Choosing to say out of the Alliance, the Cinders are isolated in their own conflicts, and when Helia Cinder reaches to the void for answers, she inadvertently draws a creature out. Expecting to be eaten alive, she is instead left with a man with no...
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Ghost woke with a screech of pain, shoving near everything off the storeroom table as he came to. Panic set in as he recalled the blade slicing through his face and out the back of his skull, and he scrambled to stand. His legs gave out and tears filled his eyes as he slammed his hands on the table, breaking it straight through before his fists crashed into the foundation. The room shook but it was on the outer edges of Talamayas' ground level castle, so there was no risk to the structure here. Still, he had to temper his emotions. This level of hysteria would get him nowhere.
Thankfully, Talamayas was not here, as he'd insisted on doing reconnaissance during the daytime when Ghost could not accompany him. Some time-sensitive lead on Wren's whereabouts. If Talamayas had seen Ghost wake this way, he'd fall apart. Talamayas could not handle losing Stone after just learning he was alive again, especially not with Wren gone. Ghost couldn't handle it either.
Deep breaths.
The action did not do the same for a vampire as a human, since vampires did not require respiration, but filling his body with oxygen confused his body enough to calm the trembling. The vampire functions expelled the unnecessary compound, silencing everything around him as he tried to put himself together. Pyre still needed his help, even if Ghost was unsure if he himself would live out the day. It was in that harrowing silence that he felt it.
His connection to Stone, a voice calling to him.
Since the day Rastos had dragged Stone into the void, their connection had been severed, but now, he could feel it again. It drove him from his room out into the desert to a dead spot in the anti-magic, and he transported himself into the Cinder's temporary lodgings. No one was home, which was best for him, as he was weak in the daytime and did not have energy to communicate much. Without Stone needing his life force to stay awake, at least Ghost could manage on his feet.
The closer he came to where Stone had fallen, the thicker the grip on his other half felt, as if Stone was pulling him forward with an arm, calling to him with that soft voice, and trailing his fingers into his very soul with need for his presence. It persisted until Ghost stood over Stone's corpse, but he couldn't see it, not really. The call to his other half was so strong that Ghost used it to ground his spiraling thoughts as his soul reached for Stone's. Stone was here, just beyond a veil that he needed to push back.
Ghost had felt this once before. When Stone's body had refused to allow vampire blood to control him, he'd slipped into death but screamed for Ghost to save him. That time, as well as this, Stone had needed Ghost's blood to revitalize him, to drag him out of the pits of death, and Ghost would give him every drop if necessary. Wedging one of his short blades into the artery in his arm, he wrenched it over where Stone's face should have been. Dark magic pulsed at his feet as the blood soaked into Stone's fallen body, absorbing into his skin even when he had no mouth to drink it. A howl screamed from the place of Stone's death, one Ghost knew well as the void cried out for the soul Ghost was stealing away.
