Echoes of the Core

Chapter Nine: Whispers in the Dark

The cell was colder than it had been the night before.

Aeris curled into herself on the stone floor, her breath misting in front of her. There was no light, no warmth. The jagged walls closed in around her like a familiar nightmare. They reminded her too much of the asylum—the place her parents had abandoned her to so long ago. The same chill, the same crushing isolation. She could still hear the hollow echoes of her younger self, screaming for someone to come back, for anyone to save her. But no one had.

The council had been her salvation once, pulling her from that place, from the madness that had threatened to swallow her whole. They had promised her a future, a purpose. And now, they had locked her up just the same.

A bitter laugh escaped her lips, but it sounded foreign, distant. They had saved her only to break her again, and this time, it was worse. The betrayal cut deeper. The despair, once fought off, settled in like the fog she had known all those years ago—slowly, quietly, until it was too thick to breathe.

She pressed her hands to her temples, as if she could stop the memories from pouring in, but they came anyway, and with them, the realization. She wasn't sure anymore where the asylum ended and the cell began.

The council hadn't yet decided her fate. Whether she'd be executed for what she had done or shown some twisted form of mercy—mercy. The word tasted bitter in her mouth, because what kind of mercy was there for someone like her?

But before the tears could come again, something strange happened.

A glow—soft and faint—bloomed in the corner of her cell.

Aeris froze, her heart stuttering in her chest. She sat up slowly, her breath catching, too scared to blink. The glow couldn't be real. It couldn't be. She had been locked away for so long, with nothing but the cold and the dark as her companions. She had forgotten what light even looked like. Her mind had played tricks on her before—sounds that weren't there, whispers that vanished the moment she strained to hear them. Was this just another cruel trick?

She shook her head, trying to clear the fog that clung to her thoughts. The glow wasn't her magic. She knew that much. It was too gentle, too... peaceful. Her magic was a force of chaos, wild and untamed, a tempest that raged inside her. But this light—it was soft, like moonlight filtering through the trees. It brushed against her skin like a warm breeze, melting the chill that had burrowed into her bones.

Her fingers trembled as she reached out, terrified and desperate at the same time. What if it disappeared? What if it was just another illusion born from her crumbling mind? She had no idea what was real anymore. How could she, when the days bled into nights and the walls closed in tighter each passing moment?

But the light stayed. It didn't vanish when her fingers grazed it. Instead, it held her, calm and steady, as if it was real, as if it could pull her from the edges of the madness that had gnawed at her for so long.

Her breath hitched, confusion swirling in her chest. Was this the presence? The one she had felt before, distant but constant, like a shadow just beyond her reach? Had it finally come to save her, or was her mind playing cruel tricks again? She couldn't tell anymore. Had she wished for it so desperately that her own thoughts had conjured this light—offering her comfort in the form of a hallucination she was too broken to resist?

Was it real, or just another dream slipping through her fingers?

She didn't know. She couldn't know. And in that moment, she didn't care. Real or not, it made her feel less alone.

But then, just as gently as it had come, the light began to fade. Darkness swallowed the cell once more, and she was left alone again. Except now, something had changed. A crack had formed in the suffocating wall of despair around her—just enough to let her breathe. Or maybe that was part of the illusion too.