Jasmine walked with Micah and Uncle Grey, turning down another hallway. Everything was quiet now,
The air felt heavy,
She dropped to the cold floor, her legs giving out. Her shoulders shook, but she tried not to cry. The tears were there, stuck behind her eyes, but she didn't want to let them fall. Not yet. Not like this.
Micah didn't say anything. He stood near her, close enough she could feel him, but he didn't touch her. She knew he was hurting too. He looked straight ahead, like if he looked down, he'd fall apart too.
Uncle Grey leaned on the wall. He looked older now. Messy hair, tired face, like all the strength had been drained out of him. He didn't cry. Just stared at the floor like he couldn't believe they were still standing.
Then—footsteps.
New ones.
Not theirs.
They all froze. Jasmine held her breath, listening. The steps were slow, careful, like whoever it was didn't want to be heard. Her heart started beating faster. Micah moved a little in front of her. Uncle Grey stood straight again, his hand twitching by his side.
Jasmine wiped her face with her sleeve, trying to clear the tears that had escaped.
From the corner of her eye, Jasmine saw movement shadows peeling away from the walls. Draven was the first to emerge, his long coat catching in the draft like it was alive. Then came Leo, practically dragging Camilla, who looked more like a ghost than a person. And Malachi gods, Malachi looked like he might detonate if anyone so much as breathed too loud. His face was flushed, jaw clenched so hard it looked painful. His eyes weren't wet but they shimmered on the edge.
Liliana came last. Jasmine's chest tightened. She looked... wrecked. Hair half undone, steps uneven, arms wrapped around herself like they were the only things keeping her together. And maybe they were. She looked like she'd cracked somewhere inside, but hadn't had time to break yet.
Draven froze the moment he spotted them his dark gaze locking, but he said nothing. Not a single word, not like before when he threatens them through the cell bars with that smoothness in his voice.
The air felt like it dropped ten degrees.
Then the lord's voice cut in, like steel against stone.
"Where are your elders?" His eyes slid toward Camilla. "Where's Lady Maevera?"
The last part was colder. Too specific. Too pointed.
Jasmine's heart kicked against her ribs. Nobody spoke.
Camilla just looked into space like her aunt would materialize if she looks long enough.
Leo's jaw worked like he wanted to say something, but couldn't.
Malachi… Jasmine didn't even think he heard the question. He was breathing too loud. Staring through the wall.
The silence spread. Like a crack in glass.
Jasmine hated it. Hated how it wrapped around all of them like some invisible noose. Someone had to say something.
She stepped forward, not even knowing what she was going to say, but God, anything was better than this silence.
"What's going on?" Jasmine muttered, breath ragged. "Why's there... so many things I don't understand what are these creatures...?"
As if summoned by the very question, their screeches tore through the air again this time louder, sharper. Closer.
Somebody gasped, "Oh God!" but Jasmine couldn't tell who. The voice felt like it could've come from her own throat. All of them turned at once.
Down the hallway, one of the creatures floated no, hovered weightless, as if it didn't obey the same rules of gravity as they did. It had no legs. Just shadows, trails of smoke and flickers of sickly green that pulsed like dying embers. Its face or what might've been one twitched like it was struggling to remember being human. Its gaze locked onto them with a hunger Jasmine felt deep in her chest.
"Stand back!" Uncle Grey barked, stepping forward without hesitation.
But Draven, who had been watching the opposite side, snapped around. "There's no standing back," he said grimly.
At the far end of the hall, another one had appeared.
Leo swore under his breath and unsheathed the blade he kept at his side. "There's no running either," he muttered, jaw clenched. "I might as well die fighting."
Jasmine didn't speak. Her body was already moving shifting weight, adjusting stance. Her hand shook, but she held it steady. This was it. The last fight. The last time she'd get to see Micah's teasing smile, or Uncle Grey's stubborn frown. The creatures moved fast. Faster than shadows. One blink and they'd be on them.
She barely had time to breathe before the thing lunged straight at her.
Jasmine raised her hand, not knowing what it would do, maybe nothing. Maybe she'd be swallowed whole.
But—
Nothing.
No impact. No cold bite of claws. No searing scream.
Silence.
She opened her eyes slowly, breath caught.
The creature was right there. Just inches from her face. Hovering. Stilled mid-lunge, twisted in its ghostly motion like someone hit pause. The sickly green glow around it buzzed softly, but the sound didn't move. It didn't breathe. It didn't blink.
She turned.
Uncle Grey hadn't moved. His arm still halfway raised. Micah too frozen. Everything else, frozen.
Except—
"What's going on?" Leo asked, stepping forward warily, his voice slicing through the stillness like it shouldn't be allowed.
Camilla stumbled back, nearly tripping over her own feet. She had been too close too close to the thing's face. Up close, its mouth looked like a pit that swallowed screams.
"Malachi... was this your doing?" Leo asked, voice low, eyes narrow. But Malachi just shook his head, face pale. He looked more scared than ever.
Draven didn't answer. He just watched. Brow furrowed. Thinking.
Then words cane from the shadows. Calm, like they had no business being there.
"They are called Vakari," a woman said.
Everyone turned, instantly on edge expecting another monster, another horror.
But it wasn't. It was a woman. Older maybe fifty, maybe sixty. Her clothes were worn and stained and looked like they'd once belonged to someone else, someone who had given up, but the way she held herself upright, and steady Jasmine felt something shift.
"Returned spirits," the woman continued, "called by imbalance. By pain."
"Who are you?" Jasmine asked, her voice thin and uncertain.
The woman gave a small crooked smile, tired but sharp around the edges.
"Eleandra," she said. "Keeper of Balance."
Draven let out a slow, mocking chuckle, the kind that always made Jasmine's spine tighten. "Of course, Keeper of Balance. And how exactly did you end up rotting in my father's cell?"
No one spoke. The silence around them thickened, like fog closing in. But the woman this Elandra only smiled. Unshaken. Unbothered.
"There are things you need to understand," she said gently, completely sidestepping Draven's taunt, like it hadn't even brushed her skin. "Things olden. Forgotten. Buried beneath your wars, your grief, your pride. This curse will not stop. It will rage on until these souls are appeased."
"Appeased how?" Camilla asked, her arms crossed, her tone sharp but bored in that way only she could pull off. She looked like she didn't care, but Jasmine could tell her fingers were twitching. "How do we even trust this? We've lost everything."
Elandra's face softened just barelyand her gaze landed on Camilla. "I love your spirit, child. Pure. Brave. But grief doesn't care about purity. It claws through even the strongest. Still, you—all of you—have been chosen."
"Chosen by who?" Liliana snapped, her voice dipped in venom. "I didn't ask for this. I didn't ask for any of this. All I want is everything to go back. The way it was. To begin again."
"Of course. Of course!" Elandra said with maddening calm, brushing off Liliana's frustration like she was brushing lint from her shoulder.
She stepped forward not fast, but with a kind of command that pulled the air with her. The others stiffened, not sure whether to run or raise a weapon. Jasmine's breath hitched.
Elandra didn't falter. Her walk was steady, like she owned the space with no fear. Not even a whisper of hesitation.
She came to a stop in front of Jasmine.
Her eyes were gray, deep like storm clouds, and hollow like they'd seen every century rested on Jasmine for a moment. Then she turned away, her voice colder now.
"None of you asked for this. But that doesn't change what's coming. If you do nothing... the world you know will vanish. Slowly and quietly, like it never existed."
"But... my family's here," Jasmine said, her voice cracking around the edges. She turned her head toward them still frozen, still stuck mid-breath, horror burned into their features like a painting left too long in the sun. "I can't leave them behind."
"Once you step into the timeline," Elandra said, turning slightly toward her, "everything will stop. The clock will seize. The outcome, your outcome—will decide if it resumes... or not."
"So you want us to go back in time," Malachi cut in his voice skeptical. "To fix the future by breaking the past. That sounds like a one-way ticket to hell."
"Of course," Elandra said, smiling, too calmly. "It would throw off the balance—"
"And you want us to walk into it like heroes?" Liliana hissed. "March into the jaws of time with our eyes shut and a smile on our face?"
Draven took a step forward his fists clenched. "What's your gain in this?"
"I'm not doing anything," Elandra said looking unfazed and almost amused. "I'm helping fix what's already unraveling."
Malachi's brow furrowed. "If we go back… what happens to us? Time doesn't let go that easy. There has to be a consequence."
Elandra's eyes glimmered. She tilted her head slightly, like a cat amused by something beneath its paws. "You should know," she said with a smile that felt like knives behind silk, "breaching time comes with a little cost—"
"Out with it already!" Draven snapped, stepping forward, his jaw twitching hard. He'd had enough—enough games, enough of the nonsense she was spewing.
"You will lose your memories," she said plainly. "Everything you know of the present—wiped. And if you fail to fix what was broken in the past…" She turned, slowly. Then pointed directly at Draven. "You. All of you. Will cease to exist. Like none of this—" she waved a hand at the frozen hallway, the heavy silence "—ever happened."
"What?" Jasmine barely breathed the word.
"That's not just unfair," Leo said, stepping forward now, his voice heated. "That's stupidity. You want us to walk into the lion's den without weapons, without memory, without anything but a damn wish?"
"I'm not that heartless," Elandra said, turning from them now. "Even if I don't call the shots, I won't leave you stranded. I will leave trails and clues. A path. Whether you follow it is up to you."
She stopped midway down the corridor, the air around her humming.
Then, without warning, she touched the wall. Her fingers barely brushed the surface yet behind her, the world faded. Not like a dream, not even like sleep. But like reality was being shut off, piece by piece. A light switch flipped inside a void.
"Remember," she said, her voice now strange and echoing, deeper than it had been. "You alone hold the key..."
And then—
She was gone.
"No—wait!"
"Shit!"
There was no time to breathe. No time to think.
The floor dropped.
Not literally, but it felt like the earth had been pulled out from under them. Jasmine fell, along with the others, into a void so dark it didn't feel like falling anymore it felt like being erased. She could still see them, Camilla, Draven, Malachinfalling beside her.
Then the light twisted. The sound fractured. Time buckled.
And all five of her senses were stripped away like they'd never been hers to begin with.