Page 80 of Eclipse Born

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ECHOES IN THE BONE

CADE

Istood in a dimly lit hallway, its walls shifting like smoke caught in a breeze, never quite settling into solidity. The floorboards beneath my feet seemed to stretch out impossibly far ahead, warping perspective like a funhouse mirror. The air felt thick, almost syrupy as I tried to move through it.

This place... I knew it. The faded wallpaper with its floral pattern, the creaking third step on the staircase to my right, the faint smell of cinnamon that always lingered in the air. My childhood home. But wrong, distorted, as if viewed through rippling water. The doors along the corridor were too narrow, stretched tall like the entrance to a mausoleum. The ceiling hung too low, pressing down with a weight I could almost feel.

Voices whispered through the walls. Fragments of conversations floated past me like debris in a current.

“...never should have brought him back...”

“...the mark is spreading...”

“...can't contain what's inside him much longer...”

I turned, trying to follow the sounds, but they came from everywhere and nowhere at once. A soft click made me freeze. One of the doors had swung open, just a crack. A sliver of red light spilled out, painting a thin line across the warped floorboards.

My feet moved toward it without conscious thought, drawn by some pull I couldn't resist. The door creaked as I pushed it wider, the sound unnaturally loud in the whispering corridor.

The room beyond was my old bedroom, but like the hallway, everything was wrong. Where my bed should have been stood a tall, ornate mirror in a frame of twisted metal that resembled vines... or perhaps bones. I approached it cautiously, my reflection coming into view.

Only it wasn't quite my reflection.

The figure that stared back had my face, my build, wore my clothes... but its eyes were black, flickering with embers like a dying fire. Dark veins pulsed beneath its skin, spreading like ink through water, a web of corruption that seemed to be consuming it from within.

I stopped, but my reflection continued moving, tilting its head with a curious smirk that twisted my features into someone I didn't recognize.

“Did you think you could come back whole?”it asked, my voice but with something else layered beneath it, a rasping, guttural undertone that made my skin crawl.

I stepped back, but the reflection's hand shot forward, slamming against the glass from the inside. The mirror shattered with a sound like a thousand screaming voices, shards exploding outward, slicing through the air toward me.

The room twisted, shifted, reality folding in on itself. I was suddenly on my knees, heat engulfing me. Flames licked at my skin, but they didn't burn—they seemed almost to caress, to welcome. The air was thick with the scent of burning flesh,the crackle of fire a constant, terrible music. Someone was screaming. Was it me? I couldn't tell anymore.

Hands clawed at my shoulders, my back, my legs, pulling me deeper into the inferno. Through the smoke and the haze, dozens of black eyes watched, hungry, eager.

“Your rightful place,”a voice whispered, so close it could have been inside my head.“Where you belong.”

“No,” I tried to say, but my mouth filled with ash. “This isn't me.”

“Cade!” Another voice cut through the roar of the flames, familiar, desperate. “You have to wake up!”

A light flashed, blindingly bright against the red-orange glow of the fire. A hand grabbed my wrist, yanking me upward, away from the clutching fingers and hungry flames. I stumbled, gasping for air that wasn't saturated with smoke and suffering. The pain lingered, phantom burns that throbbed with each heartbeat.

As my vision cleared, I looked up to see who had pulled me from the fire. Someone was stood over me, immaculate in his dark suit, not a hair out of place. He tilted his head, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

“See you soon,”he said softly.

Everything collapsed into blackness.

I gasped awake, sitting up so fast my vision swam with floating dark spots. My heart pounded against my ribs like it was trying to break free. Sweat soaked body, cold against feverish skin. For a moment, I was disoriented, the nightmare still clinging to the edges of my consciousness.

Sean's bedroom. I was in Sean's bed in his warehouse. The familiar sight of his weapons on the wall, the ancient books stacked on the nightstand, the faded band posters he insisted on keeping... it should have been comforting. Instead, I felt like an intruder, like I didn't belong here anymore.

The dream was already slipping away, details blurring and fading with each passing second, but the feeling—it was still in my blood. A sense of wrongness, of corruption, of something alien shifting beneath my skin.

I ran a hand over my chest, feeling clammy skin, my pulse hammering where the mark rested.

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