Chapter One Aria

Chapter One

Aria

Darkness spread over the barren wasteland. A bare glow at the edge of Faydor was the only light to guide her way as she tracked over the hard, frozen ground. Her breaths were salient as she panted around the frigid air that filled her lungs, and blood crashed through her veins as she searched through the eternal night.

Her and Pax’s footsteps pounded in her ears as they ran headlong through the heavy vapor that snaked over the lifeless ground and curled around the wiry, leafless elms.

Lightning cracked across the low-hung canopy, a streak of sin and perversion.

Hisses of iniquity filled their ears, the whispers of the Kruen casting their evils into any willing mind.

She and Pax tracked one, refusing to allow its escape.

“Do not slow,” Pax urged as he tugged at her hand, encouraging her to push harder as they ran over the barren terrain, through the vapors and mist that whispered of evil.

Voices intoned the unthinkable, and the sound of wickedness and atrocities cut through her spirit like blades.

Chasing the dark shadow that fled, she refused the exhaustion and drove herself into the fog that sought to suffocate. It wisped around the jagged rocks and streaked through the desolation.

She and Pax closed in on the vapid shadow that writhed and thrashed.

The Kruen started to take new shape, morphing from smoke and manifesting as whole as it reared up to stare back at them, exposing the horror of its features.

Its face was pitted and gnarled by the atrocities of its mind.

Its skin was charred and black, its body made of a thousand spindly limbs.

Red fury sped beneath its seared flesh, a visible evil that coursed through its veins.

She wanted to weep when she saw its thoughts.

She reached inside herself for the power she’d been given, harnessed it until it was a vibrating orb of intensity she could no longer contain, then projected the light outward.

Desperately trying to bind the Kruen.

To stop it.

To end it.

The energy blew from her in a barrage of white rays.

As it felt the powerful energy cut through the darkness, the Kruen split in two, and in two parts, the thick shadow slipped low to blend with the dense fog that curled and spilled out over the pitted, rocky ground. The fog shifted and roiled, boiling where the shadow wound a billowing path as it fled. It was quick to come back together as it sought sanctuary deeper in the recesses of Faydor.

The Kruen whipped around the edge of a boulder.

Pax gathered his light and stretched out his mind to bind it, and he impaled the monster on its side.

With a piercing screech, a fragment of the shadow fell, writhing before it withered.

In an instant, the remaining shadow amassed. It lashed out with its limbs, which appeared in a thousand fiery tendrils.

She and Pax broke apart to dodge it. A molten blade streaked past her arm, missing her by an inch.

Only she realized in a flash that her Nol had not been so lucky.

She screamed as Pax reeled back and clutched his side where he’d been struck by the Kruen’s searing limb.

His gray eyes were wide with agony. Her Nol’s pain had become her own.

Pax dropped to his knees, and she couldn’t help but do the same. On all fours, she crawled to where he’d fallen. With shaking hands, she reached for him, begging, “Pax. Don’t go. Stay with me. Please, don’t go.”

She’d all but forgotten the vicious Kruen as she turned her back and clutched Pax’s shirt.

“Pax,” she whispered as she reached out and touched the severe, sharp angles of his face.

But she already knew she could not keep him there.

Like a torch, his spirit surged, flickered, and then he was gone.

She had no time to rebound or stand.

Because, from behind, a strike fell deep into her flesh.

The lash of a whip that was sharp and excruciating.

And it shattered the last of the light.

I jolted upright in bed. My hands were fisted in the blanket, and my mouth was opened toward the ceiling on a silent cry that I fought to keep locked in my throat. The scream threatened to break free, and I warred against the urge to release it, knowing what would happen if I gave voice to the agony.

This was something that could not be shared.

Jagged pants heaved from my lungs as my mind spiraled through the remnants of sleep, and I blinked through the disorder as I struggled to get my bearings in the wisping darkness. To adjust to being yanked from one reality to another.

Visions continued to flash, horrors that rushed through my brain in a circuit of confusion. My heart thundered at my ribs, and I could feel the blood careening through my veins.

I finally managed to inhale a shaky, steadying breath, and I shifted to sit up on the side of the bed. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the lapping shadows of my surroundings.

I was in my tiny room. The same one I’d awakened in for my entire life.

Safe.

It was only a bad dream.

It was only a bad dream.

I might have been able to convince myself of it if it weren’t for the fiery pain that seared across my back, starting at my right shoulder and slashing at an angle to my lower left side.

And I knew somewhere in this world, someplace I could never see, Pax was suffering the same affliction. I wanted to reach out. Touch him in this realm. Find the one my heart loved with every part of me.

But I could only ever have him while I slept, and never in the way I truly wanted to.

Reaching up, I touched the top of the wound on my right shoulder, wincing at the sharp sting at the contact. It was open, as I knew it would be. Venom dripping poison into my body. When I drew my hand away, I was able to make out the dark, charred blood that coated my fingertips.

Proof of this nightmare.

My reality.

The secret I fell into every night.