Page 74 of Echoes From the Void

“He’s not really here,” I say, watching the corruption ripple through the air. “It’s a projection?—”

“Through corrupted shadow essence,” Matteo finishes, moving to guard the door where Leo’s sisters have created a barrier of interlocked shadows. “Like the children at Shadow Locke.”

Leo’s father—or the thing wearing his form—tilts his head at an impossible angle. Those purple-veined shadows reach for Leo again, but this time they don’t attack. They try to seep into his skin.

“No!” I lunge forward, wrapping my own shadows around Leo protectively. Through our pack bond, I feel his horror as understanding dawns.

“He’s trying to corrupt me,” Leo gasps, fighting against the invasion. “Like he was corrupted. Like?—”

“Like Mom knew he would,” Luna calls from behind her shadow barrier. “Leo, remember what she taught you!”

Leo’s father moves with unnatural speed, corrupted essence pouring from his form like toxic smoke. The room fills with sickly purple light, and Lyra’s scream pierces the air?—

Until it doesn’t.

Her violin strings vibrate without being touched, shadow-song cutting through corruption. The purple light wavers, corruption recoiling from the pure notes.

“The frequency,” Leo gasps, realization dawning. “Lyra, keep playing!”

His father’s form shudders, those wrong shadows twisting away from the music. But then that twisted smile returns, stretching his face too wide.

“Sweet child,” it says in that voice that isn’t his father’s, that makes my shadow wolves howl in rage. “Do you think you’re the first to try? Your mother played such pretty songs too. Right until the end.”

Leo goes rigid against my shadows. “What did you?—”

The attack comes from everywhere. Corrupted essence explodes outward, drowning Lyra’s music in waves of sickly purple. Through our bond, I feel Matteo’s pain as he slams into the wall again. My wolves dissolve into nothing where that twisted essence touches them.

“Your mother’s death wasn’t an accident,” the thing wearing Leo’s father says with terrible gentleness. “She knew too much. Saw too much. Just like you’re beginning to see.”

“You’re lying.” Leo’s voice breaks, his shadows flickering with grief and rage.

“Am I? Ask yourself why she trained you so hard. Why she was so afraid at the end.”

Luna’s legal documents burst into shadow flames as she steps through her barrier. “Shut up,” she snarls, her power rising like a storm. “You don’t get to talk about her.”

All five Martinez sisters move as one, their shadows merging into something ancient and terrible. Something their mother taught them to become.

But their father’s corrupted form just laughs—a sound that makes my shadows recoil. “Perfect,” it says through that twisted grin. “Show me that power. Let me taste what she died protecting.”

The purple corruption surges like a tide, but this time it goes straight for Liliana—the youngest, the most vulnerable. Through our pack bond, I feel Leo’s desperate fear an instant before he moves.

He throws himself between the corruption and his baby sister.

The moment it touches him, Leo’s scream tears through every bond we share. The sound rips through me like physical pain as corruption wraps around him. Matteo roars, his shadows surging forward, but we’re too late.

The thing wearing Leo’s father laughs one final time. “A taste,” it says, “of what’s to come.”

Then it vanishes, leaving behind shattered glass and the acrid stench of corrupted essence.

Leo collapses.

“No, no, no—” Liliana tries to rush forward, but Lucia holds her back as purple veins spider across Leo’s skin. Each pulse of corrupt energy sends waves of agony through our pack bonds.

“Leo!” Matteo cradles him, his shadows trying desperately to counter the corruption. But we all see it spreading, inch by terrible inch, turning everything it touches that sickly purple.

Through our bond, I feel everything—his pain, his fear, but mostly his bone-deep relief that it was him instead of his sisters. Even now, even dying, Leo tries to smile.

“Well,” he manages through gritted teeth, “guess family breakfast is cancelled.”

---