Page 65 of Ghoul Me, Maybe

---

The Collector intercepts her—barely. They clash, her blade meeting a shield of compressed air that knocks her flat.

Mira throws fire. Lyle screams and hurls a rune bomb that blows a hole in the deck.

Everything is falling apart.

I crawl to my feet—if you can call them that. I’m not fully here anymore. Parts of me are shadows. My fingers phase through the deck.

But I seeher.

Bleeding. Fighting. Refusing to break.

And I know,I will not fade.

Not tonight.

I rise.

And the tiderises with me.

Water slams the ship—drenching all of us. But it listens to me now. Bends to my will. The Collector stumbles. His circle cracks.

I lunge.

Grab the relic from where it’s fallen.

And Iburn.

Sienna screams.

But I’m not letting go.

I focus every ounce of my being—every fragment left from the man I was, and the ghost I became—and I pour it into the relic.

It shrieks.

Glows.

Thenshatters.

The bay explodes with light.

The second I touch it—everythingstops.

Not just time.

Everything.

The relic hums in my palm like it’s alive—pulsing in time with a heart I no longer have. Light pours from the cracks in it, spilling like molten gold, ancient and angry andhungry. It doesn’t want to be held. It wants tocommand.

The ship groans beneath me.

Not from battle.

From memory.

The wreck iswaking up.

Its bones glow—every plank, every nail, every carved rune on the hull Jonas ever etched now pulsing with the same ghostlight bleeding from the relic.

---