“You are under my command—you will not speak! You will kill! You will kill them like I want you to!”

Something in me buckles, my unheart spasming. My blood thrums hot in my ears, every sensation suddenly very real and not dreamy in the slightest. She’s making me feel. I suffer everything intensely, no longer dream-detached, my body growing heavy and my mind becoming aware of my eyes, six of them opening on my cheeks—

“Varia, stop,” I plead. “Stop!”

Her fingers twist out at me, a cruel, delighted smile on her face. But it’s not her smile. It’s older than her, somehow. It’s lined with so much more pain than a mortal could experience—hundreds of aching years, not two decades. I watch in horror as the bruises on her body start to throb, expanding in their discoloration even farther up her neck, her chest, her wrists and arms, as if they’re…consuming her. A bruise on her scalp moves to her eye, shriveling the white of it instantly, her socket bleeding bright and the shriveled eye hanging loose and useless, a mirror of her brother’s.

“You will destroy,” she rumbles. “For us. You will hurt them, as they have hurt us.”

This isn’t her. It’s the Bone Tree. I can hear it in her voice, her words. That’s not a witch, or a d’Malvane, or even a person. It’s a hunger. It’s something beyond life and death, beyond magic and machine and mortals. Something bigger and older and wounded. Lonely.

I just know.

I just…understand. Like Muro said, it’s that feeling. That feeling of wrongness I sensed first in my dreams. A feeling that isn’t mine, but is so sure of itself anyway. It’s that feeling I felt in my dreams sent to me by the Tree of Souls, according to Muro. It wells up now, aching.

“Are you…lonely?” I manage through my squeezing throat, through the hunger’s sudden urge to rip and tear and consume.

Varia’s eyes go wide again—her withered one bleeding profusely with each inch the lid moves up. A trail of red blood banners behind her, curling around her stream of black hair. I swallow hard and fight to hold on to my thoughts—with how strong the urge to destroy is, I don’t think I can Weep, but the principal of sinking into myself helps keep my mind above water. Or below it, in this case.

“You sound lonely,” I press. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you’re alone.”