The blood essence flowed upstream against the raging river in her veins. Fists formed in the eddies and railed against the walls of her being like prisoners pounding against walls of stone. Hateful. Alien. Brimming with power she stole. It was unlike all the other essence in her body. Not gifted by the system, there was no subtle interworking of nature into her being, this was void gifted, void taken, and between herself and her blood there existed an indivisible layer — thin as thin can be — a hollow space.

A void.

And the stolen essence, the hate-fueled Blood, rebelled against this hollow barrier like a wild horse bucking the saddle. Though it could not touch her, it could fight her. It writhed and the threads of metal essence strained to keep the stitched power in place, but Zoe knew they wouldn't break.

She was stronger than her prisoner, and though she currently lacked the will to make of it a slave, or even to beseech it and make of it a friend, she knew the essence was hers. Like everything that was hers, she would find a use for it, but for now, she needed to find her friends.

Beyond the broken window, the lake sloshed with dying waves. The fight beyond, the slashing of grass blades, and the roaring of the yacht-bearing beast had died. Zoe stood and the attic floor creaked. The dust angel she swept across the floor caught the light through the broken window. There was no fleeting urge to lay back down, stretch, sleep — though she had been going nonstop for weeks now — the sloshing water beyond the window told her it was time to continue, and so she did.

"No rest for the wicked," she muttered to herself as she leaned out the window to survey the scene in the dungeon.

The mirror-clad yacht listed, sinking, as blood poured from it into the water and dyed it watermelon pink. She felt the smell of iron against the back of her throat as though it dripped past her lips.

The beast was gone.

Only the yacht remained, shattered and overflowing with bright gore. Had her wound killed it? She saw no shadow around the sinking vessel, no impression of the shape beneath, though her eyes struggled to pierce the offal-clouded waters, she was sure she saw nothing…

There. The island. The beast wounded, colossal, dragged itself upon the shore. Her eyes widened as a gasp of shock left her scarred lips. Had it grown, or was its true bulk so hidden by the water?

Its legs were bent like a turtle’s but where there should be flippers were loose, boneless hands. Upon its back and shoulders, it bore armor of shards — mirror and lightning-glassed flesh both — but the limbs were the pale grey of Zazzatha though stretched and strained to a colossal size. How large could something be? The entire beast stretched end to end like the main street of a small town, and as it crawled up the beach, crashing the trees, blood leaked from the slight wound in its back like a small creek drying in the summer blaze.

She had hoped that tearing out the tongue in the cabin may have killed the greater beast, but hope was not enough it seemed. Could she kill that beast at all? If so, how? Though Oriz’s words returned to her: maybe she wasn’t supposed to try?

The beast continued its crawl through the forest, dragging its useless legs behind it, boneless feet flopping with every shuffling stride. Its head strained against gravity as it glared at the gothic mansion at the island’s peak. Ominous, slouching, it crawled up into the forest and was swallowed by the trees.

A single blade of grass wafted past her on a wind she hardly felt. It spiraled, twisted, and continued toward a tall house with a rusted weathervane upon its crown. No wind could budge that time-fused piece of iron. No eye could discern the time-muted shape. But all the same, it flashed in the light, caught the eye, and let her notice the tattooed hand beckon from the window below.

Relief settled through her heart: her friends were alive.

But as her attention waned, the blood essence surged and suffered inside her as it tried to escape. She drummed a finger upon the stitched wound in her thigh as though it were the sealed clasps of a purse. Soon, she promised, and knowing the cruelty of such a promise, soon you shall be forged and you shall be mine, a technique, and a whisper of malignant defiance crept up through her veins and into her ears.

No. A voice like a beast shattering air, but only an echo, drowning, gurgling. No. Sinister and wet with a mouth formed by a slashed face. No. No. No.

She smiled and shrugged and leaped from the window. Her dive was far from perfect — never much of a swimmer — but she cut through the water all the same. Her strokes devoured the distance.

Below her, uneasy dead filled the sunken streets. They turned their rotted eyes to watch her passing. She knew not what rules had changed — or remained the same — but she did not reach for them and they did not reach for her. In moments, her powerful body brought her to the house with the weather vane. Two stories sat below the water and a third towered proudly above. She gripped the stone wall and hauled herself up.

Up the wall slick with moss and water. Up and through the window, looking for —

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An arm wrapped around her throat and pulled her down to the ground. She kicked out, but her legs were in the air. Useless. Her back hit the wooden floorboards with a crash that shook dust from the ceiling. The silhouette of her assailant moved out of sight. She twisted, but a blade of grass hovered above her eye.

She stilled and looked along the blade until she saw the grey hand, the slender wrist, of Oriz. Behind her supposed master, stood Bella and Anton. Grim hope bled from Bella’s eyes.

“Is that you, Zoe?” she asked.

Anton’s mouth was a firm line, the only sign he felt anything at all, but he turned the attention of eleven eyes upon her, silver curiosity burning, before he nodded.

“It’s her,” he said. “Not a parasite.”

Oriz snorted.

“You can tell?”

He tapped the serpent bracelet upon his bicep.

“This lets me see.”

“But can you see the hunger within her? Can you see the curse she fashioned from her own hands? I know you see the scars she gained from drinking too deep, too fast, too hungrily. But does she wear the mark of the glutton or does the glutton wear her?”

Bella placed her sword against the wall and stepped around Oriz. She crouched beside Zoe. With care, but with purpose, she pushed the blade aside. A sliver opened upon her palm even though she pushed the flat. She didn’t wince.

“Zoe,” she said. “What happened on the boat? You said you wouldn’t attempt the technique, but you threw us away. Why?”

Zoe met Bella’s gaze, her scarred lips twitched, and she turned away.

“My hand was forced.”

Oriz poked her blade’s tip at the tear in Zoe’s fishskin pants. She tapped the ugly stitches of metal essence.

“You used the parasite’s technique?” she didn’t sound mad, or concerned, only curious, and the sound chilled Zoe as she looked up at the alien woman. “You say your hunger drove your body, but the technique worked?”

“You didn’t think it would work?”

Oriz shook her head, but was it a disagreement or a confirmation?

“I’ve never seen anyone use a technique from the void before,” she clarified. “What you did when you cut out the Black Star radiation was one thing, but this…”

“You’re the one who told me it would work!” Zoe sat up, dripping water, leaning against a wall. “You said I could gain power!”

“I expected to be by your side when you experimented,” her blade shredded into leaves as she knelt beside Zoe. “You are the arrogant student I taught in the dunes, but your hunger wrestles like snakes in a bag. Do you know why your hunger took control?”

Zoe looked down between her feet. The pride in her accomplishment was overwhelmed by the source of her actions. By the hand that moved hers as though it were a puppet.

“Because I was weak.”

“No, not really. You can control hunger to an extent, but we all must feed. Your gluttony didn’t take control because you were too weak to resist. It took control because it knew there was food, but you were too weak to take it.”

Zoe clenched her fists.

“How am I supposed to fight against something that can take control of my body from within?”

Oriz shook her head sadly.

“You cannot fight something hidden within your nature, no more than the blinding lightning can fight the deafening thunder. There is a reason they are called curses. There is a reason they are called sins. But you should be proud of your accomplishment. And it is your —” Oriz staggered suddenly, clutching the wall. “We can discuss this later, now we —”

She puked rainbow threads. They coiled down her dress and fell toward the floor like worms. Dissipating and curling like smoke. Staining the floor like dye. Where the color bled, it left Oriz paler; her grey skin taking the hue of paper, her yellow hair the color of sun-beached sand.

“I have little time…” she wiped her chin. “Do you have the fragment?”

Zoe paused, a fist resting upon the stitches in her leg. Proud of her accomplishments? Or shamed for her hunger? She gazed up at the grey-skinned woman and knew nothing of what she thought. Alien. The word came to her suddenly, truthfully, and she realized how many assumptions she made about the woman who she called master.

But now was not the time.

She exchanged a glance with Anton and Bella, and in moments the four of them were staring down at the two Mirrorbell fragments. Dull, brassy metal, heavy pieces, cragged, ill-fitting, but parts of a whole. The metal surfaces cast poor reflections that moved with a rhythm of their own. Oriz nodded.

“We have two, and now there is only one remaining.”

A roar shook the building like thunder. As one, they turned to the window and beheld.

Upon the island, the great monstrous beast had reached the mansion. Heaved onto its crooked elbows, it stood as tall as the highest spire. Lightning pooled in the great maw, and cascaded forth. The furious blue bolts boiled through the air and struck the many rods sticking up from the mansion’s turrets. The black metal glowed white, sagged, and drooled across the mirrored tiles. More lightning followed. Windows shattered. Walls buckled and blew apart. Lightning without thunder, blue light seared into Zoe’s eyes, as the mansion glowed, weakened, burning.

And the great beast dipped its head and shuffled into the collapsing mansion like a burrowing rat. Its loose ankles flopped as it kicked apart trees and hilltops. Essence flared, seethed, and the monster stood on elbow and knee, the mansion fused to its back like a mighty shell.

How could they kill something like that? Was it even possible?

The roar that broke forth peeled the roof from the houses upon the lake.

Only Oriz remained standing in the third-story room. Zoe stared at a blue sky as the roar rang out in her ears like a tolling bell. Bloody trickles down her cheeks, but still that horrible sound tolled.

The world was a bell, and she the center, shook and rung by another’s hand…

And the last image she saw before the roar bowled her over echoed in her mind — the flash of metal upon the tongue — too small to be seen but seen nonetheless — a fragment of the Mirrorbell glinting before a monster swallowed it down.