I sat up, chest heaving. It took me a few blinks to comprehend where I was, but gradually I recognized the top of the ziggurat. I looked around for my friends. "Guys? Are you okay? How did we get up here?"
But no matter where I searched in the dark, I couldn't see Webb or Vale anywhere.
"The storm is only picking up," someone said.
I sprung to my feet, ready to fight at the familiar flat tone. But my spear was gone.
Nymandus Blackburne, king of After, stepped from the darkness and approached me.
"You!" I spat at him. "What are you doing here?" Where the fuck was my spear?
Blackburne paid me no mind. He didn't even bother to look in my direction. He kept his gaze fixed on the swirling sandstorm surrounding the ziggurat. "Any sign of Orville?" he asked.
"I do not hear him anywhere," said someone with an Arabic accent with a twinge of worry.
I spun to confront the other man. "Crow!" I said. I dashed for my friend, but when I reached out, my hands fell through him like I wasn't there.
I froze. This wasn't real. This was another memory. I regarded the two men at the heart of the storm. But whose memory was I witnessing?
Blackburne ran his fingers through his undone hair. It was strange to see him so disheveled. "Gott im Himmel," he muttered. "You were right, Crow. There used to be an entire civilization out here."
Crow moved his spear, a beautiful golden thing with two points at either end fringed by cross beams shaped like spread red wings, to the other arm to make room for a crow that had just escaped from the storm. He turned an ear to it, listening as it rattled. "My eyes have seen Orville!" he said to the king. "He is just on the outskirts of—"
The blind ghost fell silent. He stood where the lovers perished, as if their shadows were his own. As if he could see them, he knelt to lay a palm on the seared stone. His lip trembled. His star-filled eyes swirled like the storm surrounding them.
Both Blackburne and I moved for the smaller man when he suddenly cried out and doubled over as if in pain. Blackburne caught Crow before he could fall to the ground. "Crow?" the king said. He actually looked worried as he held his friend. "What's wrong? Another memory?"
But Crow just writhed in response. His body contorted as he let out a strangled scream. Blackburne held on to him tighter and tighter, calling out his name. Finally, the shrouded man went limp in his arms.
"Crow? Speak to me! Are you alright?"
My blood went cold as the blind man raised his spear and pointed it at the king's throat. When he spoke, his words dripped with venom. "Unhand me, monster."
Blackburne released Crow and backed away from him, palms raised. His throat bobbed. "What are you doing? It's me, Crow!"
Crow's eyes burned scorching red. His expression contorted with manic rage. The storm churned faster—louder. The winds shrieked like a thousand angry ghosts. He pointed his winged spear at the frightened king and said, "I know."
He stepped toward the king. Blackburne took a step back.
"Did you have another memory? What happened?" Blackburne asked. When his friend raised his spear, he pleaded, "Crow! Talk to me! What are you doing?"
The blind man snarled. Whips of wind struck the king, forcing him to raise his arms to protect himself. Fear glistened in the whites of his eyes when he peeked over his arms at his crazed friend. He was cornered with nowhere to run. Another step backward and he would fall into the pit.
"I am finishing what I should have done long ago!" Crow screamed over the storm. He threw himself at the king, hurling them both into the abyss below.
I lunged for the pit's edge, but all I saw was a blackness that was even blacker than the Dark that spread across my entire vision. And in that darkness, I heard Crow vow, "What a shame...I will not see you and your whole damned city burn, Nymandus!"
A ringing deafened my ears. For a few moments, the only sensation I could perceive was a scorching, burning, utterly agonizing pain that ate at my hand and lower arm. Was my flesh being seared from bone? Was my arm just empty space now—just dust? Was I fading? All I knew for certain was that I could now recount for absolute fact what Hell was like.
But eventually, the heat ebbed away, its place taken by a biting cold. I heard people shouting my name.
I opened my eyes. I was no longer trapped beneath the sand in the lair of shadows. Instead, I lay once again beneath the tremendous black sky. The crystalline half-sphere of lux blazed above me, bobbing weakly in the void. Every few seconds, a chain of white lightning shot forth from it. It was close, far closer than Earth's yellow sun had been. I felt like, if I really tried, I could reach out an arm and pluck the glowing crystal from the sky.
Its light was weak, for most of my surroundings were still defined by pulsating purple shadows. In the red haze that outlined the ruined city, rolling sand dunes, and distant mountains that I hadn't known existed, Vale and Webb crouched over where I lay in the sand. Both of them were completely healed and intact. I was the one in pieces now.
The ziggurat was gone, blown to pieces that surrounded us. "Wha—" I had to swallow to wet my dry throat. "What happened?" I asked them.
"I think we roused the kusarikku," Vale breathed as she watched the half-sun spin.
When I struggled to sit up, she laid a hand on my back and helped me up. We'd gathered in the center of a blown-out crater. Vale had brought her bike over to rest beside us. Even in the dimness, it was clear that the den of shadows was no more. Pieces of columns and crumbling remnants of walls, the only remnants of Aḫ-ḫur's annihilated temple, spiked through the sand like weathered tombstones. Or like the fingers of a partially buried corpse.
The wind swept through the ruins, filling the air with an eerie, mournful howling. I shivered, practically spasming from the cold that stung me. An incessant pins-and-needles sensation bit at the arm I'd used to wake the crystal. I didn't dare look at myself or my wounds, letting my imagination fill the gaps just as I'd done when I'd first arrived. Even Webb and Vale shivered from the icy air that left my body.
I clapped a hand to my aching head. "I saw another memory, but it wasn't mine," I told the other hollows.
A crow squawked beside me. Nannāru puffed up her jet-black plumage and hissed at my pocket. "What the...?" I said as I searched my pocket. I gasped when I felt something that hadn't been in there before. I shivered even more when I raised Blackburne's vial to my face. The thing inside throbbed. The crow hissed again and took wing, as if fleeing from whatever was inside. And deep inside my brain, some instinct compelled me to run when I noticed the crack in the glass. Some of the fluid dribbled free from the vial.
"Crow had this," I said to my shocked friends. "He must've given this back before Reynard took him away." Another bead of black slime oozed from the crack. Run, run, run! my heart screamed. "But why?"
"Skye." Vale's hand brushed against the skin of my arm. "Your...Your arm," she stammered. "Look at your arm."
Finally, I surrendered to my nagging morbid curiosity. I looked away from the vial to the hand that held it and held my tingling arm up to my face, expecting to see the usual gaping black voids cut into my flesh. Instead, puckered white skin marred my formerly pale skin, like branching electricity scars. No cold seeped from the mark, but the wounds wouldn't heal. It shimmered in the dim light, like my skin was made of stars. Like Crow's blind eyes. Looking at myself, all I could see was Blackburne's disfigured face.
I nearly dropped the vial.
Crow, Blackburne, and I...We'd all been burned by live lux.
My friends winced when I began laughing, quietly at first. Then my voice filled the crater.
Vale pulled me to my feet, an eyebrow raised and lips pursed.
"That settles it," I said, still grinning at my skin as I pocketed the vial. "I saw into the crystal's memories! It's alive! Someone sliced it apart and pulled it from the sky! And Crow and Blackburne..." I ignored my friends and my ailing body and pried my spear from the ground. In my head, I saw the hieroglyphs on the now halved tablet—saw the two men surrounded by nothing but shadows. "I think one of them knows what happened to it. That's how they got their scars and how Crow went blind! The resulting explosion must have obliterated the city and all the other hollows that lived there."
And...and created shadows, somehow? I finished in my head. I was still lost how they fit into this mess. Suddenly, I felt so light-headed and wobbled on the balls of my feet.
Vale caught me and held me, muttering, "Take it easy, Skye. You're hurt bad."
Webb, meanwhile, stood off to the side, shaking his head. "But why?" he asked. "Why destroy the sun? What would be the benefit of eternal darkness? Who would choose this?"
I glared off into the desert. The Dark is already less...dark. But even then, the weak light of the half-sun was not enough to illuminate any further answers. My crazed grin faded, replaced by a grimace. Another violent shiver racked my body. "I don't know, but I do know we need to get back to After now! Crow is in trouble and the shadows are on their way to kill all the hollows! We'll deal with that first, and then we'll find out where the other half of the sun is. I guarantee Blackburne knows."
Vale grabbed me by the shoulders and held me at arm's length from her, looking at me like a disappointed mother. "No," she huffed. "First things first, you need to heal. You are barely in one piece."
"I'm healing!"
"Not fast enough."
I struggled to stand squarely before her, but I wobbled again and almost toppled into the sand. Cold air spilled from me and spread across the sand like an invisible fluid. "I'll heal on the bike! Let's go!" I raised my hands emphatically when I spoke. When I did, a fiery tingling trickled across my scar. An unseen aura pulsed from me, making the sand ripple and my friends back away from me.
And in the sand beneath our feet, I felt them all awake...the sleeping shadows.
The sand at our feet began bubbling like boiling water. The three of us gasped and scrambled toward the safety of the bike. In the dim light cast from the fractured sun, I saw each and every horrible, disfigured shadow that arose from the ruins of their home like zombies. The sun hadn't been the only thing to awaken. A phalanx of monsters slithered for us. Hissing filled the air.
Vale clapped her hands together. "Okay then! Webb, you make sure she doesn't fall off the bike, and let's get the Hell out of here, yeah?"
We didn't need to be told twice. While gnarled and clawed hands grappled at us, and teeth clacked together, eager for the soft give of hollow flesh, our trio mounted Vale's motorcycle, and we sped off toward After, our home.
I just prayed that there was still a home to return to.
Cold sweats in the morning
Real life's become boring
I've tripped and I'm falling
But I'll stop tomorrow
Can you catch the feeling?
A small wet cloth to stem the bleeding
The scars on my arms are barely healing
I can see your halo fall, halo fall