The Wedding of Bone and Ichor

The bottom of the world smelled of wet limestone and ancient, stagnant rot.

Elara lay on her back in the mud of the Abyssal Well. She couldn't feel her legs. She could, however, feel the jagged shard of her own femur poking through the white silk of her ceremonial robes. The robes were ruined, stained with muck and the bright, alarming red of her arterial blood.

Above her, a mile up, was a tiny circle of light. That was where they had stood.

Kaelen, the Hero of Light.

Isolde, the Mage.

Torian, the Ranger.

They had looked down at her as she fell. They hadn't looked sad. They had looked relieved.

*“It is the only way to seal the breach, Elara,”* Kaelen had said, his handsome face solemn, his hand resting on the hilt of the holy sword. *“Your sacrifice will save the world.”*

He had pushed her.

Elara tried to inhale, but her lungs were punctured. Every breath was a gurgle. She stared at the darkness pressing in around her. The bioluminescent moss clinging to the walls cast a sickly green glow, revealing piles of bones from "sacrifices" past.

She waited for the Light to take her. She had been the Saintess. She had healed the sick. She had knit flesh back together with prayer. Surely, the Goddess of Dawn would embrace her now.

But the dark remained dark. There was no light. There was no salvation. There was only the cold, wet mud and the knowledge that she had been discarded like refuse.

Rage, hot and unfamiliar, bloomed in her chest, overriding the pain.

She didn't want to go to the light. The light was Kaelen. The light was the lie that had broken her spine.

"I hate you," she whispered, the words bubbling past the blood in her throat. "I hate you all."

She didn't pray. She screamed. It was a broken, animal sound that tore through the silence of the abyss, echoing off the damp walls. It wasn't a plea for mercy. It was a demand for consequences.

* Good.*

The voice didn't come from the air. It vibrated in the marrow of her broken bones. It was the sound of a glacier cracking, of a whale song heard through miles of crushing pressure.

* The Light burns,* the voice murmured. *The Dark holds.*

The mud beneath Elara began to shift. It wasn't mud. It was flesh.

From the shadows, something coalesced. It was a woman, or the memory of one, tall and shimmering with a terrifying, cold beauty. Her skin was the color of moonlight on black water. Her hair floated as if she were submerged, drifting around a face that held eyes like dying stars.

Xylia. The Drowned Star. The thing the heroes were afraid of.

Xylia knelt beside Elara. She didn't look at the injuries with pity. She looked at them with hunger.

"They broke you," Xylia whispered. She reached out a hand. Her fingers were long, tipped with obsidian claws, and where she touched Elara’s cheek, the skin went numb with cold. "My poor, shattered thing."

"Save me," Elara wheezed. "And I will kill them."

Xylia smiled. Her mouth was too wide, filled with rows of needle-teeth that retracted as she softened her expression.

"I do not want a servant, little Saint," Xylia hummed. "I want a bride. I want to knit you back together with my own blood. I want to live in your shadow and eat the hearts of those who hurt you. Will you be mine?"

It was a terrifying offer. It was possession. It was damnation.

Elara looked up at the tiny, distant circle of light where Kaelen lived.

"Yours," Elara gasped. "I am yours."

Xylia leaned down. She kissed Elara.

It wasn't a kiss of romance. It was an invasion. Cold, black ichor poured into Elara’s mouth. The pain was blinding as her bones snapped back into place, fused not with calcium, but with void-glass. Her blood burned away, replaced by the starry substance of the goddess.

Elara screamed as she was remade, and Xylia laughed—a sound like the tide crashing against a cliff—holding her tight as they sank together into the dark.