ALCYDE
The cabin air hangs thick as spoiled cream, each breath coating my lungs with wrongness that tastes of copper and dead flowers. Morning light struggles through windows beaded with condensation that defies physics, running upward in rivulets that spell words in languages best forgotten. Sophia writhes in my arms, her body a battlefield where two souls wage war beneath skin that cycles between furnace-hot and corpse-cold in waves that make the floorboards groan beneath us.
"Hold her down." Bertha's command slices through the oppressive atmosphere as she unpacks bottles filled with liquids that move against natural law, pressing against glass with dark intent. "The poison's trying to extract what the moon mother placed. Allura wants them torn apart—soul from soul, essence from essenc
