Behind The Locks || ONC 2024

Chapter 16: Against Her

Truth be told, if the witch had made the decision to go back to Crystal kingdom, the situation would have been different. Maybe choosing a new path for herself was the illest decision she had ever made in her life.

Who knows? The end lies in the hand of the author, maybe it wasn't, maybe it was.

"Zack!" Arielline could think of nobody else after being separated from her brother.

A pungent smell of nothing she had ever smelled before, pierced through her nose, and she could feel it form an unhealthy layer at the bottom of her lungs.

There was no fresher air to breathe in hell, was there?

She only had to stoically overcome it.

The glow around the door had died down, she couldn't say the same for the fog, maybe darkness had just covered it. Her hands in front of her face had become invisible. If not for the touch of her eyes, she could have sworn they were shut.

"Zack!" The walls echoed her voice in a higher pitch but no response came with it.

"Zack!" Still there was no different result. "Nick!" His name went and boomerang with no response. "Mirabelle!"

Whatever had happened to everyone had made them silent, and not only them but her entire surrounding. All she could hear was her heart throbbing hard against its confines and a rush of blood in her ears.

She navigated blindly with the slap of empty darkness wherever she strode towards.

She regretted the idea of putting on hills, because they did not add balance to her already foggy head, before withdrawing them. The teetering could have gotten her into worse.

There was no essence in toddling in darkness completely unaware of where she was heading but at least it made her feel like she was doing something about her lost friends and brother.

Her dictation in the dark was as futile as forcing a chicken to bear milk and she was figuring that by each step she took.

"Zack!" She knew how grail it was, but she would have rather done it than wait for a miracle to happen. She didn't expect more in the same magnitude.

Her voice echoed back in a higher pitch.

At the corner of her eye, she caught the only thing she could say resembled light.

It flickered and glowed weakly through the myriad of fog clogging its view.

She swerved and trudged for its direction.

Everytime she took a step, it flickered and disappeared, but got back in line before she had taken another. It didn't change position or any other definition of queer, insinuating that the coast was clear.

Only when she got to it did she notice that it was a torch, and not just a torch; Zack's torch.

"Zack! Zack! Zack!" She shrilled to the highest tempo of her vocals but in return the echoes tortured her ears with her own sound.

"Zack, where are you?"

Wild imaginations solely mimicked from horror movies crossed her mind killing every modicum of hope she had of seeing her brother ever again.

She illuminated around her circumference for him or anything to do with him or her friends but there was nothing to show for them. A dusty floor, fog, and more overwhelming darkness conquered her surroundings.

The torch on her hand flickered more vigorously and died. Who goes to haunt a ghost with a touch in the twenty-first century? Doesn't he watch horror movies?