Page 117 of Echoes From the Void

“You know what I see when I look at you now?” I ask, letting my shadows reach toward her corruption. Each tendril carries understanding gained from my father’s burden. “I see every child you broke trying to fill your own brokenness. Every life you twisted because you couldn’t bear to be alone with yourself.”

Her careful smile cracks slightly, corruption writhing more frantically around her form. “You understand nothing. I am perfecting evolution itself. Creating vessels strong enough to-”

“To what?” I cut her off, taking another step closer. The void pulses around us, remembering its original purpose. “To carry the emptiness you couldn’t stand? To be the weapons you were too weak to become yourself?”

Corruption explodes from her in a wave that would have destroyed me hours ago. The void itself seems to recoil as her power lashes out, making the frozen light shifters’ forms shudder with remembered pain. But now, after absorbing my father’s ancient burden, after understanding corruption’s true nature, I see it for what it is—her desperate attempt to matter.

“I made you!” she screams, her careful composure finally shattering. Corruption bleeds from her form like acid rain, eating into the very fabric of reality. “Everything you are, every power you have—I created it all!”

“No,” I say softly, letting my transformed shadows absorb her wild attack. Through our twin bond, I feel Finn pause in his work with the light shifters, his essence reaching for mine in support. Through the pack bonds, I feel their distant presence like anchors to sanity. “You tried to break what was already perfect. Tried to corrupt what was meant to be balanced from the start.”

Valerie’s form wavers as she registers the change in me. For the first time in all our years of twisted history, I see genuine fear crack through her perfect mask. Her corruption whips more frantically around us, but can’t quite hide how her essence trembles.

“What have you become?” she whispers, backing away. Her heels click against crystallized light as she retreats through her web of corruption.

“I’ve become what I was always meant to be,” I say, following her step for step. My wolves pace beside me, their forms steady with new purpose. “What you tried so hard to corrupt. What all of us were meant to be before you twisted purpose into poison.”

She backs further away, her corruption writhing more desperately now. Behind her, I catch glimpses of Finn working among the frozen light shifters, his light a beacon of what we’re really fighting for. What we’re trying to restore.

“Stay back,” she snarls, but the command lacks her old power. Her voice cracks like ancient ice as understanding begins to seep through her defenses. “You have no idea what forces you’re playing with. The sacrifices I’ve made to-”

“To what? Control evolution?” My wolves circle closer, their shadows flowing with new certainty. Through our bond, I feel Finn’s light pulse with understanding of what must come next. “You never understood the difference between sacrifice and destruction. Between willing change and forced corruption.”

Her laugh turns hysterical, corruption spraying from her like broken glass. “And you think you do? The scared little girl I found in that foster home? The one who let me-”

“The one who survived you,” I cut her off, my transformed shadows reaching further. “The one who learned what real strength is. What real sacrifice means.”

Through our bond, I feel Finn’s progress—each frozen light shifter awakening to new possibility, their crystallized forms beginning to pulse with remembered purpose. Above us, through our pack bonds, I feel the shadow beasts being restored to their original nature. All around us, reality itself thrums with remembrance of what it was meant to be.

“You’re alone, Valerie,” I say softly, letting my shadows stroke her essence like she used to stroke my hair before the worst punishments. “You’ve always been alone. That’s why you had to break others—to make them as empty as you. But look around. Look what happens when we choose something better.”

She does look—at the void transforming from corruption to possibility, at my father’s restored form, at Finn’s work of awakening. For just a moment, her perfect mask cracks completely. Beneath her corruption, I glimpse the scared child she must have been before she learned to break others.

“Please,” she whispers, and for the first time in all the years I’ve known her, the word holds no manipulation. No false sweetness. Just raw desperation that makes my shadows ache with recognition. “I don’t know how to be anything else.”

“I know,” I tell her, letting my transformed shadows reach for her essence. Not to corrupt or destroy, but to finally see her completely. To understand. “That’s why this has to end.”

My shadows wrap around her form before she can retreat. Through our connection, I see all of her—every layer of corruption peeling back to reveal the truth beneath:

A young shadow shifter, desperate to matter.

Centuries of consuming others’ essence to fill her own emptiness.

The moment she discovered she could corrupt light itself.

Every child she broke trying to create something that could survive her.

Every experiment, every torture, every twisted attempt to force evolution.

“No,” she thrashes against my hold, her corruption flailing like broken wings. The void pulses around us, remembering its original purpose as her power starts to unravel. “You can’t- I won’t let you-”

“Shhh,” I whisper, the same way she used to whisper to me in the asylum. My shadows cradle her essence as it begins to come undone. “It’s time to rest now. Time to stop running.”

“I could have made you perfect,” she sobs, her careful composure completely shattered. Corruption bleeds from her like mercury tears, each drop carrying centuries of desperate loneliness. “Could have made you strong enough to-”

“To what? Carry your corruption? Bear your emptiness?” My shadows tighten as understanding flows between us. Through our twin bond, I feel Finn pause in his work, his light reaching to support my shadows. “I was already perfect. We all were. You just couldn’t bear to see it.”

Through our pack bonds, I feel them sense what’s coming—Matteo’s predator nature recognizing necessary endings, Leo’s sunshine offering grace even now, Bishop’s Guardian magic mapping the transformation, Dorian’s frost patterns analyzing what must be done.

---