The ground shuddered again, a deep, bone rattling tremor that rolled through the circle like a heartbeat growing impatient. Dust and ash lifted from the cracked earth, stinging their eyes, and the air tasted metallic, thick with the residue of power older than memory.
Leira braced her palms on her knees, gasping for air that refused to fill her lungs. Her hair whipped across her face, plastered with sweat and grime. Cassian staggered sideways, catching himself on trembling legs, teeth gritted against the ache that radiated from his chest.
The runes were no longer pulsing, they were pounding, drumming, beating like a furious second heart beneath the earth. Each throb pressed through their bones, vibrating through the marrow, sending tremors to their very spines. The circle exhaled through the ground, a low, rolling rumble that seemed alive, sentient, as if the world itself were leaning closer to listen.
Then the whispers started. Soft at first. Unclear. Like wind trapped under stone, curling and coiling into syllables just out of reach. Leira's head jerked up, eyes wide.
"Cassian… do you hear that?"
He froze, muscles tense, eyes scanning the perimeter. The whispers thickened, layering over themselves like a chorus of trapped souls. They were not speaking to them, not directly, but about them, intimate and piercing. Words scraped against her mind:
"Anger untamed…guilt festering… wounds unspoken…truth withheld."
Cassian's eyes widened. "Leira… this isn't just reacting to us. It's judging us."
The ground beneath them cracked sharply, thin lines splitting between the runes like spiderwebs forming in glass. Heat radiated from the fissures.
Leira's pulse hammered. "What are you saying?"
Cassian stumbled back, but the circle answered his movement with a vicious flare of red that licked up his leg, a searing sensation that bit into flesh without touching it. He hissed, stumbling, breath ragged.
"It's escalating," he said through clenched teeth. "It's forcing something…"
Before he could finish, the cracks widened further. Pale light spilled out, slow and deliberate, crawling toward their feet like a living thing, tendrils brushing their skin, sending icy tremors up their spines. Leira recoiled instinctively, heart hammering, nails scraping against stone as if to anchor herself.
The whispers grew clearer, sharper, cutting through the chaos like cold steel:
"Two halves of the same wound… two paths severed… broken…incomplete."
Cassian swallowed hard, voice barely steady. "It's talking about us."
Leira shook her head violently, hair sticking to her sweat slicked face.
"I don't understand this. How can it know us? Last time I was here, none of these things had happened yet… I didn't even know you. It can't possibly know…"
The circle interrupted her with a pulse so violent it threw them both to their knees. Dust choked the air, and their ears rang. Then the voice spoke, no longer whispers. Ancient, enormous, aware in a way that made the blood in her veins feel like it had frozen.
"This wound is shared. This wound must speak. Both sides. Now."
Cassian's eyes snapped to Leira's, and she met his gaze with a tremor in her chest, terror mirrored in his own. Light surged up from the runes, forming two separate columns: a deep red blazing beside Cassian, a blinding white beside Leira. The beams pressed inward, pointed at them, insistent and demanding.
Cassian's lips parted, voice raw. "It wants a confession…"
Leira's whisper trembled. "From both of us."
The circle responded with a deafening boom, shaking the dust from the walls of the surrounding clearing, rattling their teeth and making the hair on their arms stand on end. The columns twisted upward, enormous and jagged, like lightning frozen in air, bending inward until they pressed against the beating of their hearts. Every breath was heavy, every inhalation painful, each pulse of light syncing with the rhythm of fear and anticipation thrumming between them.
Leira gasped, hand flying to her chest as the white beam pressed inward, warmth burning like molten ice. Cassian choked, the red hook of light constricting around him as though seeking to wrench his very essence from his bones. Their muscles tensed, sinews screaming, nerves alight with pain and exhilaration. They weren't just beams of energy, they were demands, probing their hearts, probing their souls, pulling secrets to the surface.
"You have to say it," Cassian rasped, sweat streaking his pale face, eyes swimming with pressure. "Whatever it wants from you…Leira, it won't stop until you…" He cried out as the red column constricted sharply, sending a shockwave up his spine.
Leira reached toward him instinctively, trembling fingers brushing the air between them before snapping back.
"What if saying it makes things worse?" Her voice cracked, high and fragile. "What if this thing wants us to tear each other apart?"
Cassian's chest heaved. He forced himself to meet her eyes, pupils dilated with pain and fear.
"At this point," he gasped, voice ragged, "not saying it is already tearing us apart."
The circle pulsed again, tendrils of light snaking along the ground, vibrating in tune with the taut tension strung between them. The beams tightened, pressing inward like coiled serpents, and the ground beneath them groaned, trembling as though preparing for a final judgment.
Leira's lips parted, voice barely audible over the crackling of raw energy.
"Cassian… I… I don't know how to even begin."
He rasped, the air trembling around them.
"Start… just… start." His knees threatened to buckle under the psychic weight, chest straining against the pull of the beams. "Say it."
The light pushed harder, pressing in from every angle, icy fire threading along their nerves. Leira felt her chest constrict, each heartbeat an impossibly heavy stone. She screamed, voice raw and jagged, and Cassian buckled beside her with a strangled groan, his body shuddering as though the circle were ripping fragments of him out piece by piece.
The ancient voice surrounded them, omnipresent and merciless. "Truth… or death."
Leira's mind raced, fear threatening to drown thought, but the clarity of the circle's demand struck her like a hammer. She swallowed hard, trembling from the crown of her head to her toes. Her words were a whisper, almost fragile in the vast, oppressive space, but they carried weight.
"I didn't come here for the mission… that's not why I came with you. I came here because part of me still wants to understand you... part of me still remembers who you once were... remembers what it was like to… to love you… but I have to hold on to this hate, I need to… because I don't know how to live without it."
The circle reacted immediately, a convulsive shudder ripping through the earth. The beams pressed harder, red and white lances of energy driving into them with the insistence of a living being.
Cassian's jaw dropped, chest heaving, eyes wide with a mixture of shock, awe, and vulnerability. His hand lifted instinctively toward her, trembling fingers brushing the air between them as though reaching for the truth she had just bared.
The ground cracked wider, the runes pulsating furiously as the circle fed on the honesty she had given it. The whispers returned, louder now, layered and insistent. Almost as if acknowledging her confession.
"Rage..."
Cassian's voice broke through, strained and hoarse. "Leira… I… I…"
His confession hovered, unfinished, mingling with the heat and pressure of the circle. The red beam intensified, wrapping around him tighter, like it wanted every fragment of his pain exposed. He shuddered, voice trembling.
"I've carried the memories for so long… it's so heavy… I've tried to make right what I… what I can't undo. I wanted to come on this mission with you as the last thing I did before ending it all."
His breath hitched. "The Keepers kept me in line for centuries by using you to torture me. Every moment I hurt you, every look, every word, every single thing I ever did to you, has been on a constant loop since the first time. That's how they broke me. That's how they used me."
His voice cracked.
"They used you, Leira… the woman I loved… the woman I… love."
The circle roared, tightening around them like a fist, and the light stabbed downward with violent insistence. Air crackled, dust and ash spinning in a vortex around their legs, suffocating in its intensity. Their bodies trembled from the sheer force, teeth chattering, skin slick with sweat.
Leira's knees buckled beneath her. Her hands clutched her chest, shaking.
"Cassian…" Her breath was a rasp, trembling with equal parts fear and release.
Cassian's entire form seemed to shrink under the oppressive weight of the circle. He gasped, staggering, muscles straining, head lolling back in exhaustion and pain.
"It… it wants more… more from both of us…" He forced his voice out, raw and desperate.
The runes flared even higher, claws of red and white light digging deeper into their chests. The ground heaved like a living thing, trembling, groaning, and hissing, testing the limits of their endurance. Dust filled their lungs. Their hearts thundered against their ribcages, every beat echoing in the vaulted cavern of the world around them.
And then, abruptly, darkness swallowed them.
Not a blink.
Not a fade.
A violent, total black. The columns of light snapped back, the whispers silenced, leaving them suspended in complete sensory void. The pressure remained, subtle but absolute, as if the circle itself was holding its breath, waiting, patient and omniscient. Leira's hand floated instinctively toward Cassian, finding only empty air, her chest pounding in terror. Cassian's ragged breathing echoed in the void, his lips moving as though speaking, but no sound came. The circle had not released them; it had only paused, watching, testing.
And in that infinite black, one truth remained: they were still utterly trapped, utterly exposed, and the circle still craved more.