Page 90 of The Madness Within

Her.

My mother. Young. Alive. Dressed in her Watcher robes. Her eyes locked onto mine, sharp, knowing.

“Ember,” her voice said, not a recording. Not static. A spell. “If you’ve found this… then the Veil has begun to tear. And you are no longer just my daughter.”

The image flickered.

“You are the bridge. The flame. The judgment they feared.”

I staggered back, the mirror pulsing.

Flashes flooded through me, too fast to hold. Too sharp to forget.

Me, standing in a ring of fire, power pouring from my fingertips. Me, screaming as the sky tore open and shadow spilled through. Me, kneeling beside a dying Dorian, my hands covered in blood and light.

I choked on air.

“She locked your birth behind a sigil,” Dorian said softly. “To hide what you were. And what you still are.”

“What am I?” I breathed.

He stepped beside me, his voice reverent. “You’re not just a Watcher.” He reached out, placing my hand over the glyph at the mirror’s base. “You’re theWatcher of the Veil. You keep the balance between both worlds.”

The second my palm touched it, the circle flared. The mirror cracked, not violently, but with purpose. The glyphs on the floor spun, and the room began to shake.

Power, my power, awakened in my blood like a rising tide.

I dropped to my knees, gasping. I could feel it blooming in me, tearing through the walls I didn’t know were there.

And then… I heard her again.

“You must choose, Ember. What comes through. What is kept out. And what must burn.”

The vision faded. But something inside me didn’t.

I rose slowly, every part of me buzzing, alive, aware. I turned to Dorian, my voice steady for the first time in days. “I’m not afraid anymore.”

He looked at me like I’d become something holy. Something terrifying. Somethingreal. “I know,” he said. “You finally see what I’ve seen all along.”

And in that moment, I understood.

I wasn’t meant to follow a path.

I was meant to forge it.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

??The Last Broadcast

Ember

I could no longer go back to my old life. Maybe once this was all over I could, but not now. Not with everything that’s coursing through my veins this very second.

I lit a candle with a thought. It flared blue. Hungry. My magic still tingled under my skin, humming with the pulse of something not quite human.

I sat at the mic. Just like I always had.

Except this time?

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