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My mind chases memories that track back to my parents, my grandfather, my career, and my life, and when I look back, there’s a malevolent shadow darkening the past and perhaps even the future. I have this sense that Micah is all that stands between me and it. I never belonged there. I belong here. With him. Everything, I reply.

He’s silent for eternal moments, but I can feel him in my mind and almost see us standing on the path with fireflies fluttering around us, guiding our path, my path. I think maybe the fireflies are a creation of my mind, a way to create a tangible form of my magic.

Your thanks isn’t what I want from you, Ember, Micah finally states.

Then what do you want? I dare.

Too much. There’s a pause in which my thoughts and emotions tangle up and twist me in knots before he adds, I’ll see you in the morning.

And it’s as if he’s disconnected a call. I can feel the blank space. He’s gone again. I huff out a heavy breath and repeat his words in my mind—too much. The implications of those words could be far-reaching, but deep down I know what they mean. Too much to have to kill me, but he will if that’s where my journey leads us both.

That truth is always between us, stalking us, haunting us.

I squeeze my eyes shut and reach for his mind, shocked when I find it easily, and I repeat a quote from the Bible my grandfather used to read to me. Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart, I appointed you a prophet to the nations. In other words, Micah has a duty to perform, a destiny somehow linked to me. He can’t rewrite the future, but maybe I can, I think.

With that, I shove him out of my mind with as much force as possible. I shut the door between us and sit down at the table, sipping the well-creamed coffee and then reaching for the book Micah so wants me to read, finding the spot where I left off.

And I let the words fill my mind, lost in the extremely difficult-to-read passages, even considering all the legal text I’ve weeded through over the years. An hour later, my frustration is high as I still don’t know much about the Aza, and the coziness of the fire has left me heavy with the need for slumber. At a minimum, I need a break.

Pushing to my feet, I walk toward the door I assume to be the bathroom and discover a space that’s somehow castle-appropriate while still managing to be modern hotel luxury. The center of the room is a massive clawfoot tub with gold feet that begs for me and a bottle of bubbles. To the left is an artsy stone-framed shower. Across from both is a double vanity and sinks. Of course, after a quick inspection, I determine there are no towels or toiletries anywhere in sight.

Okay then, I think, and call out, “House. I need some things, please.” I squeeze my eyes shut, and feeling more than a little silly, I start making a list of necessities. When I dare to peek at the results, to my utter surprise, everything is sitting on the vanity. Did I do that, or did the house? Or maybe both? I don’t know, but I could get used to this all too easily, and it’s a little scary. Are we really supposed to have anything we want at the blink of an eye? I suspect that’s part of the reason Micah warned me that we must live like humans to protect humans. I not only believe this to be true, but I’m quite certain that a failure to do so has implications beyond fitting in. As the saying goes, “With all great power comes great responsibility.”

It's a long while later, and I’m well-warmed by a luxurious bath, dressed in a tank top and pajama bottoms, when I slip under the equally luxurious sheets of my temporary cushy bed, my book in hand. I don’t require much sleep—two hours here and there, if I’m truthful—an anomaly that helped me through law school, and I now assume to be part of my Nephilim genetics. This time, when I start reading, I push through the tedious text fairly quickly and transition to an easier-to-read, modern style of writing that explains the guts of what the Aza is all about.

What Micah thinks is my story.

And some of what I read downright steals my breath.

She (not he) will come in an unexpected place and time, a descendant of both Nephilim and Seraphim, with the eyes of a Crystal Seer. She will be beautiful—delicate, it may seem—when there is fire and ice and immense power within her. She will, in fact, represent both the good and evil inherent to both humans and Nephilim. Ultimately, she is both a test of our moral compasses and an example meant to lead our kind on a journey to see how far we have come and how easily we may fall. She will become either the greatest weapon against evil ever allowed upon Earth or the greatest evil known to mankind and Nephilim alike. Depending on where we are as a race at the time, she may well be the punishment we deserve, and to conquer her is to prevent our extinction. If we cannot, we shall not.

I drop the book, and it tumbles off the bed and lands with a solid thud while my heart beats a rock concert in my chest. It’s not me, I tell myself. Nothing in that passage says that it’s me. I throw away the blankets and scramble to retrieve the book, sitting down on the floor and frantically searching for my place again and for the next page in the story. Someone else’s story—and I have to prove that to Micah.

And to me.

I pant out a relieved breath and locate my spot, finding the next page, the next chapter.

The day she is born, a cry will sound throughout the Nephilim, the one warning you will receive that she lives before she comes of age, before she comes into her truth. She will live amongst humans, unaware of who and what she is, unable to stop her fate from unfolding, but those early years matter. They will shape her in ways even she cannot change. Destiny will find her and weaponize her, and no matter how diligently the Nephilim hide her, the serpent is part of her destiny, as surely as is the wolf.

Bile forms in the back of my mouth, and I flash back to the fortune teller who’d declared me the end of the world. She didn’t say I might be the end of the world. She said I am the end of the world.

In her own way, she’d said what Micah has as well, what the book declares to be true. I am the Aza.

The Sacred Book of Nephilim

Eve was Adam’s temptation, and one bite of the apple changed the future of mankind. History will always repeat itself.

Chapter thirty-two

With my destiny discovered, I feel a shift inside me, almost a flutter of an artistic wing that paints the light where the dark had been. I’m no longer in denial of who and what I am, and as Micah had predicted, my magic flourishes.

By sunrise, I’m dressed in jeans, a thin sweater, and combat boots that I’ve simply willed into place, and I don’t bother knocking on Micah’s door or attempting the walk down the ever-expanding hallway. I pull on my jacket and think myself to the beach with the ease of someone who’s mastered the skill over a lifetime, and I do so with barely a thought but then I’ve gotten used to the house gifting me what I want. I’m not even sure this counts as me rifting. It’s more like the house rifted me. Though truly, I’m not sure if the magic of Elysium is aiding me or if I’ve simply unlocked my “assets,” as Micah calls them.

I stand on the rocks overlooking the ocean and the lighthouse, the wind rushing through my hair, and I can’t help but notice that the salt on my lips tastes as normal as Olive Garden did last night. I’m living a double life, and that might be the problem. There’s only one life—my new life as a Nephilim and Crystal Seer. As the Aza, and I’m still not fully sure what that means.

For now, I live in the moment, the magic of this world vibrating through me, seeping into my pores, awakening my soul. I’ve never actually seen a lighthouse in person, and my eyes lift and catch on the giant structure where it sits on a slightly higher incline, the reddish shade kissed by the wear and tear of salt and sun. I wonder why a world without people needs such a thing, but I’m drawn to it in some deep, unexplainable way, much like I am to Micah.

It calls to me, beckoning me, and I travel the rocky slant up the hill and cross the smooth stone of the ledge to the stand at the base of the tower that’s closer to the edge of the cliff than it had appeared from below. The view is stunning, miles of bluer than blue ocean, stretching eternally it seems, the wind tossing around my hair and kissing my skin. Considering his fear of heights, Oliver would be freaking out right now while I laughed my ass off at him, the way he laughs at me for my fear of spiders. Please let this place not have giant spiders. I claim the bench beside the aged wooden front door and accept my friendship with him is over, praying that he really is one of the good guys, as I’d proclaimed to Micah. At this point, I’m not sure I can assume anyone is what they seem.