Into Shadows and Escaping Ash ✔️

25.1 | Her Hollow Point |

In the very beginning, Theron had attacked me with such haste and assurance. A theme appearing to surround us now as confidence blankets us both.

"Where do you think Kiel was off to anyway?" He muses aloud, glancing back at the door before doing another lap.

I scoff slightly. "You're going to make me dizzy."

"I'm serious."

"So am I," I shoot back, cutting him a sharp glare.

Theron stops beside me again and subtly rolls his eyes. "Think about it. He would be doing this himself if he weren't occupied with something or someone else, right?"

"Perhaps..." I say.

My brother is a great many things, but an idiot isn't one.

Each time he leaves me alone allows for immense risk, even in such a weakened state.

"There is next to no one of any importance in this town, so unless he has some Overlord to answer to, I would say this distraction from me is temporary."

Theron nods, resting his back against the metal ledge. "So who then... Another relative, an Overlord, some terrifying creature? What else could it be...?"

Only now do I realize how the tables would be reversed had I just taken Meika up on her detrimental proposal. Linking our souls together temporarily, uniting against most evil. Perhaps I could have synced into Daniel's mana and him my own.

Without that stupid contract, options are scarce. I'm not powerful enough on my own, not without Lindon.

Those red eyes flash in and out of my vision, haunting me.

As long as he doesn't try to murder me when I find him, things will be okay.

Mendable.

"Everything feels hollow... Pointless..." I mutter, mostly to myself.

Theron's frown deepens. "Don't say it like that, Iridian."

"There are Witches in this town. Daniel and I found them... They... They are surviving here within the city limits for some reason. Tamsin didn't specify if she'd struck some kind of deal with Kiel, only advised me to stay as far away from him as possible until reunited with Lindon."

"Which you obviously heeded," Theron adds sarcastically.

Sighing, I let it slip under the radar and keep going. "So what if there are Witches inside of this building?"

"I don't know, you'd have been hard-pressed to convince me dinosaurs used to exist at one point, let alone Witches. Things like this are so far outside of my realm of thinking."

Another wave of dizzying pain alters my sense of reality, only this time there are no hallucinations. Only pitch-black darkness.

The kind that gives you tunnel vision and saps all the energy from your veins.

My words sound distant and far away, to the point where I don't know what I'm saying. I can't hear them.

Drifting farther and farther away, like an air balloon sweeping me off my feet and whisking me into a silent, clouded land of smoke and shadow.

Some might consider this nothingness hell.

The true, final void people expect when the end greets them.

"Iridian. Ira, come on. Hey, you need to snap out of it!" Theron is shaking my shoulders violently but it only stirs my thoughts in a vague shroud of sound.