Chapter 280: A process of confusion
Third-person POV
Seraphina could hear them.
She wasn’t sure how, or even why, considering how heavy her body felt. Her limbs were numb, her chest was tight, and her thoughts were slow and jumbled, like trying to move through water while having her legs tied together.
But through all that, she heard the voice. A deep, commanding voice that didn’t belong to anyone she knew was speaking to Electra and telling her to choose.
Seraphina wanted to sit up, to ask who this man was and what he meant, but her body betrayed her. It wouldn’t move. Her eyes refused to open fully, and her lungs struggled to draw in air. Still, her mind pushed against the haze, searching for Electra’s voice, and there it was, trembling but still as fierce as always.
"I just don’t want her to lose herself just to save me," Electra was saying.
Seraphina’s chest ached, not from whatever was wrong with her, but from the way Electra sounded, like she was on the edge of tears. Like she was desperate.
Another wave of fire rolled through Seraphina’s insides, and her jaw clenched. It hurt. More than anything had hurt before, but she didn’t care, not if she could say what she needed to say.
She tried once, but her voice failed her. She tried again, forcing the words out through the agony.
"Let it... happen..." she whispered, barely loud enough for anyone to hear. "It’s... part of it. I’m okay..."
She wasn’t. She was anything but okay, but she needed Electra to believe she was. She needed Electra to understand that this, whatever this was, was something they had to let happen.
Seraphina didn’t know exactly what she had become or what was happening to Electra, but she remembered the glowing forest, the fake Electra that she had met, and how she ended up in this situation after meeting that creature.
And even if she couldn’t explain all of that now to Electra so she could understand, she still had to do something.
With the last bit of strength in her trembling fingers, she reached out and found Electra’s hand, and then she squeezed it.
Electra gasped, and Seraphina felt it. She held tighter, as tight as her failing body could allow, and she hoped, prayed even, that Electra would understand what the squeeze meant.
It meant: Don’t stop it.
It meant I trust you.
It meant, I’m still here.
Electra looked down at her, eyes wide with panic, with too much emotion swimming behind them, but her expression softened when she felt Seraphina’s grip.
"Seraphina..." Electra whispered, crouching closer, her free hand brushing the sweat-slick hair from Seraphina’s forehead.
Seraphina could no longer respond, but she didn’t let go.
Electra’s eyes then shifted, past Seraphina, and up toward the figure that was standing at the other side of the space.
Her voice was trembling when she spoke. "She’ll be okay, right? Whatever happens... she’ll live, right? Nothing can go wrong, right?"
Her grandfather tilted his head. "That depends on what your definition of ’okay is, child. We may have totally different definitions for that word."
Electra’s grip tightened. "I meant, will she live a normal life? After all this. Will she still be... her? Can she still be her normal self?"
The old deity took a few steps forward, the glow around him dimming just a little as he did. "You ask the wrong questions, child. Seraphina will live, but as the vessel of a Phoenix, as the carrier of the flame that keeps you balanced, nothing about her life will be normal again. You shouldn’t have to ask such an obvious question."
The words hit Electra like a punch, and she blinked quickly, as if trying to convince herself she had heard wrong, but Seraphina already knew that this was always going to be a one-way road, and she had chosen to walk it.
"She didn’t agree to this," Electra said quietly, but with venom.
"She actually did, but even if she didn’t, she didn’t need to," her grandfather replied. "She was chosen long before either of you understood what any of this meant, Electra."
Electra looked down at Seraphina again, and this time, tears slipped down her cheeks, but she didn’t bother to wipe them away.
"If you truly wish to help her," her grandfather spoke up again, "then stop clinging to your human fears. Accept it, Electra. Accept the process for what it is. The binding has already begun, and what remains is your surrender to it."
Electra shook her head, too many emotions crowding her lungs. "You keep saying that—’accept it.’ What am I accepting? What does that even mean?"
Her grandfather did not flinch. He didn’t even blink. He simply studied her with the calm indifference of someone who had seen millennia of suffering and had grown immune to it.
"The more you resist," he said flatly, "the longer she suffers, and whether you like it or not, that girl’s soul is linked to yours now. If you stay in denial, thinking there’s a miraculous way to keep her from doing her duty as your vessel, you will not kill her body, but her soul may never fully recover."
At his words, Electra looked down at Seraphina again—at her closed eyes, her lips slightly parted as if she was fighting for air.
"I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do!" she snapped. "You keep saying I need to accept something, but you haven’t told me anything about how to even begin! How am I supposed to just guess my way through a process that could kill her?"
Her voice cracked on the last word. Her grandfather let out a quiet sigh, like a teacher disappointed in a student who just wouldn’t learn fast enough.
"Let her go," he said simply.
Electra blinked. "What?"
"Put her down. Stop trying to hold on to her like she’s dying when she’s not, at least not yet. Stop trying to control the moment, and just let go of her body. Let go of your fear. Stop worrying, and everything else will fall into place."
She stared at him, disbelieving. Was that really all he was going to say?
"That’s it?" she whispered.
His gaze didn’t waver. "Good luck, child."
And before Electra could so much as open her mouth to protest, he was gone.
Just like that.
One blink, and the space he’d occupied was empty, as if he had never been there in the first place, and as if he hadn’t just told her that Seraphina’s soul might never recover if she didn’t "stop worrying."
Why did everything about this place have to be so confusing?