Hatku didn't breathe.
Couldn't.
The silence pressed in like a coffin lid, heavy and absolute. The kind of silence that wasn't made from the absence of sound, but from the presence of something watching—something old, wrong, and uninvited.
His sister—if that thing was still her—clung to the upper stone beam like a predator poised above its prey. Her limbs were rigid, but not humanly so. The joints bent wrong. Her spine arched in a twisted crescent. Her fingernails had lengthened into clawed points, each tip glowing faint green, mirroring the wild flame twitching at her fingertips.
Her eyes…
They glowed.
Not with light, but hunger.
"...Tashina?" His voice cracked out of him like a splintered echo, a breathless fragment of disbelief. "It's me…"
She flinched. A subtle jerk of her head. Like a memory trying to surface through thick, black water.
A sound followed—not a name, not a word—but a deep snarl, caught somewhere between breath and scream. Her jaw creaked as it opened wider, unnaturally wide, revealing a row of sharpened teeth that hadn't been there before. They glinted in the dim torchlight like bone turned blade.
Then she blinked. Once. Twice. And something human clawed through.
"Ha…tku…?"
The voice was small. Cracked. A whisper bleeding through something else—like a voice trapped behind ice.
Hatku's heart surged against his ribs.
He stepped forward slowly, sword still at his side. One wrong move could snap her. One step too fast, and he might never get her back.
But her body seized again—like lightning had torn through her veins. Her arms spasmed. Her chest heaved. The black veins creeping along her skin now spread to her neck, pulsating beneath the surface like roots of rot.
And then—
The green flame burst from her back.
Not a flare.
Wings.
Twisted, contorted flame-wings. They unfurled toward the ceiling in silent defiance, bending backward like broken limbs reaching toward a god that would never answer.
Tashina screamed.
It was layered—hers and something else. As if the voice of a creature centuries dead had been forced to share a throat with her.
Hatku dropped to one knee, bracing himself as the scream shook dust from the ceiling.
She leapt from the rafters.
He braced for claws, for fury, for death.
Instead, she collapsed in front of him.
Writhing. Shaking. Her fists pounded the cold stone as her voice cracked, splintering through sobs.
"No—no—I won't—I won't hurt you—I won't—"
"Make it stop, Hatku! Please—make it stop!"
He was already by her side, hands on her burning shoulders. Her skin felt fevered—too hot, too wild. His palms hissed from the heat, but he didn't let go.
"Tashina! Listen to me! You're still you. You're still—"
Her eyes snapped open.
For a split second, they weren't hers.
They belonged to something else.
Something ancient. Something ravenous.
Hatku jerked backward, startled. And in that instant, the temple came alive with protest.
The wind howled. Not from any window—but from within the stone.
Ancient banners, untouched by air for decades, snapped violently. A tremor rolled through the floor. Cracks zig-zagged along the walls. The holy water font—blessed by generations—cracked straight down the middle.
Black liquid seeped from it.
Hatku stared, paralyzed.
Something sacred had been violated.
Whatever struck Tashina in the swamp—it wasn't just poison.
It was a corruption.
A soul-sickness.
Her flame—once the symbol of her strength and spirit—was now hijacked. Twisting. Alien. And the Brajin Temple, a place where warriors came to seek healing and divine insight, was rejecting her. It was reacting to her presence like a body reacting to disease. Purging her.
Hatku stood slowly, the weight of dread anchoring him to the ground.
She was mutating. Changing. Being claimed.
He didn't know how much time he had. Maybe an hour. Maybe less. Or maybe… she was already gone.
"Tashina…" he whispered, almost to himself. "I won't lose you. Not again."
Behind him, she whimpered.
The green flame on her back flickered brighter—then paused. Like it had learned something.
And for a brief second, the room grew colder.
The shadows along the wall stretched.
Hatku didn't notice that the torch nearest the door had gone out.
Something had entered the temple with them that night.
Something still hiding in the dark.