Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
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.