled slowly. The wind shuddered, responding like a lover to her breath. Lightning licked across her fingertips, hunger curling at the edges of her too-sharp smile.

  James didn’t move. He couldn’t. His body screamed for him to run. To flee. Every instinct in him, memory, and ounce of training told him to move and get away. But he stayed.

  Because Max was behind him. Because Oakwood was behind him. Because if he ran, she would find them all.

  The silence stretched.

  Rain poured down around them.

  The Vessel tilted her head, watching him with a strange, almost amused curiosity.

  “Oh, how interesting…” Her voice was like rolling thunder, deep, resonant, carried on the wind. “Another god seed.”

  James clenched his jaw, unsure how to answer. She took a step forward, the ground trembling beneath her feet. James adjusted his grip on his sword. She watched him, observing him like one might look at an ant.

  “You’re not like the others, are you?” she murmured, almost to herself. “You’re different. Stronger. Or at least, you could be.”

  James swallowed. His throat was dry.

  She sighed and lifted a hand, studying her fingers as if they fascinated her. Lightning jumping from fingertip to fingertip.

  “You carry the scent of another,” she mused. “Someone… ancient. Someone forgotten. Like I was. Is she here?”

  James flinched. Swordpoint wavering as he raised it out in front of him.

  “My sister whispers to you, doesn’t she?” The Vessel’s lips curled and James’ heart stuttered.

  She knows.

  There was a flicker of movement in the puddle at his feet—not his reflection, but hers. The Sister's face was smiling back at him from inside his skin, and James staggered back. He shoved the fingers of his free hand through his hair and banged the hand against his chest.

  I am me. I am me.

  The Vessel chuckled.

  “Ah.” She took another step forward, slow, deliberate. “You don’t even know what you are yet, do you?”

  “I know enough.” James forced himself to straighten.

  She laughed. A truly amused sound. Like the rolling crack of thunder in the distance.

  “Oh, you’re delightful.” She extended a hand—not in attack, but an offer.

  “Come,” she said, smiling. “Join me, little god seed. Or I will kill you.”

  The wind howled. The storm raged. And James had never felt so small.

  But James didn’t move. Not at first. His eyes flicked to the gathered people at the courtyard's edge, their faces half-hidden by the shadows of their hoods. Some looked enraptured, kneeling in reverence. Others gripped their weapons, shifting uneasily, waiting. There were too many. Even if he could take her down—could he?—the moment he tried, they'd descend on him like wolves.

  Should I fight her? I came to save Max, and I have him. I need time to think.

  The wind howled, whipping around them, making his robe snap and beat against him. Cold and sharp rain lashed at his face, but he barely felt it.

  James licked his lips, letting his eyes drop to the hand she offered. The air around her crackled, energy rippling up her arm, licking at her fingers. Even the storm seemed to lean toward her, pulled by some invisible force.

  James tilted his head, mirroring her earlier gesture.

  “Join you?” His voice was low, wary. He let the words sit, watching for any shift in her posture or any sign of movement. “And what exactly does that mean?”

  The Vessel smiled, not cruelly or mockingly, but like a teacher indulging a child’s question.

  “It means power,” she said. “It means purpose.”

  James took a slow step to the side, casually shifting his weight. The Vessel didn’t move, but her eyes tracked him with lazy amusement.

  “Purpose,” he echoed. Another step. He was still too close to Max. “And I suppose you’d be the one giving it to me?”

  She let out a soft laugh. "Would you rather wander through the dark, blind, lost? Clawing for meaning in a world that will crush you under its heel? In a world I am to remake."

  James' grip on the sword tightened. Another step. The Vessel stood utterly still, but the air around her shifted, bending inward towards her in subtle ripples like heat rising off stones far away.

  “I already have a purpose.” His tone was short. Steady. One more step. "I don’t need you to give me one."

  She sighed, almost disappointed yet still considerably entertained by the exchange. “Is that so?”

  James shrugged, shifting his stance slightly. Just a little more. If he could get her to turn entirely away from Max...

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  “You don’t strike me as the selfless type,” he said, voice light, nearly conversational. “And you don’t seem the sort to share power.”

  The Vessel grinned. It was a harsh thing, bright white and too full of teeth.

  “Then perhaps we are not so different, after all.” James nearly missed a step. Something inside him twisted at her words. A whisper of doubt.

  A whisper of something else.

  Another step.

  The Vessel finally turned just enough that Max was no longer in her sight. Her back was nearly fully to him.

  James let out a slow breath through his nose. He still had no idea what the hell he was going to do.

  James took another step.

  The Vessel of Storms was still watching him, still amused, but James could see her patience had limits.

  Time was running out.

  The world shifted.

  A single raindrop hung frozen in the air, suspended just before hitting his nose. The storm paused, mid-rumble, lightning locked in the clouds, its jagged edges illuminating the sky like shattered glass.

  James felt this before. The stretching of a moment, he searched for her, but she wasn't there.

  Something cool pressed against his back. Fingers gripped at his shoulders, light as breath. A whisper curled into his ear, threading through his mind like a second heartbeat.

  "Enough, my little sapling." James spun, but the world was not the same anymore.

  He was no longer in the courtyard.

  He stood in a void of midnight and silver. The sky above was deep, endless black, dotted with a thousand stars that twisted and moved, reforming in patterns that he almost—almost—understood. Beneath his feet, there was no ground, only a surface like water, reflecting those same strange constellations, yet his boots made no ripple as he stepped back.

  She stood before him.

  The Sister.

  More real than ever before.

  Her gown was still spun of starlight, but now it held substance, each thread tangible. Her hair, no longer flowing like mist, was braided down her back, woven through with strands of silver. She was beautiful, in the way something ancient and distant is beautiful—like looking at the moon and knowing it would never belong to you.

  James clenched his fists. “What is this?”

  The Sister smiled, tilting her head.

  “A moment.” She gestured at the impossible world around them. “One that you are rapidly running out of.”

  James turned, trying to catch some glimpse of the courtyard, Max, and the Vessel. But there was nothing. Just this place. This silence.

  “I don’t have time for this,” he growled. Gripping his sword tighter.

  “No, little sapling. You have only this time.” She laughed, stepping forward, her bare feet making no sound against the mirrored floor.

  “Then get to the point.” James' pulse thudded in his ears.

  The Sister stopped inches from him.

  Her face was closer than it had ever been. Her endless eyes threatened to swallow him. She touched his face. Her fingers traced the scar from temple to chin, lingering along his jaw, light as a nighttime breeze.

  "Your time is almost up," she murmured, her voice soft, rich. “You saw her, didn’t you? The Vessel.”

  James swallowed hard, but he said nothing. He looked away, unable to look into her eyes anymore.

  “She gave herself to Him.” The Sister’s voice darkened, something like contempt curling at the edges of her words. "Fully. Willingly. And He has rewarded her accordingly.”

  Her fingers curled under his chin, forcing him to look at her.

  “Tell me, little sapling… do you truly believe you can face her alone?”

  James' breath caught.

  A flicker of the future—a vision or a truth, he couldn’t tell—flashed before his eyes.

  Max, broken beneath the Vessel's boot. Oakwood drowned in an endless storm. The Rusty Kettle on fire, Sebations lifeless eyes pleading, a hand outstretched to a still smoldering corpse. Sophia and Kurt are trying to hold back, but lightning tears from the sky, burning, destroying. The people he had bled for, suffered for, screaming as lightning reduced them to cinders.

  He closed his eyes. A tightness wrapped around his chest.

  “No,” he admitted, voice tight. “I can’t.”

  The Sister smiled. Not cruelly. Not softly. But a knowing, patient smile.

  “Then you know what must be done.”

  James tore away from her grip.

  “No.” He took a step back, then another. “I already gave you a piece of me. I felt it go. I felt it.” His breath came faster. “I won’t—”

  “You will.”

  The words struck like the tolling of a bell in his bones. The Sister tilted her head, watching him with something he couldn’t place—something like fondness and sorrow together.

  “This is not about what you want, James.” Her voice softened, but it did not waver. “This is about what is necessary.”

  “There’s another way. There has to be.” James shook his head

  “There isn’t.” She stepped toward him again, each movement slow, deliberate, careful, as though she knew he was about to bolt.

  She raised her hand so as not to touch him but to gesture around them. The constellations overhead swirled, shifting, pulling apart like a veil, revealing something beyond.

  A single massive tree stretched into the endless black, its trunk a twisting pillar of silver, and its leaves luminous, glowing softly like distant moons. Golden orbs hung for each branch, each pulsing with life.

  And at its base—

  A shadow. A man with an army. Curling, shifting, writhing like smoke, They chopped, they burned, they tried to tear the tree down. Some would grab the orbs and offer them to the man, who ate them with a mouth too large for his face and glowing red eyes.

  James’ blood ran cold.

  “The Storm is only the beginning,” the Sister said, voice heavy with something like grief. As the man ate another of the golden orbs. “This world was meant to be more. But He would have it all undone.”

  The vision flickered. The tree was gone. The stars reformed, swirling back into place, but the vision's weight remained.

  James was shaking. Cold sweat ran down his spine, and his palms felt sweaty. The Sister studied him for a long moment, then sighed and lifted a hand.

  “I cannot force you, James.” Her palm hovered just in front of his chest, fingers curled like she could already feel his heartbeat beneath them. “But you must choose.”

  Her light filled the space between them, waiting. It flashed with the rhythm of his heart, and he looked away.

  “Give yourself to me. Fully. Entirely.” Her eyes burned—endless constellations, infinite and unknowable. “Or die.”

  The final word echoed into him, vibrating through him like a tempest. She wasn’t threatening him. She was telling the truth.

  The Sister lowered her hand. “I will not ask again.”

  The world stretched, waiting for his answer. He knew time was running out. He knew he had to make a choice. And for the first time since this began, back in the Orchard. James felt it—A real choice.

  The weight in his chest, the storm raging in his head, the ache of indecision—he let it all go. His fists unclenched at his sides. His shoulders dropped.

  “Yes.” He whispered,

  The Sister smiled. Not victorious. Not cruel. Her fingers pressed against his chest.

  James felt it. A shift. A tug, like the moment before waking from a deep sleep, the second before slipping off a ledge—except he wasn’t falling.

  He should have fought it. Instinct screamed for him to hold on like before. But instead, he let go.

  The light rose from within him, like a thread slipping free of a loom, unraveling, unwinding, into smoke, incense, or breath. The Sister inhaled, drawing it from him, pulling it into herself, her eyes glowing brighter and brighter. She closed her eyes as though savoring the moment. Her ageless face relaxed, and a single phrase rang in his ears, not spoken but felt, resonating through every part of him.

  “Thank you.”

  The world shattered back into motion. James gasped as air rushed back into his lungs. The weight of the rain slammed against him, the wind howled, and the frozen storm roared back to life—but something was different.

  Above them, the sky split.

  From a full moon, a beam of moonlight pierced through the swirling clouds, silver and pure, cutting through the storm like a sword. It struck him, wrapped around him, through him—filling every inch of his body.

  He didn’t fight it. He leaned into it.

  James felt himself change.

  His skin shimmered like polished silver, glowing soft and cool as though lit from within. The pain, the aches, the exhaustion, the hunger—gone. Every wound, every scar—erased. His hands no longer trembled, his limbs no longer ached.

  His hair, once brown, burned white, shifting like starlight caught in water.

  His eyes—he could feel the way they glowed, not with the crackling violence of the Vessel’s lightning, but with the calm, steady radiance of a full moon.

  The sword in his grip changed.

  It grew, the steel warping, reshaping itself into something larger, sharper, and stronger. The awkwardness of the blade vanished; it felt like something made just for him, lost in a fall.

  James flexed his fingers around the hilt, feeling the power settle into him, not burning, not overwhelming, but radiating. The power was no longer foreign; it was his, and he was it. He raised his head.

  The storm above still raged, but now… now the moon shone through gaps in the clouds.

  The Vessel of Storms stared at him, and for the first time since she had risen, her smile was gone. James lifted his sword, catching the moonlight and casting it against the darkness.

  The Vessel moved—

  And the fight began.