Ethereal Darkness

Chapter 2

The Space Between

Madeline

Three days have passed since my Garrison has asked the impossible of me. To say my nerves were starting to get the best of me now was an understatement. Was I seriously contemplating searching for the Savior myself?

Apparently, it seemed that way.

A part of me wondered if I had fallen and hit my head when I was leaving the cove and had dreamed the entire exchange at the Atrium. Still, after several failed attempts to ‘wake’ myself, I finally accepted that it all had actually happened.

I now sat near the edge of the courtyard with my arms wrapped around my knees as the usual calm of the space blurred with too much movement.

Angels rushed past me—guardians mostly, their robes streaked with stardust and ash. They moved like a wind-fed fire, fast and unrelenting, barely acknowledging me as they carried soul after soul through the gates to the other side.

I lost count of how many came through.

Hundreds, thousands, even.

Children. Elders. Bloodstained men holding babies. Spirits who hadn’t yet realized they were dead. It was awful to watch.

And yet I sit there in the grass asking myself the same question, but never seem to find an answer.

Why me?

Why did they ask me to do this alone? Why did he disappear in the first place?

My hand found the feather that I had tucked into my sleeve. Its tip darkened, as if it carried a shadow of its own.

What if he doesn’t want to be found?

The thought struck hard and cruel within my chest. Thai was all getting to be too much. I needed a moment to gather my thoughts, and there was only one place that ever helped me do that.

I slipped out of the courtyard carefully without anyone noticing, and I returned to my little hidden cove. I had hoped that the stillness here would help to soothe me like it always had. But as I sat there watching the tiny ripples of water as they lapped at the edge of the shore, I realized that I was not going to find the answers that I sought here.

The wind didn’t carry the same songs that it usually did. The light didn’t dance the same either.

Something had shifted.

I tried sketching, but my hand trembled too much to draw the familiar eyes. They had never come out right—but now, they refused to come at all. I stared at the blank page as if it had betrayed me. The charcoal tip hovered, then lowered, then scratched out a mess of broken lines that I quickly erased. I groaned in frustration as I slammed the book shut.

I stayed there until the stars bled through the mist and the air turned cold. The chill managed to seep through the layers of robes like they were nothing. My body shivered as I finally made my way back to the Sanctum Hall to my rooms.

My body felt numb, as if the weight of a boulder was sitting upon my chest as I stepped into my room. I showered in the hopes that the water would wash away the decision I was about to make, but even the warmth of the water offered little respite.

I didn’t mean to fall asleep. But when I did, I woke up inside the Commander's office. With the crystal looking glass glowing unnaturally bright, casting long shadows over the walls like tendrils of smoke. I cast a glance around the room, searching for the others, but I was the only one there. Reluctantly, I stepped toward it, peering into the glowing sphere—but it wasn’t the present I saw.

I watched as the cities fell in reverse. People who had burned now stood again, only to crumble once more. Time fractured and rebuilt itself over and over. Playing in a loop that seemed to go on forever.

Then the view shifted—fast and jarring.

I peered at the sphere harder, and that was when I noticed it. A figure standing off to the side amid ruin, with its back turned to me. Tall. Cloaked in shadows, dragging the ash along behind it as it moved.

Then it stopped and turned halfway, just enough to show a pair of glowing gold eyes, rimmed with sorrow.

“Remember,” a voice whispered.

And then I was falling—

My eyes flew open as I sat up so fast that the room spun for a moment before finally stilling long enough for me to realize that it was daylight once again. The bright light was shining through the sheer curtains that covered the windows. My breath came in short pants as I tried to make sense of what I had seen in my dream.

“What was I supposed to remember?” I said aloud to the empty room.

Those eyes. They seemed so familiar, so haunting.

I threw back the covers and raced to grab my sketchbook and pencil. I didn't know what I was drawing at first; my hand just flew across the parchment all on its own until it stopped. I sucked in a breath as I stared at what I had drawn.

The eyes.

The eyes I had been trying to perfect all this time now stared back at me, with gold irises perfectly framed by thick, dark lashes. A small smile played upon my lips as I marveled at them, as my fingertips brushed across the edge of the drawing.

The door to my room opened without so much as a knock, startling me. Remi stood in the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest. Her face seemed to become unfocused for a moment, swapping from the typical look of disdain that I had come to expect from Remi to something else.

Something softer, it was as if a mask had finally slipped, and for the first time, I actually saw Remi. Her eyes shimmered—not with celestial light, but emotion. Human, even. “Jamieson said that you need to be ready in the next fifteen minutes.”

It was time. And whether I was ready or not, I was going to have to face whatever was about to be thrown my way. I nodded without a word and quickly got up and started to gather my things.

What do you take on a trip to Earth in the hopes of finding the one and only Savior?

“Has there been any change on Earth since the other day?” I found myself asking. What was I hoping for? That maybe the destruction had stopped and the world would return to normal, and I would not have to be the one who tried to save it all?

Maybe.

Was that the answer that I got?

Of course not.

Remi sighed, “It is worse than before. More and more cities fall every day. The gates are overflowing with so many souls that the guardians are having a hard time keeping up,” Remi said as she crossed the room towards the small desk that sat in the corner.

Our rooms within the Hall were not large at all; they were only big enough for the essentials: a bed, a desk, and a small wardrobe for our robes, along with the smallest bathroom imaginable.

I watched out of the corner of my eyes as I stuffed another robe into my pack. Remi flipped through the pages of my sketchbook that still sat open in the center of the desk. I watched as the muscles in her body grew tense as she turned the last page.

Her face went pale

Did she recognize the eyes as well? Did she know who they belonged to?

She closed the book and turned to me, her face grim, “Jamieson’s waiting,” she said softly. “We don’t have much time,” she said quickly as she crossed the room towards the door again and flung it open wide before disappearing down the hall.

“Hey, wait up,” I called as I rushed to close my pack and follow after her.

Did she wait? Nope.

“You recognize them, don't you?” I asked as I finally caught up to her.

She came to a sudden halt, and I did not have time to stop my momentum, and I plowed right into her back.

“Where did you see him?” Her sudden question startled me because I had no clue who she was referring to.

The eyes belonged to a man? I had always assumed they did. They always felt like they did, but having the confirmation that they were male surprised me a little, and I felt my heart rate spike a little.

“Madeline, answer me!” Remi demanded. “Where did you see him?”

I did my best to shake off my surprise, but I failed at it by the look on her face.

“I don't know who ‘He’ is, I have always drawn them for as long as I can remember, they have always just been there in the back of my mind. I had never gotten them right, though, until this morning. They were in my dream,” I said quietly.

And in that moment, fear cracked across Remi’s face like glass spidering after it was hit.

“I was back in the commander's office, and the looking glass was replaying what we had all witnessed the other day over and over again until I noticed a figure standing off to the side. When it turned, I saw the eyes right as I woke up. They had called to me so much that I had to draw them, and surprisingly, they were exactly right this time. Everything I had been missing in the previous drawings was there,” I said as I opened the book to show her all the different drawings.

“You know this ‘Him’, don't you?” I asked.

“No,” she said, her tone firm.

She was lying. I could tell by the way her eye twitched at the corner. She did know the owner of the eyes, and she was deliberately pretending that she didn't.

But why?