I'm not surprised to see Clover in the corridor of doors with the other soul wanderers. After I had spoken to Cerberus, I had expected that what Clover said at the well would be accepted as truth. The other soul wanderers don't seem to care for his presence, but the tense facial expressions and postures are hard to miss.
Vrana is standing at the end of the corridor where the darkness is like a vacuum. At the edge he has created a large gate – one I have never seen before. It looks ancient and worn-out, yet at the same time invincible, like nothing can get through the thick, stone-like material.
When he opens the gate the whirling darkness lays on the other side, yet it feels different from the other doors.
Vrana and the other soul wanderers step through, one after another. I do the same – if reluctantly. On the other side lays another corridor of doors. We're no longer standing on a lone stone platform in the air. We're surrounded by water, it reaches my calves, and underneath lays an old cobble-stone road with overgrown algae. They're moving slowly in the water as we trample onwards.
"Don't leave the road," says Vrana when he leads us down the corridor. It's longer than the one we were just in. It makes me wonder how many abandoned worlds there are and how much of the Realm of the Dead I haven't seen, and never will.
It's dark and a slight mist hangs over the water, a stale taste finds it way to my mouth. The air is tickling my skin as the sound of feet trampling in water echoes in the darkness.
We finally reach the gate that Vrana has been looking after. It's entirely black, with eerie towers carved into the dark stone. I can feel something when I walk up the stairs. It turns my stomach and the stale taste in my mouth turns fouler. Vrana stands in front of the gate, I cannot see his face but I feel the unpleasant feeling that's seeping out of him, the absolute terror he feels to stay this close to the door.
Vrana turns around and sweeps his eyes over us, he gives me a pitiful expression. The others look uncomfortable, but they have something in their eyes that tells me that they've gone through this before, and they know what is awaiting.
"Orchid," Vrana begins and it's impossible to not notice the exhausted voice, "some rules for worlds that have reached this amount of distortion. Don't touch the darkness. If it starts moving faster, run. The only exit is the same gate you entered through. You cannot create doors in these worlds, so if it's falling apart then aim to get to the main gate as fast as possible. Don't trust anything but yourselves, the distortion twists the worlds. It's not like it was when it was whole."
He takes a deep breath.
"If the world falls apart and you haven't reached the mask then you run back. There's no point to pay with your existence if it's impossible to reach it."
"And if it isn't impossible?" Sage asks.
Vrana's mouth tightens. "Then do whatever you can to grab it. Good luck. I'll be waiting for you here."
Vrana walks down the stairs while we stay at the two highest steps.
Sage pulls a hand over the gate and his face grimaces, he moves it further down towards the handle and lets it lay there for a few seconds before he opens it. I turn away when a hot and thick gust of wind hits my eyes. Vrana automatically takes a few steps back, almost outside of the broad cobble-stone road. He takes a deep and shaky breath, and the fear I feel from him increases as the door stands wide-open.
Sun grabs my wrist, and the vile air hangs over her face as an almost transparent veil. She leads us through the darkness when the others have already stepped through, but just as we cross the threshold, I hear Vrana take another desperate breath.
The air is repulsive. It feels like hundreds of insects are crawling and bathing in a thick layer of oil covering my skin. I swallow hard and blink away the tears that has formed in the corner of my eyes.
Once upon a time this world could have been beautiful. But now it's horrid. An unending darkness covers most part of the sky. An oil-like smoke crawls out of its depths and hangs over the city in the distance. The rest of the sky is covered in brown, thick clouds. The city consists of hundreds of towers, they look like dark spears sticking up from the ground, with the tips pointing towards the sky. Part of the city has already been engulfed by the darkness that is closing in like a giant, breaching wall.
Sun lets go of my wrist and takes a few steps across the dead grass. She looks at the city in the distance, and on the strange, naked forest below us. The darkness is moving. Not fast, not like it's about to devour the rest of the city it has begun – but like it is alive.
"How long?" Sun asks and the voice sounds more fragile than it usually does, I barely recognize it.
Sage looks down at the city from the hill and then at the living darkness. "With that threatening us, I'd say a day or two. We're going to have to rest when it weighs us down."
And weighing us down it does. I cannot stop staring at the way it moves. It is different from the whirling darkness. This moves more like water.
"Can we even handle two days?" Clover asks.
Nine shakes his head slightly. "I doubt that. We'll have to take short breaks and continue even if we don't have the energy."
I'm not sure how we'd be able to do that. We haven't been here long and I already feel the exhausted feeling I had seen in Vrana's face. My feet feels as heavy as lead and for each step I take, it feels like my entire soul is fighting against me.
"What do we do?" I ask.
"We walk as far as we can, and rest for thirty minutes or an hour when we can no longer continue," Sage says.
The confident and harsh voice I had heard in the meeting hall is no longer there, now he reminds me of a little boy despite his middle-aged appearance. There's something fragile in all of us. We have been stripped to the very core, where all the walls and defenses we built have crumbled, all that remains is an exhausted fear we cannot hide.
I tear away my eyes from the sky and follow the others down the steep hill. I have to put all my attention to my thighs to not stumble. For each step it's like I'm knee-deep in mud and for each breath a part of the suffocating, foul-tasting air finds its way into my lungs.
We finally reach the end of the hill, where the dead forest begins. The trees have grown into each other in strange, twisted ways and is covering the dark sky with its thick branches. It feels like an eternity when we wander the forest, and the closer we come the city and the darkness the more twisted the trees become. They grow into each other, and into or over the ground. Some of them are twisted around each other like two snakes. A few of the crooked ones reminds me of humans' expressions of pure terror, they'll haunt my dreams if we're ever able to get out of here.
Clover is the first one to fall. He manages to catch himself with his hands scraping against the dead leaves on the muddy path.
I quickly help him up on his feet again and he mumbles a quick, "I'm fine."
"Let me," Nine says and grabs one of Clover's arms and pulls it over his shoulders.
I take a step back and watch them as Nine and Clover limps across the road and in-between two twisted trees.
"Sage. We need to rest," Nine breathes heavily.
Sage nods, likely too exhausted to answer with words. Nine helps Clover down under the infused trees and sits himself down on the muddy leaves, with not a care in the world that it dirties and soaks his jeans. Clover pushes a muddy hand against his throat.
"Are you okay?" Sage asks and sits down next to Nine, but the dark eyes focus on Clover.
Clover pushes the elbows against his knees and touches his forehead. "I can barely breathe. I had forgotten how exhausting these places can be... It's been a while."
Sun and I also sit down. All we can do now is to wait until we can move again. Clover removes the flat cap and holds it with one of his hands, while he pulls the other one through the brown hair. I want to talk to him. Try to explain why I did what I did, but I cannot find the correct words – if they even exist.
We gather the energy to move on, but when it's time to continue, it doesn't feel any easier to get up.
"How is it?" Sun asks as we get back to the muddy path.
I'm not sure what to answer. It's written in all of our faces how exhausted we are.
"I've been in worlds like these before," Sun continues when I don't answer her, "but it has never been this close."
The darkness is sucking out all our energy despite it being so far away. It watches us through the branches.
"And it has never been this exhausting," she continues, each word is heavy with fatigue.
"How can we get back?" I breathe.
I feel more human than I have in a long time. At the same time, it feels foreign. I've gotten used to be without feeling, pain and sweat. It differs from the dagger and the injury from the shattered soul. This feels more real.
It takes a while before she answers, "we will."
No explanation on how, nor does she sound confident over her own words.
This will be our grave. I don't have to say it out loud, we all know it's a possibility.