Elion

July 13, 1985. Saturday. 6:25 a.m. Timber Hollow. The McGregor sawmill. The main hall. They hadn't gotten far. Just a couple hundred steps along the broken road leading from the sawmill to the mines when the air behind them shuddered. Not a sound—a jolt, as if something enormous had struck the ground deep beneath the sawmill. And then came the scream. It was high, layered, and in it were mixed voices they knew and voices they'd never heard. Mira's voice—but not alone, as if torn into a dozen fragments. And the voices of others: children's, elderly, male, female, full of terror and pleading. And through it all, laughter. Familiar, glassy, tinkling. "That's her!" Tim spun around and ran back before anyone could say a word. Zoe and Leo rushed after him. Branches whipped their faces, feet slipped on the wet grass, but they ran without feeling the pain, because the scream continued, growing louder, more terrible, inhuman. When they burst into the hall, they saw it. Elion stood in the center, over Mira's body. But it was no longer a body—it was a doll he was playing with. His long fingers gripped her head, and from them streamed lilac light, penetrating beneath her skin, into her bones, into every cell. And Mira was changing. Bones were breaking. Not with a crack—with a quiet, wet snap, as if tearing wet fabric. Shoulders bent back at impossible angles, ribs protruded through her skin, and the skin turned translucent, like parchment lit from within by lilac. Her spine arched into a curve, and every vertebra was visible—glowing, pulsing. Arms and legs elongated, fingers coiled into spirals, and at the joints, new, extra joints appeared, alien to the human body. But worst of all was her face. It melted. Features blurred like a painting left in the rain, and from that mush, new faces began to emerge—three, four, five, layering over one another. And each one smiled. Three smiles, four, five—spreading sideways like cracks in glass. Eyes opening and closing, and in them was nothing but lilac fire. She was screaming. But the scream came not from her mouth—mouths were multiplying too, each moving on its own. The scream came from everywhere at once, and in it Zoe recognized her own voice: "Don't touch her!" and Tim's voice: "We won't leave you!" and Leo's voice: "I don't know how to fix this," and someone else's, unfamiliar, an old woman's: "Don't go there, child," and a child's: "Mommy, I'm scared," and a man's bass: "It breathes here." All the voices Elion had ever heard poured out of that distorted body like a broken radio. Tim lunged toward her. "Mira! Mira, I'm here!" He tried to grab her, pull her away from Elion, but his hands passed through. Mira's flesh had become smoke, light, nothing, and Tim's fingers closed on emptiness. He tried again, screaming, crying, grasping at air, tearing through the lilac haze, but he couldn't touch her. And she kept screaming, the faces multiplying, the bones breaking over and over, as if someone were reassembling her body in the wrong order. Leo stood with his hand over his mouth, tears streaming down his cheeks. Zoe grabbed the stone from her pocket, hurled it at Elion, but he didn't even flinch. The stone passed through him and struck the wall. "Let her go!" Zoe screamed. "You promised!" Elion raised his head. His hollows where eyes should have been now burned white, not lilac, and in that white light was emptiness—not like before, but final. Sated. "I am not holding her," he said, his voice calm, almost sad. "She is. This is her last gift. She gave me her memory, but her body still remembers. The body is saying goodbye. This is transformation. Without it, I cannot leave." "You're killing her!" "She was already dead the moment she agreed. I am only letting her finish." Mira cried out one last time—so loud that the few panes left in the sawmill's windows cracked and fell like a rain of shards. And then her body began to crumble. Not collapse, not sink—crumble, like burnt paper. From her fingertips, from her hair, from the edges of her clothes, luminous particles separated and rose into the air, forming a slow, soundless vortex. Her skin thinned, became translucent, and through it, not bones were visible—only light. In seconds, all that remained of Mira was a silhouette of golden-silver radiance, and then that too scattered. The glowing ash settled softly on the concrete floor, on the old ties, on Tim's shoulders as he knelt, arms outstretched to where she had been. Everything fell silent. Elion vanished—simply ceased to exist, as if he had never been. In the hall remained only the living: three friends and the man-tree, silently watching from its wall. Tim didn't move. He knelt, palms pressed to the concrete, staring at the place where Mira had crumbled. Zoe lowered herself beside him, wrapped her arms around his shoulders, but he didn't respond. Leo stepped closer and silently pointed to the floor. There, among the settling luminous dust, lay the only thing left of Mira: a glowing thread. It was thin as silk, wound into a small, neat bow. Silver, with a faint blue sheen, it pulsed with a steady, calm light—like a heart no longer afraid. Zoe reached out and carefully picked up the bow. It was warm, almost hot, and vibrated in her palm like a living thing. She pressed it to her chest, where beneath her hoodie Mark's bracelet still hung, and closed her eyes. "We'll kill him," she said. Not a shout, not a shriek. Spoken quietly, as if stating an indisputable fact. "We'll find a way. We'll go down into the mines. We'll find his true core and destroy it. I swear." Tim raised his head. His face was wet with tears, but his eyes—for the first time in a long while—burned not with fear or pain. There was fury in them. Pure, cold as steel. "I swear," he repeated, his voice hollow but firm. "I won't rest until that thing is dead." Leo said nothing. He simply walked over, took Zoe's hand—the one clutching the bow—and squeezed her fingers in his. His green scar on his wrist flared brighter, but now that light wasn't frightening. It looked like an oath. They stood in the silence of the ruined hall, the three of them, over a handful of fading dust. And outside, over the town, the sky was beginning to crack again, and the lilac fog rose from the ground like the breath of a waking beast. But now they had a goal. And they had the bow—small, glowing, the last greeting from a girl who drew trees with light bulbs instead of leaves.