The dreams weren't his anymore.
They came wrapped in silk and blood, layered in soundless screaming and hymns sung backward. He didn't fall asleep—he was taken. As if some hand reached inside his skull and dragged his soul somewhere cold and wet, where the air tasted like metal and memories didn't belong to him.
Tonight was worse.
He stood at the edge of a battlefield.
Mountains loomed in the distance, their peaks cracked like broken teeth. Above, the sky bled purple. Not a poetic purple—real bleeding. Thick, oozing tendrils of it spilled through the clouds like veins snapping open. And beneath that sky, thousands of bodies lay in twisted, beautiful piles.
Jace didn't recognize the armor. Or the banners. Or even the weapons—curved things made of bone and starlight. But his hands knew them. They moved with practiced ease as he knelt beside a dying man, slit his throat, and whispered a prayer in a tongue his waking self didn't understand.
"Shai-vhal mar'essa. We do not mourn the broken. We consume them."
The voice wasn't his.
Not in tone. Not in shape.
It echoed from within him, low and impossible, layered with a dozen versions of itself—male, female, something in-between. And as the blood ran over his fingers, it smiled.
Somewhere in the fog of the dream, Jace tried to scream.
The body stood.
Walked.
And the field shifted.
Now he stood before a temple made entirely of bone. The gates pulsed with veins still alive, still twitching. A choir sang from within—no words, just raw desire stretched into notes, vibrating low in the gut.
The Hollow God had walked here once.
Had ruled here.
And Jace… had been part of it.
Not a servant.
Not a worshiper.
A piece.
The doors opened.
Inside, thrones carved from ribcages lined the walls. On each one, a version of him sat. Different faces. Different styles. But the same fire behind the eyes. Each bore a mark somewhere on their body—a seeping, thorny scar in the same place as the shard buried in Jace's thigh.
"You woke us too early." one of them said.
Another smirked. "No… just in time."
Jace couldn't speak. Not in here. He could only feel. And what he felt was hunger.
Cosmic. Carnal. Cold.
Then—she appeared.
The woman from before.
Obsidian skin. Golden veins pulsing beneath it like lightning trapped under glass. She didn't walk. She glided.
And when she spoke, the dream cracked.
"My lovely, broken little vessel," she whispered. "You are the first who has survived this long."
He tried to step back, but the floor melted into teeth. Hands dragged at his ankles. Lust and death and memory bled together.
"Do you know what you are?"
She reached out, placing her palm over his chest.
It burned.
"You're not a mistake. You're a reboot."
Suddenly the temple collapsed. Screams tore the sky open. Jace was falling, falling back into himself—
—
He woke up gasping.
Chest heaving. Sweat soaking the sheets. He couldn't move at first. His fingers were trembling, muscles locked. He could still hear the echo of her voice in his ears. It rang like church bells made of flesh and sorrow.
Reya was already awake.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at him. Her expression unreadable.
"You screamed in your sleep," she said softly.
"Yeah," he rasped. "I was somewhere else."
"I felt it," she whispered. "The air bent around you. Time slipped. You were gone for two hours. But to me… it felt like a week."
He swallowed. "I saw her again."
"The one who touched your soul?"
"No," Jace said. "The one who owns it."
She didn't speak. Just stared at him a moment longer, then slowly reached forward. Her fingers traced along the edge of his jaw, then down to his throat. Lightly. Tender. But not gentle.
"You're becoming something else," she murmured.
"I don't want to be anything else."
Reya leaned close. Her breath was cool against his skin.
"Then stop dreaming like a god."
—
Later that night, while Lena worked in silence carving new bullets with runes etched by hand, Jace sat by the window, tracing the scar on his leg.
It pulsed under his touch.
Not pain.
Not heat.
But a pull.
Like something underneath the city was calling to him.
It didn't say his name.
It hissed it.
And deep below, in the bones of the world, something ancient stirred.