Vera Sandstorm's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

The ground where the behemoth stood looks wrong. Vera steps closer. The cobblestones are cracked in a pattern that spreads out from where the creature's feet had been. Between the stones, something glints. She kneels. The cracks form a circle, and at the center is a symbol carved into the street itself. She reaches toward it and the carved lines begin to glow. Copper-bright, the same color as her formula. The light spreads through the cracks, running beneath the broken ground like veins. Then the earth splits. The center drops away and reveals a space underneath, shallow but deliberate. Inside lies a glass vial, sealed and filled with the same copper liquid she's been carrying. But this one is different. The formula inside moves on its own, circling the glass like it's alive. Vera picks it up and the glow dies. The symbol fades. She turns the vial in her hand and sees words etched into the glass in a language she doesn't know but somehow understands. Not a formula for reversing death. A formula for separating what shouldn't be joined. She'd been right about one thing — the substance was meant to purge. But she'd been wrong about what it was purging from. This wasn't made to restore her mortality. It was made to strip away everything supernatural, including her. The vial grows warm in her palm. She has two choices now. Use it and risk burning away what's left of her existence, or accept that the formula she spent years chasing was never meant to save her at all.