Echoes of the Core

Chapter Eight: Shadows of Silence and Guilt

The cold stone walls pressed in on Aeris like a suffocating weight. No light filtered into her cell, save for the occasional flicker of a torch in the distant hall, casting long shadows that danced like ghosts across the floor. The iron cuffs dug into her wrists, raw and bruised, a constant reminder of her captivity.

Each day felt like an eternity. Time had no meaning here. The days bled into each other, a ceaseless monotony broken only by the distant murmur of voices—guards perhaps, or council members passing judgment she wasn't allowed to hear. Would they kill her? Or show mercy? The uncertainty gnawed at her mind, her thoughts spiraling in a thousand directions, none offering solace.

She hadn't felt magic since the day they locked her up. The vibrations that used to hum in the air, the gentle pull of energy that had always been there, were gone. No, not gone. Muffled. As though someone had draped a thick, suffocating blanket over the world. Each time she reached out, hoping to grasp some sense of the power she once felt, her mind recoiled. The fear was too great. The thought of magic terrified her now.

The memories of the crowd's horror-stricken faces haunted her. Chasm Magic! they had screamed. Even thinking of it made her heart pound with a paralyzing dread. If she could never feel magic again, maybe that was for the best. Perhaps she didn't deserve it. Maybe the world was safer without her touching it, without her warping its energies and bending its will.

Aeris pulled her knees to her chest, curling into herself as the cold from the stone floor seeped into her bones. No one had visited her in days. Weeks. She couldn't be sure anymore. The silence in her mind was deafening. Why had they abandoned her? She hadn't meant for any of it to happen. She hadn't asked for this power, for this curse that seemed destined to ruin everything she touched.

Quinlan's absence gnawed at her the most. The man who had given her a name, who had promised to watch over her, was nowhere to be seen. She hadn't expected him to come, not really, but some part of her had held onto the hope that he'd appear, even just to condemn her. Aeris, he had called her, a name that had once carried so much hope, so much promise.

But now, the name felt hollow. A cruel reminder of what she had lost. She could barely remember the name she had before. The one from Earth. It had been erased when she arrived in Luminara, as if her past self had never existed. And now, Quinlan—who had bestowed her new name, her new identity—was gone. What did that leave her with?

Who was she?

She had never belonged on Earth. The memories of her childhood there were distant, like faint echoes from another life, warped by time and the bitter tang of loneliness. She had always thought herself different, isolated. But had it been as bad as she remembered? Had she truly been so alone? Or was that just something she had convinced herself of, a story she told herself to survive?

Maybe things would have been better on Earth, if she had just stayed. Maybe there, in her ordinary world, she wouldn't be locked in a cell, feared and hated for a power she never asked for. Maybe her parents hadn't been as cruel as she remembered, their voices not as harsh. Maybe, if she had stayed, she would have grown up to be just another person, someone insignificant but safe.

The cold sank deeper into her skin. Does it even matter? she thought, staring at the cracks in the stone floor, tracing their jagged lines. She was no one here. No one back on Earth. Aeris. What a joke. The name was meaningless now, just like her. The man who gave it to her wanted nothing to do with her anymore. She had seen this coming for years, hadn't she? How Quinlan's visits had become more infrequent, his tone more distant. He'd never really believed in her, not like she had wanted him to. He must have known, even then, that she would never be what they hoped for.