Chapter 26

     The storm surged above, roaring louder now, as if the sky itself was breaking open. Ava’s chant had fallen silent, her arms still raised, her eyes closed, but the power she had been channeling wasn’t just focused on the marshlands anymore. It was spreading—reaching out beyond the shoreline, beyond the crumbling earth beneath our feet. The land was responding to her, bending and shifting, but it was no longer confined to this one place. I could feel it—something expanding, something rippling through the very fabric of the world around us.

     Tony stood beside me, his eyes wide with disbelief as the ground continued to tremble. He wasn’t looking at Ava anymore—his gaze had shifted to the horizon, to the distant line where the marshland gave way to the forests and towns that lay beyond. There was a question in his eyes, an unspoken fear that seemed to take hold of him as the realization settled in.

     “This isn’t just about the marsh, is it?” he asked, his voice low and tight. “It’s... it’s bigger than that.”

     I swallowed hard, my mind racing. He was right. The power Ava had tapped into, the rot she had been feeding, wasn’t limited to this stretch of land. It was spreading, moving outward, touching everything it came into contact with. The marsh had been the epicenter, but now the tremors were reaching farther, moving through the land like veins spreading through a body.

     A county. The thought flickered through my mind, unbidden but unmistakable. This land, this place—it was just a part of something larger. The forces that Ava had awakened didn’t recognize boundaries or borders. They didn’t care about ownership or control. What we had been fighting over wasn’t just a patch of marshland—it was the land itself, the very ground that stretched across counties, towns, cities.

     “This could spread,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “It’s not just here, Tony. It’s the whole county, maybe farther. The decay—what she’s been feeding on—it’s moving.”

     Tony’s face paled. “You mean... she’s tearing up the entire land?”

     I nodded, my heart pounding in my chest. “The land responds to her. The decay, the rot—it’s not just limited to where we’re standing. It’s spreading out, and if we don’t stop her, it could consume everything.”

     The weight of it settled over us like a shadow. The storm wasn’t just about the marsh, wasn’t just about this one stretch of coastline where the Atlantic met the earth. Ava’s power had gone beyond that. The land was alive—every county, every field, every stretch of soil. And now it was feeding on itself, tearing itself apart from the inside.

     Ava still stood at the shoreline, her arms outstretched, but there was something different about her now. The earlier confidence, the fierce control she had over the land, seemed to be slipping. Her fingers twitched, her mouth twisted into a grimace, and I could see the strain in her body, as though the power she had unleashed was beginning to turn on her.

     “The land isn’t hers to control,” I said softly, more to myself than to Tony. “She’s been drawing from it, but it’s too much. It’s bigger than her.”

     Tony clenched his fists, his frustration boiling over. “So what do we do? How do we stop something that’s this big?”

     I shook my head, unsure. Ava had become a conduit for something ancient, something that didn’t follow the rules of the world we knew. She wasn’t just manipulating the land—she had become a part of it, and the rot, the decay she had unleashed, was now feeding off her, spreading farther and faster than even she could control.

     The storm raged on, lightning flashing across the sky, illuminating the landscape in brief, violent bursts. In those moments of light, I could see the full scope of what was happening—the way the ground was buckling and cracking, the way the marsh seemed to be sinking into itself, as though the land was collapsing under the weight of its own history, its own forgotten past.

     I turned to Tony, my mind racing. “We have to sever her connection to the land. She’s feeding off it, but if we can break that link—”

     “How?” Tony interrupted, his voice laced with frustration. “How do you cut someone off from the earth itself?”

     I didn’t have an answer. Ava’s power was tied to the rot, to the decay that had been festering beneath the surface for centuries. But there had to be a way—some way to disrupt the flow of energy, to stop the spread before it consumed everything.

     Ava let out a sharp cry, her body jerking as though something had struck her. She staggered back, her hands clutching at her chest, her eyes wide with pain and confusion. The power was turning on her now, the same forces she had been channeling beginning to tear through her body, threatening to rip her apart from the inside.

     “She’s losing control,” I said, my voice urgent. “We need to act now, before the land takes her—and everything else—with it.”

     Tony nodded, his face set with determination. “Tell me what to do.”

     I looked at Ava, at the ground beneath her feet, at the way the earth seemed to writhe and twist, as though it were alive. And then it hit me—the rot, the decay she had been feeding on, was tied to the past, to the forgotten histories that had been buried beneath the soil. It wasn’t just about power—it was about memory, about the land reclaiming itself after centuries of neglect and destruction.

     “We need to stop feeding the rot,” I said, my mind racing. “We need to... undo what’s been done. The land is fighting back because it’s been broken, because it’s been used and discarded. If we can show it that there’s something worth saving—”

     Tony frowned, his confusion clear. “How do we do that?”

     I hesitated, searching for the answer. But the land—this county, this stretch of earth—it wasn’t beyond saving. It had been scarred by history, by centuries of decay, but it wasn’t lost. Ava had tried to control it by feeding off its pain, its rot, but there was something else buried here, something older and stronger.

     The storm crackled overhead, and I knew we were running out of time.

     “We need to give the land something new,” I said, my voice steady. “We need to stop feeding it death. We need to feed it life.”