When Elena opened her eyes, she had no sense of how long she'd been drifting.
Blood floated around her like a galaxy of constellations, shimmering rubies suspended in the black void. Her body hung weightless in the silence, curled inward, broken. She tried not to look at her arms. Burned, blistered, blackened down to the bone. And she tried harder not to feel them.
Time was strange here.
Slow. Circular. Unforgiving.
She smiled bitterly through chapped lips as memories flickered behind her eyes.
Niegal kissing her forehead when he thought she was asleep.
The weight of his arms around her, so tight, as if trying to hold her soul in place.
His grief, hot and jagged, pressed like a storm against her bones.
And Esperanza.
Her daughter. Their little Hope.
Tears, glimmering and laced with magic, slipped down Elena's cheeks and disappeared into the void.
She wasn't dead.
She was between.
Suspended in the storm-path of the old gods. Where souls cracked open and were remade.
Where Guabancex herself waited in the silence.
After what felt like eternity, Elena stopped trying to sleep.
Her body floated. Hollow.
So she dreamed with her eyes open.
She imagined Esperanza's tiny fingers in hers.
Kissing her baby's cheeks.
Breathing in her warmth.
The way Niegal held her like she might vanish.
"I'd do anything to see you again," Elena whispered into the dark.
And then-
Light.
A glimmer.
A golden thread in the inky black.
And a voice. Small. Familiar.
"Maaaami? Mami?"
Her eyes flew open.
"Esperanza?!"
She cried out, reaching toward the light, agony rippling through every nerve. Her fingers trembled, burned raw.
But she didn't stop.
"Esperanza!"
She blinked.
And found herself standing on a shore.
But not one from this world.
The sand shimmered like crushed pearl and bone, untouched by time.
The sea sang, deep and thunderous, humming with a power older than gods.
Lightning forked silently across a violet sky, though no clouds hung above.
A warm wind kissed her face, carrying the scent of salt and lilies.
Elena clutched her arms to her chest. They still throbbed, twitching with residual lightning. Her scars, once spiral and soft, now pulsed with stormfire, etched anew.
Guabancex is not done with me, she thought.
Sand clung to her bare feet as she walked down the beach, following the voice that cut through the wind like a hymn.
"Mama? Maaami!"
And there…
She saw her.
A little girl with wild auburn curls and silver eyes bright as twin moons. She sat cross-legged in the sand, giggling, building a castle with towers of polished shell and driftwood.
Magic flickered at her fingertips. green and violet, like her parents. Like something greater.
The girl turned, beaming.
That smile.
That joy only a child can give their mother.
"There you are, Mami!"
Then she paused.
Her silver eyes grew wide as she noticed Elena's arms, smoldering and trembling.
"Oh no, Mami. Is that why Papi's scared? And Titi Aurora too?"
Elena's throat tightened.
"Esperanza…?"
The girl giggled and added a starfish to her tallest tower.
"Who else, silly?"
Her little lip wobbled. She reached out a spark-covered hand.
"I know it hurts… but won't you come back to me and Papi?"
Elena sank to her knees, the pain crashing in waves.
Still, she smiled through the tears.
"I would love to," she whispered. "Do you know the way, mija?"
Esperanza nodded solemnly. She tugged her mother's skirt with care.
"Come, Mami. It's right here."
They walked side by side down the sacred beach.
Elena could barely breathe from looking at her- this living miracle, this child who should not have survived such a world. Her little feet left glowing prints in the sand, as if the sea itself blessed her steps.
The sky began to pulse.
Darkness gathered on the horizon.
Not a threat, but a presence.
She was coming.
The storm.
Doña Guabancex.
Elena felt Her approach. Not in sound, but in pulse. In pressure. The kind of sacred silence that comes before a tempest.
Her arms throbbed. Her soul rose.
They stopped at the edge of the sea.
Waves lapped at their ankles, warm and electric.
Esperanza pointed toward the water.
"I remember you told me water is healing," she said, her voice lilting. "This is a healing place."
She tilted her head- just like her father.
"I think I was here before? Oh well!"
She giggled and gave Elena a gentle nudge.
"Go on, Mami. I'll see you at home! I'm with Papi!"
Elena reached out as her daughter ran back toward the sandcastle.
The thunder rolled once.
Then silence.
She closed her eyes, chest full to bursting.
"Adiós, mi Esperanza… Mami's coming."
She took a deep breath-
And stepped into the sea.
The moment her foot touched the water, the sky split in half.
Lightning forked across eternity.
Rain fell sideways, gold and violet and burning.
And in the heavens above the veil, Guabancex roared.
You are not finished, daughter of flame.
You are the storm.
And the storm must rise again.