Page 115 of Claimed By the Mothman
What is this you have become, mortal and moth?
Nell turned toward it, spine straight, hand anchored in Sig’s. He was still returning to her, his self knitting back together through her grip, and that gave her strength.
“I have become nothing but what his love has made me.” The words spilled from her with the ring of truth and prophecy. “Whole, complete. More than I was before.”
The opal ring flared in agreement, and as Nell’s words rang through the not-space, a thin shiver of light began to rise from the stone. It trembled, suspended in the air for the briefest breath, then began to unfurl. It rose from her hand like an exhale turned tangible and arched outward, as though answering a call from across an impossible distance.
As though the light itself was reaching toward the Lustrum in longing—a lover’s reach across a great divide of time and space.
The Lustrum stilled as the light curled towards it, and the pulse surrounding them shifted. A deep harmonic note bloomed through the chamber, and the opal began to sing back in rhythm. Inrecognition.
Yes,the Lustrum whispered.This was once part of us.
The opal flared again, its glow now layered.
We did not see it when last you walked these halls. It was not fully awake, but now…now it burns.
The Lustrum turned to them both. It leaned closer, its voice a wind through a canyon, soft and unyielding.
It burns because of you. Your bond has awakened what we have forgotten.
Nell looked down at the ring on her finger and swallowed hard. “I get it,” she said quietly. “That feeling of hollowness you carry inside you for so long that you forget that, once, it was never there.”
She glanced at Sig. His breath was shallow, and his eyes still flickered slightly, but he was there. Her fingers tightened around his that were growing stronger by the moment.
“You didn’t recognize it before,” she said. “Because it had been gone too long, or because it had changed. Or because you had.”
Letting go of Sig’s hand briefly, she twisted the ring and tugged it gently from her finger.
“I know what it’s like… to feel empty.” She held the ring up, its light continuing to spill upward.
“It’s not fun.” Her voice cracked slightly. “But when you find that thing, thatpersonwho doesn’t just make you whole again, but makes youmorethan you were…”
She looked into the fractal bloom of the Lustrum without fear.
“Even an ancient liminal space deserves that.”
An invisible current stirred the air and wrapped itself around the opal ring. It rose without resistance and light began to unfurl in ribbons, reaching toward the Lustrum, weaving through its impossible geometries. The chamber brightened blindingly and, with one joyous tremor, the ring and the Lustrummerged.
Nell watched as the Lustrum shimmered even brighter and vaster than before. A sense of wholeness pulsed from it, and for a single moment she felt the word in her bones:Complete. We are once again whole. This bond has restored what was broken in us. But more than that…It has remade you.
Sig drew in a breath like itmeantsomething again. His wings twitched, first in reflex, then in rhythm. His fingers curled tight around Nell’s, claws careful but sure.
He looked at her.Reallylooked. And he waswhole.
The bond sang with a hum as sweet as honey.
Nell let out a laugh that broke halfway into a sob. She reached for him with both hands, cupped his face like he was the only real thing in the world, and kissed him. He kissed her back like it was the first thing he'd ever learned.
You were shaped for endings, but refused your shaping,the Lustrum whispered.I see it now. You are no longer Harbinger.
Sig looked up, antennae trembling. Nell tightened her grip on his hand, steadying. The Lustrum lifted one vast, many-jointed limb and extended it toward Sig.
You are no longer a signal of endings,the Lustrum intoned,but a watcher of what comes after. You are Continuance.
Light flared around Sig and the sigils etched into his chest and arms—the ancestral markings of Harbinger—blazed golden, shimmered, andfractured.
The patterns twisted in on themselves, curling into new shapes, both graceful and fluid with a strange new rhythm. When the glow faded, his skin bore a new script that was unequivocally, entirely his. No longer warnings, but markings of promise.
