Chapter 18 · She's Back. Not Human.

"Get your hands off me!" Ella screamed, but the words came out as a ragged wheeze.

She wasn't just exhausted; she felt like her soul had been put through a meat grinder. The golden entity—the thing that had just burst out of her mother's shattered jade pendant—wasn't just standing there. It was sliding into her. Not like a ghost, but like hot lead being poured into her veins.

Cain slammed into her side, his shoulder hitting hers with enough force to knock the wind out of her. He shoved her back against a jagged pillar of obsidian, his hand gripping her wrist so tight she could feel the bone creak.

"Fight it," Cain hissed, his voice a low, dangerous vibration in his chest. "Ella, if you let that thing anchor itself, you aren't coming back. You'll be a puppet with a pretty face."

"I can't!" she gasped, her back scraping against the cold stone. "It's... it's inside my head!"

Across the clearing, the stranger in white didn't move to help. He stood there, blood dripping from a shallow cut on his cheek, a twisted smile playing on his lips.