SAGE
Voices dragged me out of the dark. They scraped across my consciousness like nails on stone, pulling me upward from a depth that had almost become merciful.
Pain greeted me before sight did.
It lived everywhere—sharp, throbbing, gnawing—but it burned brightest in my chest, radiating outward from the place where the stake remained lodged beneath my heart.
Every breath felt like it dragged glass through my lungs. Every heartbeat seemed to grind the wood deeper into flesh, as though my body itself were conspiring against me.
I had felt worse before. But not like this. This pain was layered—physical agony braided with black magic, corrosive and invasive, eating at my magic, destabilizing my core. I could feel the corruption crawling through my veins like a slow-moving poison, unraveling me thread by thread.
I had hidden most of it from Darius. From Adam.
