Page 136 of The Reckoning of Starlight

The figure’s hand stilled, the chamber’s hum narrowing to a piercing tone.

“We need to leave,” Aesar hissed.

The apparition turned, light rearranging itself around a body that never settled. Its features shifted from angular to soft, masculine to feminine, neither and both, face after face surfacing and dissolving before any could hold.

Its gaze found Lykor, turquoise light holding the form of an elf without the weight of flesh. Essence surged through the chamber. Every surface flared, and pressure gathered behind Lykor’s eyes until his molars ached.

It reached for him.

The gesture struck inside his skull. An ancient presence drove through the channels Galaeryn had carved into his mind, following paths worn deep by years of coercion.

Lykor’s hands shook. His body locked.

The king’s magic had been iron forced through thought, crushing Lykor’s will until it bent or broke. He’d survived by burying Aesar in their awareness, partitioning himself behind obsidian doors, sacrificing whatever pieces he could afford to lose.

None of it had kept Galaeryn out.

But this touch offered warmth.

The hum thinned into something intimate, pressing against the inside of his skull with the tenderness of a hand cradling his face. It whispered without language, yet Lykor understood.

“Come home. The stars have kept your seat.”

A part of him writhed, trying to fight it. But his body—Aesar’s blood, the Aelfyn lineage Lykor had never claimed—leaned toward the warmth before he could wrench it back.

“Lykor.” Aesar’s voice cracked. “This is why Galaeryn experimented on you in the prisons. He was making you a—”

Vessel.

The king’s words returned.

Forged for divinity. Shaped to bear what others would break beneath.

The king had followed a design whispered into his mind. And the presence before Lykor recognized what years of torture had prepared him to become.

Lykor’s vision blurred, the crystalline walls bleeding into light. Aesar clawed through their shared awareness, dragging Lykor back, forcing himself between his mind and the presence claiming it.

Aesar lunged for control.

The switch struck like a blow. Their body staggered as Lykor’s awareness was driven aside. His hand lifted without his command, his jaw locking with Aesar’s concentration. Aesar seized their muscles and reached for their Well, hauling up enough Essence to tear open a portal.

Somewhere. Anywhere. It didn’t matter. Only out.

Essence scattered before it could gather, the crystal devouring every thread Aesar wove.

Aesar’s hold on their body tore loose.

“Lykor. Move.”

The presence seized Aesar within their shared awareness and yanked him beyond Lykor’s reach, like a body swept beneath ice.

Lykor slammed back into himself.

Too late.

His body lay beyond command, his mind screaming inside motionless flesh as it had in the prisons. There, stillness had been agony. Here, it offered peace.

A terrible, borrowed peace like belonging.