The Dark Between Dreams | ✔️

Chapter 15 🔻 Nightmare Fuel

"You dare call us sinners?" snapped a voice from the crowd, louder than all the rest. A young hollow shoved his way to the front of the crowd; a scavenger judging from the mask he wore. "It was us scavengers keeping this damned city alive!" In a flash, the scavenger drew a cutlass and lunged at the nearest zealot.

A guard unslung the blade from her back and beat the scavenger brutally across the face with the hilt of it.

The crowd lost its collective mind.

All I could see was flashing blades and swirling, blurring, and senseless violence. Acolights revolted against the king's zealots. The robed zealots attacked the scavengers. And the citizens of After were caught in between as throats were slit and limbs fell limply to the ground.

And Blackburne stood above everyone, motionless, drinking it all in.

No matter how the people screamed, it seemed that the god they so revered ignored them. The inhabitants of After were alone—just men and monsters.

And I couldn't tell who was who anymore.

The temperature dropped by the second. It was time to return to my friends.

I dropped from the wall and pulled my scarf up over my hair, blocking out the sounds of violence. I ducked into a lane, but stopped in my tracks, braced to fight or flee, when a woman moved to block my path.

"We're all going to die," she said. She stared ahead, eyes unfocused. It was as if she couldn't even see me. A gray film spread over her pupils like rolling fog. "We're all going to die," she repeated. "We're all going to—"

I jumped back in shock when she collapsed at my feet.

The feral mob paid the fallen woman any mind. While tossed bricks and stones clattered around me, I knelt beside the woman in the street. She laid on her back, face up to the black sky. Her face had gone slack; completely devoid of any life. And her now gray eyes lacked any kind of glimmer. As gently as I could, I gave her bony shoulder a nudge. "H-hey. Are you okay?" I stammered. When she didn't rouse, I laid two fingers to her neck. I didn't even know what I expected. Beneath a shock of ice-cold skin, there was, of course, no heartbeat.

I knotted the fabric of my tunic in my fists, accidentally tearing another hole. So this was what catatonia looked like up close. Even more catatonic ghosts lay about getting trampled or slumped against buildings amongst the trash. Those whose eyes were left open stared up at the sky without seeing, all clouded with that same haze. I shut the woman's eyes with my fingers. Now I could almost pretend that she was asleep. But I wasn't done. I refused to be just like the other heartless hollows.

With great effort, and again, cursing my small, frail frame, I grabbed fistfuls of her ratty cardigan and pulled the catatonic hollow away from the warring factions and into the nearest hovel. This place didn't look like it was currently haunted by any ghosts. I pulled my mask from my face and searched the nearly empty room. I tucked her under a shredded old blanket I found.

There. She was asleep.

"We'll look after her, sister."

I nearly leapt out of my skin at the voice from behind me and spun to find the old acolight who had spirited me away into After's underground. I took a not at all discreet step away from her while she knelt beside the catatonic hollow. With knobby fingers, she brushed a strand of her hair out of her face in a caress—gentle, as if her cold skin was made of porcelain.

There was an explosion from somewhere not too far away, like another of After's skyscrapers collapsed. A cloud of dust spilled in through the windows and clung to my clothes and hair. It was when the dust began evaporating that it dawned on me that I was covered in the ashes of hollows. I had to bite my tongue to stifle a shriek, and I batted away the ashes like I was putting out flames.