Ride For Me, Die For Me.

Chapter 28: When the Past Breaks Open

Justin’s POV

The drums had been going for hours.

Low, steady, like a heartbeat buried under the earth. Smoke curled from the copper bowl in front of me, thick with crushed myrrh and burnt cedar. Papa Toussaint sat cross-legged across from me, humming something old and jagged — a rhythm that scratched at the inside of my skull like it was trying to pry something loose.

My hands trembled over the carved bones in my lap. I hadn’t thrown these in years. Not since the night everything went dark.

“You ready?” Papa Toussaint asked, voice low and dangerous. He looked like a man who’d seen too much and still wanted more. “Ain’t no returning from this part, boy. This is the door.”

“I ain’t come here to knock,” I muttered. “I came to break it down.”

He smiled like I’d said something holy.

The bones clattered onto the floor. Firelight shifted. Shadows twisted. My body was already fading before I realized it.

I woke up somewhere humid. Somewhere too loud with memory.

The house was the same. That twisted old shotgun house on the edge of St. Étienne where it all went down — where I’d watched my father bleed out trying to hold the darkness back with his bare hands. Where my sister left me. Where I stopped being a boy.

The walls were breathing. Swollen with voices. The floor pulsed beneath my feet.

And then I saw it.

That thing. The one I hadn’t seen clearly in all those years, only felt in my nightmares. All shadow and bone, wearing my father’s death like a crown. It stood in the doorway, eyes like burning glass.

“You ran last time,” it hissed. “But you brought your strength back with you. Come. Show me.”

I didn’t wait. I moved.

The battle was blur and flame. My fingers sparked when I touched it — glyphs flashing along my arms like my skin remembered spells I didn’t know I knew. Papa Toussaint hadn’t just taught me roots and prayers. He’d been waking something up.

I threw it through a wall. It bled mist. It laughed.

“You too late again,” it wheezed. “She glows now. The scar calls me. I want her more.”

Waiya.

My vision pulsed red. I surged forward, grabbed its throat, dragged it down with every ounce of what I had — but the thing opened its mouth wide, impossibly wide, and screamed.

The world split.

A portal, slick and hungry, tore through the ground beneath us. I held tight, cursing, fighting, but it slipped — slipped — and vanished.

And I followed it.

Three days. Or what felt like three days—time didn’t move right in that place. The portal wasn’t just a passage; it was a damn crucible. A warpath between worlds.

I ran on instinct, on fury, on the last thin thread of control that hadn’t snapped. The thing was always ahead, dragging shadows in its wake, taunting me with flickers of her—Waiya’s face, the glow of her tattoos, the sound of her laugh warped into something brittle and hollow.

Every step stripped me down.

The air burned, thick with sulfur and sorrow. I walked through a storm of memories that weren’t mine. My mother’s dying breath. My father’s last prayer. Dree’s back as she walked away. And under it all, my own screams echoing like a child’s—useless and forgotten.

I bled from places that didn’t exist.

I saw spirits twisted by regret, figures made of ash and glass that reached for me, whispering truths I couldn’t bear to hold. I kept walking. Kept fighting. Because something inside me knew—

If I stopped, I’d lose her.

The third night—if you could even call it that—I collapsed in front of a black mirror hanging in midair. My reflection looked nothing like me. It was all light and storm and old markings that pulsed like a second heart.

“Say it,” a voice whispered from the dark.

“I am not running anymore,” I said.

And everything shattered.

The markings on my skin flared white-hot, like they’d finally recognized who I was. The air bent around me. The portal cracked wide open, not behind the entity—but in front of it.

It turned too late.

I tackled it mid-scream, both of us spinning, tumbling through light and shadow and the scent of salt and ash—

Straight into her world.

Straight toward Waiya.

Waiya’s P.O.V.

It had been quiet for days.

Too quiet.

The kind of quiet that comes after a lesson so heavy, it settles in your bones. My grandmother said stillness was necessary sometimes. That some awakenings don’t scream — they whisper. But today, the whisper felt more like a warning.

I was alone in the circle behind the house, barefoot in the dirt, fingers covered in crushed sage and violet ash. The earth pulsed under me — soft but alert. A ring of salt and crushed obsidian circled where I stood, carved into the land by Granny’s hand.

Protection.

But something was pressing against it.

The sky had started turning strange around noon — thick, low clouds spinning like they were waiting for permission to fall. My tattoos hummed under my skin, glowing faintly even without my call. I should’ve known then. I should’ve gone inside.

But I stayed.

I’d been testing my limits, trying to reach further. Granny said there were parts of me I still hadn’t unlocked. Parts buried under grief, rage, and fear. I wanted to break through them. Needed to. I couldn’t afford to be slow anymore.

Not when the scar pulsed at night like a second heartbeat.

Not when I knew something was coming.

The wind dropped suddenly, like the world was holding its breath.

And then everything shattered.

The sky ripped open like paper. A shriek tore through the air — high, ancient, wrong. My circle of protection sparked, flared, and then went black as something crashed through it like it wasn’t even there.

The entity rose from the dirt in front of me, black and red and pulsing like it had been born from rot. It didn’t walk. It bled forward. Long limbs, eyes like splintered light, smoke leaking from its mouth.

And I recognized it.

Not from this life. From something older. A memory tucked inside the scar.

It hissed.

“There you are, little sun.”

I didn’t wait. I flared the power under my skin and pushed both hands forward. The ground erupted — a wall of flame and wind — but the thing moved through it. Fast. Too fast. Its claws skimmed my arm, and the pain lit me up from the inside.

But it didn’t finish me. It watched me.

It was toying with me.

“You shine brighter than before,” it rasped. “But not enough. Not yet. He’s coming. I can smell him on you.”

I reached for the dagger tied to my waist — the one my grandmother said was carved from starbone — but the thing lunged. We collided hard, and the impact threw me backward into the ash circle.

And then the sky split again.

This time, it wasn’t a shriek. It was a roar.

The portal ripped open right behind the entity. Hot wind rushed through the world, and something crashed through — slamming into the creature with such force, the ground trembled.

Justin.

He landed in a blur of glyphs and smoke, arm outstretched, eyes glowing with something new. Something awakened. He looked different. Sharper. His voice, when it came, was not the boy I met in Detroit.

It was the man who’d just walked through fire.

“Get the f**k off her.”

Justin’s voice cracked like thunder.

The entity snarled, spinning toward him, its limbs unfurling like smoke-drenched blades. But Justin didn’t flinch. His arm swept through the air, and the symbols glowing along his skin surged to life — bright, jagged, angry. They wrapped around him like armor made of prayer and pain.

“Don’t touch her,” he growled.

The entity lunged again, shrieking with a sound that split the air like glass, but Justin met it mid-leap. Their collision was violent — raw. Justin’s hands glowed with sigils that rippled across his knuckles like wildfire, and when he struck the thing in the chest, it burned.

Not smoke. Not fire.

It burned with light.

The entity screamed, recoiling like it had been branded. For a moment, it shrank, shadows flickering around its limbs like it was unraveling.

I pushed myself up on one arm, the scar on my back pulsing like it was trying to claw its way out. I wasn’t at full strength — not even close — but Justin was here now, and something in him had changed.

He wasn’t afraid anymore.

He stood between me and the creature, back straight, breathing steady, like the war that made him had finally come full circle.

“Keep it down,” I muttered, voice strained. “I almost had it.”

Justin didn’t look back, but I saw the smirk twitch at the edge of his mouth.

“Bet.”

The creature hissed and surged again, its body shifting form mid-strike — now tall and horned, now sleek and crawling — like it couldn’t hold one shape. Justin ducked low, swept its legs, and drove his fist upward into its core. There was a flash of light — gold and red — and the creature roared.

I scrambled to my feet, shaky but steady enough to call the fire back into my palms. My fingers caught flame, the heat licking my arms but not burning me. It wasn’t fire from this world — it was ancestral, wild, laced with memory and blood.

“Duck!” I shouted.

Justin dropped just as I hurled both palms forward. The fire shot like a wave, wrapping the creature in a blaze that sang in a tongue I didn’t know I remembered. The flames didn’t just burn — they tore through illusion, ripping chunks of shadow off the thing’s body.

It screamed again. But this time, the pain sounded real.

It was weakening.

Justin was up again, grabbing it by one twisted arm and slamming it into the dirt. Glyphs lit the ground where it landed, reacting to him, to me, to the sacred energy rising between us.

He looked back, breath ragged. “Together?”

I nodded, stepping beside him, fire still in one hand, my other glowing from the tattoos now lit down my arm. We moved in sync, like the rhythm had always been in us — one heart, one strike.

I threw a burst of flame into its face.

Justin followed with a punch wrapped in lightning.

It stumbled, and that’s when I saw it — the glowing thread of energy tied between the creature and my scar.

It had been feeding off me.

“Justin—”

“I see it,” he said, voice low. “We cut the cord.”

I pulled the blade from my waist, the starbone humming as it came free. Justin crouched, hands spread, calling the glyphs to his palms again. The creature thrashed wildly, lashing out in every direction, but we were faster now.

I dove forward, blade raised.

Justin moved beside me, hands sparking.

And together, we struck.

My blade sliced through the cord with a burst of searing white light.

Justin’s hands slammed against the creature’s chest, sending a shockwave through the ground. The entity shrieked — not just in pain, but in defeat — its body shattering into smoke and ash, the remnants yanked violently back through the closing portal.

The wind stopped.

The fire died.

And silence returned.

I dropped to my knees, breath catching in my throat. The scar on my back was still there — but different. Dimmer. The pulsing had stopped.

Justin sank down beside me, hand on my back, grounding me with his warmth. He was bruised, bleeding, glowing.

“You good?” he asked quietly.

I nodded, tears stinging my eyes. “Yeah. You?”

He looked up at the sky, still cracked from the fight.

Then he smiled.

“I am now.”