“I love you…” Martin uttered with a bubbling hiss and then fell silent.

  Cinder blinked blood out of her eyes, focusing on her body to heal itself as she held onto her little ginger fox. He seemed lighter somehow, wrong, softer. He was bleeding all over, but then so was she.

  Cinder choked as Lissander’s fox ears dissolved, fur and skin sloughing off like melting wax. His lavish red jacket, diamond necklaces, and sparkly pants remained, collapsing into a heap in her claws as if the mannequin beneath had melted away, all of his innards spilling out. A sickeningly sweet, metallic scent filled the air, and Cinder realized with a lurch in her stomach that it was blood and something else… something dissolving, organic, and wrong.

  “Martin!” Cinder shrieked, her voice raw with disbelief. She reached for him, her claws outstretched, then recoiled with a wail. He was… gone. Melted into nothing but a puddle of red gore, white bones and expensive fabric from Arx.

  “No… no, no, no,” Cinder repeated, her rainbow wings trembling violently. With utter disbelief she realized that she was standing in a puddle of his remains.

  Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the sudden, terrifying silence where his vibrant presence had been. He had been talking to Vespera just a few seconds ago, and now… now there was only red slush and a pile of clothes.

  Vespera stood frozen too, staring at the spot where the fox teen had been, her feathers turning entirely black.

  Then, a sob tore from Vee’s throat, sharp and ragged. “No! No, it’s not supposed to be like this! You… you said you wouldn’t leave me! Fuck! Come back you ass!”

  Reality around them wobbled, grayness dancing at the edges. Both Omnid girls shuddered.

  “What the shit was that?” Cinder spun her dragon head left and right, her maw elongating.

  “I think… that… she… she’s waking up,” Vespera let out.

  “WHO'S FUCKING WAKING UP?!” Cinder growled, advancing on the Thunderbird.

  “Y-you h-heard t-the...” Vespera choked as Cinder’s claws closed around her throat.

  “WHOM?!”

  “Archangel Z-zadkiel!” Vespera blinked tears of blood. “She did something… she ordered… Alexa the System Wizard to wake up!”

  “Meaning what?!” Cinder growled.

  “I… I don’t know, okay?” Vespera shook her head. “Maybe Alexa is waking up from her dream! Or dying? Zadkiel said… this world, Omnithornia, it’s her dream, her… her dying wish! And now… now she’s waking up from it because of whatever eldritch bullshit the Archangel did!”

  “WHAT?!”

  “It’s just a guess, okay?! I just got half of myself back damn it! I didn’t… mean for this to happen!” The Thunderbird let out, silver-gray eyes wide in panic. “I didn’t think that freeing Zadkiel would do this!!!”

  Cinder spun on Vespera, fury erupting, hot and blinding, a tidal wave of grief and rage crashing over her. “You! This is your fault!” she screamed, her voice cracking. “You wanted to confront your father! You wanted answers! And now Martin’s… he’s GONE! DEAD! Maybe perma-dead!”

  “But… we’re perfectly fine…” Vespera let out. “Why would he… melt like that?!”

  A black-feathery Quetzi fist slammed into her, sending her backwards. “We’re Omnids, you idiot! He’s a human!”

  “I… I didn’t know that!” Vespera stammered, her voice trembling. “I didn’t know he was… human! I forgot and you didn’t tell me! I just wanted… I just wanted my father gone! The Archangel’s voice was the only thing that would make sure to unmake, to perma-unbind my father’s soul from his body. Look, we’re fine… maybe our fox… is fine too, it’s only his body that melted… not his soul… right?”

  “We don’t know that! You fucking bloody Thunderknob!” Cinder shrieked, her voice escalating into a furious crescendo as she punched and kicked Vespera. “You and your stupid revenge! You and your daddy issues! You killed him, Vespera! You effing killed Martin!”

  “I didn’t… I didn’t mean for this to happen, I swear!” Vespera cried, tears streaming down her face, leaving clean streaks through her own black feathers. “My dad tried to erase me! He tried to take away everything! I fed his ass to our Archangel to unmake him… to burn his soul away… Possy… The Corpse Seeker's extra-dimensional shielding should have protected us from the words of the Archangel!”

  “Well it didn’t, you dumb bird!” Cinder hit Vespera again.

  Their argument echoed in the dim, semi-transparent, cracked crystalline sphere as Quetzi fists slammed into the Thunderbird with increasing intensity.

  Amidst the horrifying slush of flesh and bone, amidst the discarded clothing, a faint shimmer caught Vespera’s eye. A pale, almost transparent hexagon, nestled amidst the gore. The Lazarus bracelet.

  “His… bracelet,” Vespera mewled.

  She ducked away from the angry Quetzi-assault and reached out a trembling talon and plucked Martin’s bracelet from the bloody mess. It was cold, eerily light, and undeniably real. “Transparent… just like mine. Ci! We have to get to the Lazarus cavern! Get the rest of his outfit!”

  Cinder, still reeling, paused her assault, watching Vespera’s movement. Then, with a guttural cry, she lunged, scooping up the crumpled red jacket, the sparkly pants, the diamond necklaces – everything that remained of Alexander, everything tangible, everything she could hold onto. She clutched them to her chest, burying her face in the garish fabric, the scent of him – of stolen, damaged hexasuits and something uniquely, infuriatingly him – still faintly clinging to the material.

  “Where’s the fucking nearest Lazarus cavern?!” The Quetzi-girl barked.

  “Hold on!” Vespera reached out to the nearest wall, sending sparks into the crystalline strata. “Shit. There’s… Possy’s not responding! Fuck! She’s out of power and the main dragonheart engine is cracked! It’s fine… this is fine! There’s a Lazarus well in the Simmi compound! We just have to get down there!”

  Miss Possible groaned, a low, grinding sound that vibrated through the chamber. A doorway formed, leading out into the damaged chamber.

  Cinder looked up, her vision blurred with tears, to see the crystalline behemoth shuddering, segments of its body dimming, the red glow fading. The Archangel’s words had wounded it too, a deep, metaphysical wound that even the ancient machine struggled to heal. Immobile, broken, it was just another casualty in Vespera’s war.

  “Ci! Come on!” Vespera insisted. She was already moving, her stride determined, her grief seemingly compartmentalized, locked away behind a thick wall of pragmatism.

  “What… What if it doesn’t work? What if the bracelet is broken because it’s transparent now, Syntropically stabilized?!” Cinder snarled, clutching the clothes tighter. She was struggling to think clearly, her mind flashing with images of the all-consuming gray waves, the Archangel’s words burned into her psyche.

  They stumbled out of the damaged Corpse Seeker, into the echoing silence of the Archangel’s prison.

  Vespera rushed out of the torn magisteel vault door, leaping over rubble with Cinder running after.

  In a few minutes of running, Vespera stopped at a sealed magisteel door painted with yellow lines. The Thunderbird sent electric sparks at a control panel, but the door didn’t budge.

  “What?” Cinder growled.

  “I can’t open the door!” Vespera snarled. “Everything’s sealed off! Fuck!”

  “So unseal it! Isn’t this your family’s compound?!”

  “It’s not working! Everything’s down without the archangel powering it up! Damn it!” Vespera cursed, kicking a piece of debris, the sound echoing harshly in the cavernous space.

  “So what now?!” Cinder growled.

  “There’s another exit… through the hole we’ve made. Up,” Vespera said. “Skyfall Academy… that’s the nearest Lazarus well!”

  Vespera and Cinder scrambled over the rubble, propelling themselves up with their wings, their boots crunching on shattered magisteel and pulverized stone. They reached the gaping hole in the SimmiTech compound wall, the one Miss Possible had so violently gifted them.

  A weird gray shimmer-cloud curtain was draped over the sky outside, broiling and shifting, replacing the usual Omnithornian blue with an unsettling, muted, dim tone. Another gray ripple, like a heartbeat of cosmic dread, ran over the cityscape, making the already damaged structures wobble precariously.

  “Whatttt,” Cinder stared up at the strange, alien sky.

  “Focus! Lazarus cavern, Skyfall!” Vespera barked, her voice sharp.

  “What the shit is happening?!” Cinder screamed back. Her Fractal Engine heart was pulsating madly for some reason. She quickly stuffed the blood-stained clothes into Martin's overpriced magitek backpack as not to drop anything.

  “I don’t know!” Vespera spun, her talons sparking dangerously close to Cinder’s face. “Just follow me! We have the bracelet! We can fix him, get him back!”

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  The two Omnid girls rushed out of the half-demolished SimmiTech compound to the street.

  Another gray wave rushed across reality, making them stumble.

  A deafening wail suddenly ripped through the air, a sound that resonated deep in their bones, a sound that screamed of utter, unmitigated doom. Doomsday alarms began to blare across Leviathan’s Cradle, a chaotic symphony of klaxons and sirens echoing across the sprawling city.

  Cinder cried out, her feathers shifting through panicked oranges and reds as she felt a sharp, phantom pain lance through her entire being again.

  “What in the Abyss is that?!” Cinder yelled over the rising cacophony, clutching at her skull.

  Vespera’s eyes widened. She snapped her talons and choked. “The local… Aetheric density… it’s spiking!”

  “WHAT?! HOW?!” Cinder yelped.

  “I don’t know!” Vespera shook her head, eyes glowing brilliant silver-gold. “It’s like we’re… in freefall. Reality is in freefall! Local Magrad is at 14k mpm and rising. 20k… thirty k. Thirty six k. Fuck. FUCK!”

  Rainbow-shimmered, violet lightning struck from the gray cloud with a deafening boom. It remained in place like a static shear, cutting across the street. The two Omnids stared at it in horror.

  City-wide speakers crackled to life, overriding the doomsday alarms with a frantic, synthesized voice. “Celestorm Emergency! Celestorm Emergency! All citizens are ordered to proceed to the nearest designated extradimensional shelter immediately! Repeat, this is a Celestorm Emergency!”

  Then, a second voice, deeper, more authoritative, resounded across the city.

  It was Premier Lecross, the leader of Omnithornia. "This is not a drill. This is not a drill. The Wormwood Leviathan is waking up. Cradlefall is no longer safe. Planet-wide evacuation order is now in effect. All citizens are to conceal themselves in extradimensional spaces, evacuate to designated Arx-gates or leave Omnithornia immediately! Repeat, this is a planet-wide evacuation order…” The voice of the Silver-Wing Party Premier voice broke, “Slayer Nazareth… have mercy on us all.”

  Vespera didn't hesitate. She grabbed Cinder’s hand again, dragging her across the street filled with horrified, panicked Omnids. “We need a Sky-Glider NOW!”

  They found a silver confused-looking sky glider quickly parked at a nearby office building. Vespera zapped the wings making them unfurl, leapt onto the hexamesh seat and snapped the pale tentacle to her forehead.

  “Where are we GOING?!” Cinder yelled over the doomsday sirens.

  “Skyfall!” Vespera snarled, her face a mask of grim determination. “Lazarus well! We’re gonna bring him back, Ci! I swear to Slayer Nazareth, we WILL bring him back!”

  “Bring him back and then what?”

  “I don’t know what then!” Vespera shook her black and white feathery mane. “Hopefully… everything will get fixed when we do!”

  “Io,” Cinder declared. “We need to find Io. We need to gate to Arx!”

  “I don’t have a phone!” Vespera cried out. “Call him!”

  The glider took off, bursting out into the open sky, narrowly avoiding another blinding lightning-shear. The Sky-Glider wobbled violently as Vespera fought to regain control, the gathering Celestorm currents buffeting the crystalline construct, threatening to tear it apart.

  “Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!” Vespera barked. “Hold on, Ci! This poor beastie’s gonna come apart any second now!”

  Cinder clung to the Thunderbird, her rainbow wings fighting against the wind to maintain balance. Below them, Omnithornia was descending into chaos. Omnids were running in the streets, wings flailing, scales shimmering with panic, their forms blurring in the rising aetheric distortion.

  The ground was cracking, shuddering, buildings coming down.

  As the Sky-glider pierced through the gray shimmer-cloud, they broke through into a sky that was no longer blue, no longer even gray.

  It was… green. A brilliant, sickly emerald aurora pulsed above the clouds, painting the entire planet below in an eerie, otherworldly glow.

  And then they saw it.

  The Wormwood Star.

  It wasn't a comet. It was… something else. Something vast, something eldritch, monstrous, something that shouldn't exist. It covered the entire sky, a hollow diatom-shaped thing with endless silver-blue stars twinkling within its innards. A swirling vortex of silver-green light, the tail of the comet stretched across reality itself, tearing through the long fractured moon, making the very fabric of existence wobble and fray at the edges.

  The planet beneath them shuddered, groaning under the weight of something ancient and terrible awakening.

  Cinder gasped, her rainbow feathers losing their vibrant colors, shifting to muted, terrified black-grays. Vespera’s face paled, her usually confident facade cracking under the sheer cosmic horror of the inexplicable comet overhead.

  “What? What the shit… how is it there?!” Cinder cried out staring up at the Wormwood Star with wide blue eyes.

  “I don’t know!” Vespera trembled. “It… maybe it never left. Maybe it’s always been here and we just didn’t notice, didn’t spot it… until Zadkiel destabilized some pivotal aspect of reality with her words!”

  Their Sky-Glider, already struggling against the Celestorm, bucked violently as reality itself warped around them with green shimmering fire twisting into tornadoes tearing up the city far below.

  “Vee! We’re losing control!” Cinder screamed, fear lacing her voice.

  “I know! I KNOW!” Vespera shrieked back, fighting desperately with the living glider, sparks flying from her talons. “Damn it! Damn it! DAMN IT!”

  The Sky-Glider spun, plummeting downwards. Below them, the towers of Skyfall Academy, tall and elegant, began to glow. A brilliant, blinding white light emanated from their crystalline spires, a desperate, defiant beacon against the encroaching cosmic event overhead.

  They were going down, crashing towards the last bastion of hope, or perhaps, their final tomb.

  Vespera managed to spin the glider into a sideways spiral and the flying beast smashed into the ground near the front entrance.

  The Omnid girls leapt out from the damaged glider and rushed into the innards of the building and down the stairwell towards the Lazarus well.

  Rainbowy cracks rushed across the white bricks and gothic revival arches all around them.

  Vespera snapped her talons.

  “One hundred thousand mana per cubic meter of air,” she choked out, hand entwined with Cinder. “We’re fucked. We’re so fucked. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. This is all my fault isn’t it?”

  “The fuck are your sorries gonna do?!” Cinder barked, dialing Io’s number with her cracked phone.

  “Yes?” The moth picked up.

  “Io, get to the Lazarus cavern of Skyfall!” Cinder ordered.

  “Already there,” the mothman replied with a voice that was far too calm for the situation. “Everyone’s there. We’re waiting for the end.”

  . . .

  Io stood below the Lazarus statue holding tightly onto trembling June and Magdaline. Scrutimancer Satosh stood behind them, inhaling deep, eyes glowing red. Katherine stood behind them.

  “The end?” June asked. “What do you mean, Io? This can’t be the end of Cradlefall… why?!”

  “I feel it in my bones,” Io said. “This is what I was talking about earlier. There’s nothing ahead.”

  “Nothing?!” June growled, her liquid mane spinning madly.

  “Absolutely nothing,” Io shook his head. “This is the disaster that ends it all. Something pivotal broke, waking up the blood of the Leviathan beneath all of Cradlefall. At least we all get to enjoy it together.”

  “We have to get to Arx!” Mags growled.

  “Katherine, can you take us into the deep?!” June cried out.

  The girl in the black dress studded with beast cores shook her head. “No. The deep is boiling from inside out. I can’t even go under. There’s no way out. We’re boned. Extra boned.”

  “We’re waiting for our friends,” Io said, chewing on a pocky, his gray wings fluttering. “We’re not leaving without them... If we can even leave that is. Ci and Vee should be here soon.”

  The Thunderbird and Quetzalcoatl burst into the Lazarus cavern. The golden stars above them pulsed erratically, flaring and dimming. The silver fluid in the Genesis well wasn’t still anymore. It was boiling, rising. Pulses of gray emanated from it, rushing up across everything.

  Lightning danced across Vespera’s entire figure while Cinder ignited, glowing like a rainbow reactor.

  Vespera shoved the pure white Lazarus bracelet into Cinder’s hand. “Ci! Now! Together!”

  Cinder’s fingers, trembling uncontrollably, fumbled with the transparent hexagonal bracelet belonging to Martin.

  “What if it doesn’t work?” Cinder choked over the wailing sirens and the groaning academy structure above them. “What if… What if the aetheric density is too high now… what if we don’t get him back?!”

  “It has to work!” Vespera snapped, her voice laced with a desperate, brittle hope. “It’s the only effing thing we have left, damn it!”

  Tears blurred Cinder’s vision.

  The Genesis Well, once a mirror of still quicksilver, now churned like a tempestuous sea, its surface rippling and spitting with unnatural energy, throbbing like a beating heart.

  “Io!” Cinder barked, her voice cracking. “Gate! Now, damn it! Open the gate to Arx! Open a gate to anywhere! Get us outta here as soon as we get Martin back!”

  Io nodded. He raised his harmonica. His gray, fuzzy fingers trembled as he brought it to his lips, the mournful, disaster-laden notes struggling to form amidst the cacophony of alarms screeching down the stairwell.

  As Io played, a swirling vortex of blackness began to coalesce near him, the air around it crackling and distorting.

  Cinder and Vespera shoved the transparent bracelet into the churning silver fluid of the Genesis Well, letting go of it.

  For a moment, nothing happened. The fluid continued to churn, the crystals pulsed, the alarms wailed. Despair, cold and suffocating, began to creep into Cinder's heart, a heavy weight threatening to crush her.

  Then, something bloomed within the silver fluid.

  It wasn't a human shape, not the ghostly, newborn form they had ordinarily witnessed rising from the well countless times before.

  It wasn't flesh, nor bone, nor the formation of a nervous system spreading outward from a human heart.

  Instead, it was an explosion of spreading white fire.

  Brilliant, incandescent fire, erupting from the depths of the Genesis Well, a pillar of raw, untamed energy that defied all logic, all expectation, all hope.

  Fire of every color imaginable, swirling and dancing, ignited across the silver Genesis fluid surface, consuming it, transforming it. Crimson and gold, sapphire and emerald, violet and amber, all blending and blurring into a blinding, radiant inferno.

  The Genesis Well ignited brighter, blinding them.

  A low rumble started deep within the earth, growing into a deafening roar that shook the cavern to its foundations. The bioluminescent gold winked out, momentarily plunging the cavern into near-darkness, the only light now emanating from the furiously burning Genesis Well.

  Io’s gate winked out before it even formed, engulfed by the radiant fire exploding from the well.

  “One million mpm,” Vespera choked out as reality around them boiled.

  “H-how?” Cinder trembled. “What do we do?!”

  “Hold on!” Vespera screamed, grabbing Cinder’s hand, her talons digging deep into the Quetzi’s scales. Io reached out blindly, his hand finding June’s, then Magdaline’s, then Satosh’s, Katherine hugged all of them, a chain of desperate connection.

  The Genesis fluid began rising, a tidal wave of radiant, rising fire erupting from the well, engulfing everything. An all-searing inferno rushed across reality, flames that licked at their scales, their feathers, their very being, vibrating their Fractal Engine hearts.

  Cinder gasped, her breath catching in her throat as the liquid fire washed over her. It wasn't just heat, it was… something else. Something alive, something conscious, something ancient and terrible and beautiful all at once.

  Memories of the past two weeks rushed across her mind, fragmented images of the Wheel, of Arx, of a human and a fox with green eyes, of laughter and tears and shared dreams in a crystal tower. Of love she'd found and lost.

  As she drowned in the waves of liquid fire, desperately holding onto Vespera, as her vision blurred and her consciousness began to fade, a single thought, a desperate plea, a final wish bloomed in her Fractal Engine heart, echoing against the rising tide of magical, catastrophic, absolute oblivion.

  “Please… please, just let everything be okay. Let him be alive. Let me find him… again, no matter where, no matter how…”