The abandoned bathhouse smelled like mold and dusted incense. Cracked tiles. Steam-stained mirrors. Old vines crawling down the walls like veins. No electricity. Just candles, scattered in circles across the floor, their flames flickering as if something was breathing with them.
Jace stood shirtless in the center of it all.
The scar on his thigh glowed faintly, pulsing like a second heartbeat.
Reya walked the circle barefoot, dressed in a long black wrap soaked with oil and crushed nightshade. Her body shimmered with sigils drawn in ash and sweat. She held a silver dagger in one hand and a small clay bowl in the other.
"This is your choice," she said. "You walk in a human. You come out…"
"Something else."
"Maybe."
Jace exhaled through his nose. "You said you'd never do this ritual again."
"I said I'd never do it for someone who wasn't ready."
"And now?"
Reya met his eyes. There was something terrifying in her gaze. Not rage. Not coldness. Just a calm acceptance of how far she was willing to go.
"Now I don't have a choice."
The candles pulsed brighter.
Lena stood at the far edge of the bathhouse, arms crossed, silver revolver strapped to her hip. She wasn't part of this. Not really. But she was here. Watching. Guarding.
Ready to kill if things went sideways.
Reya knelt before Jace and whispered, "Strip."
He raised an eyebrow.
"You want me to take this seriously?" she said, smirking faintly. "Start by showing the Hollow God you don't fear being seen."
Jace pulled his jeans off, standing fully bare beneath the sickly candlelight. The scar burned hotter. The air felt thicker. Like the world was holding its breath.
Reya reached up and smeared something cold across his chest. It stung like acid. Bloodroot and venom, he guessed. The scent was sharp—feral.
She dipped her fingers in the bowl and began to mark his skin. Chest. Shoulders. Throat. Down the lines of his ribs and hips. Her touch wasn't tender. It was clinical. Controlled. Ritualistic.
Each symbol shimmered for a second before burning red and vanishing into his flesh.
Jace gritted his teeth. Sweat dripped from his brow.
"This is a convergence," Reya whispered. "You are not just drawing power from within. You are calling it from the Hollow Realms."
"And what does that cost me?"
She leaned in, her lips brushing his ear.
"Everything that makes you human."
He didn't flinch.
"Good," she said, and raised the dagger.
Jace didn't move.
She slashed it across his palm.
The blood spilled hot into the bowl. Steam rose from it. The glyphs on the floor hissed like they were feeding.
Then—Reya knelt before him, took the bowl, and drank.
Jace's breath caught.
It wasn't erotic. It wasn't grotesque.
It was intimate in a way he didn't know how to name.
Her eyes rolled back. Her body trembled. She dropped the bowl and stepped into the circle, standing nose-to-nose with him, her voice low and shaking.
"Now give it to me."
"What?"
"Your pain. Your rage. Your desire."
She kissed him.
And that's when the real ritual began.
It wasn't sex.
It was convergence.
Two bodies locking not for pleasure, but for transcendence. Their skin burned where it touched. Blood mixed. Glyphs flared up their spines like wildfire. Jace gasped as a current of raw power surged through him—violent, primal, blinding.
He saw visions—
—himself standing on a tower of bone, commanding legions of eyeless warriors
—Reya crowned in ash, tearing open the sky with a scream
—Lena drowning in shadow, eyes wide as something clawed out of her
—a girl he hadn't met yet, weeping in a graveyard of stars
—himself again, consumed, glowing with too much power, too much hunger—
Then—
Explosion.
The candles went out.
The entire bathhouse shook.
Lena had her gun drawn, aimed at the center of the circle, sweat dripping from her temple.
Jace stood there, panting, smoke rising off his body. Eyes burning violet.
Reya collapsed to her knees, spent.
The glyphs had scorched into the floor. Permanently.
Jace wasn't just stronger.
He felt lighter. Sharper. Like the world itself had tilted to accommodate him.
But the scar on his thigh had changed.
It now looked like a mouth.
A closed one.
Waiting to open.
Reya whispered, "You did it. You took it. You survived it."
Jace looked down at her. Then at his hands.
They shimmered.
Just for a moment.
Then the glow faded.
But the power was there.
And so was something else.
A presence.
Watching.
Waiting.
Smiling.