There was no pain. Not anymore. Only the cold.
Not the cold of steel or the emptiness of grief but the primordial cold, the kind that lingered in graves and ancient wells. The kind that predated fire. That consumed the soul without ever touching flesh.
Blurs of memories and fragments continued in Kelsey's mind. Mike touching her face, calling out to her. Hecate taking control of her body and speaking to Mike. It all shattered to pieces before feeling herself fade again.
Somewhere, Kelsey floated surrounded by darkness.
She could still feel echoes of herself like a flickering pulse, the shape of fingers, the distant memory of breath. But even these began to unravel like threads pulled loose from a blanket.
All around her, a veil shimmered.
Dark and shifting, it wrapped around the fragments of her thoughts. A web of swirling shadow threads. Its strands pulsed with violet light, each one humming with a cold terrifying power.
At the center stood Hecate.
Not merely the woman who had entered her cell. But something colossal now. Something vast. Her form shifted from woman to wolf to flame to crone to queen and back again in a loop of identities. All of them real yet all of them false.
"You gave me permission," her voice came not as sound, but as words in her soul. "Now I bind what remains."
The veil and threads of shadow began to tighten. Each thread wound around what had once been Kelsey, her thoughts, her memories, her pain. The first thread slipped around her grief, compressing it, calcifying it into a silent pearl of indifference. The next wrapped her fear, weaving it into something sharp and vicious.
"I preserve the vessel. I consume the rest."
Kelsey tried to scream, but there was no mouth. She tried to pull away, but there was no body. Her essence flailed against the veil, but every motion only wound her deeper into its shadowy labyrinth.
Within her chest, a single flame remained.
Soft. Warm. A tiny ember of memory. Mike's face, laughing, vulnerable. His hand in hers. Their wedding day. The smell of his worn hoodie and prickly beard itching her face.
The flame tried to burn against the dark threads. And Hecate… paused.
"That," she murmured, "is not mine."
The veil wrapped around the flame but could not extinguish it. It smothered, bent, and distorted, but the memory resisted.
A single thought, almost too faint to recognize, echoed through the fading soul:
"Don't forget him."
Hecate drew back, expression unreadable. Her shifting form stopped in one of its rarer states youthful, maternal, face gentle with moon-pale skin and black-rimmed eyes. For the briefest moment, she almost looked… merciful.
Instead, she coiled her power around the flame like a serpent, whispering ancient words. The flame dimmed, locked inside a crystal of shadow, buried deep within the center of the vessel.
Kelsey's soul did not get extinguished. It was sealed. And in its place, Hecate descended.
The veil hardened. A crystallized weave of spirit, body, and will. Kelsey's eyes opened, but they were no longer hers. They were black like onyx, rimmed with faint violet. Her lips curled with curiosity. She stood slowly, looking down at her hands. Her nails grew into long jet black claws.
She flexed the body. Admired it.
"This will do."
She stepped forward and the shadows followed, her heels echoing like thunder.
Inside, far beneath the goddess's influence, the last fragment of Kelsey whispered into darkness:
"Mike… please remember me."
It began with silence as she arrived at her destination. Gliding through the main entrance embraced by the darkness. Her hooded followers trailing behind.
Then the sound of footsteps. Bare feet on cold concrete. A soft rhythm, pats across the ground in succession.
She stepped through the hallway of a military facility, no longer the trembling woman who had begged for mercy. No longer prey. The shadows now bowed to her stride.
Hecate smiled.
Her form still bore Kelsey's outline, same skin, same bones, same lips. But something about the way she moved had changed. Every motion was deliberate and predatory.
Two guards turned the corner. Their hands went to their rifles.
Then they saw her eyes. She didn't speak.
The shadows reached out, curling like black vines around their throats. They didn't have time to shout. The first man was yanked into the darkness before he was spat out as a shriveled husk. The second's skull cracked against the floor before he was drained of life.
Hecate exhaled seductively. "This will make a fine place to raise an army. Better than the warehouse where my beloved abandoned me"
The air had a familiar metallic taste. A language of power written in blood and fear.
She stepped over the bodies and continued down the hall. Doors unlocked themselves as she approached. Lights flickered and died.
At the central elevator shaft, she turned to the reinforced glass wall overlooking the city. Fires burned in the distance. Angelic forces gathered. Demonic hordes pillaged. Mortals scrambling in the ashes of their failing empires.
She placed a hand against the glass.
Her reflection smiled back.
"This world is ready."
Suddenly, her spine arched her body convulsing as a wave of resistance surged up through her body. Kelsey's soul. The seal cracked for a moment. One word echoed from beneath, desperate and small:
"Stop…"
Hecate blinked.
Then, slowly, she looked down at her own hand, watching as the fingertips trembled ever so slightly.
She frowned with irritation.
"Ah," she murmured, "still dreaming, are you little light?"
She closed her hand into a fist.
Chains of violet energy wrapped tighter around the flame inside her chest the imprisoned soul of Kelsey. With a whisper, Hecate quieted the resistance.
The trembling stopped.
Still, she looked out at the world again, and something inside her had shifted.
A knock came from behind her.
She didn't turn around. "Enter."
The door hissed open, and a robed figure stepped into the room clad in black, skin gray, eyes glowing with demonic fire.
"My Lady Hecate," he rasped, bowing low. "The Duke of Hell, Bune, prepares to challenge the beast. He believes the draconic chosen is a threat."
"He's correct."
"And the angels—"
"Will be baited," she interrupted. "Let the dragons and the angels bleed each other dry. I will reap what's left."
The demon hesitated. "And the humans?"
Hecate's lips twitched.
"Oh," she purred, "I have plans for the humans."
From the folds of her robe, she produced a silver chain crowned with a ring of thorns a circlet forged from iron, bone, and imbuned with her power. She ran a finger along it.
"This is the first," she said. "There will be others."
She turned at last to face the demon, and in her eyes burned something not even the Dukes of Hell could handle.
"You may leave."
The demon obeyed, vanishing like smoke.
Alone again, Hecate walked to the window and lifted the crown to her brow. As it settled atop her head, her skin cracked in glowing lines of violet and black. A pulse echoed through the world felt in temples, cathedrals, and pantheons alike.
In the depths of Olympus, an oracle screamed and fell to the floor.
In the underworld, rivers of the dead stirred.
The goddess of the veil had returned.
And she was wearing her crown.