When Rue opened her eyes, she was greeted by darkness.
The absence of light. An eternal vastness. The darkness stretched endlessly around her, swallowing everything, consuming all sense of direction. It was so dark that for a brief moment there was no way of telling up or down. A second and she realised that she was lying upon a surface. A strange texture. It was smooth under her skin, neither hot or cold, neither stone nor earth. It felt like nothing she had ever touched before. It seemed almost like liquid, and yet it remained solid beneath her weight, as though she stood upon the sea.
For several long moments, she could do nothing except stare into the darkness, breathing heavily. Her mind struggled to catch up with reality. Thoughts colliding violently inside her skull, memories driving to the forefront of her mind in a chaotic storm. Lighthouse. Basement. Edmund. Halcyon. Levi. Kieran. She remembered the sky. She remembered tentacles through the clouds. She remembered Kieran burning alive before her eyes. She remembered Halcyon exploding into dust. She remembered Levi's goodbye. The pain of it all crashed through her with such force that her chest seized. She convulsed.
It must be a dream. A dream. Just a stupid fucking nightmare, created by the goddamn Council to break her fucking mind. Her hand immediately flew to her throat. A scar from the blade. It was real. Her fingertips brushed over the uneven skin and a wave of panic surged through her body. The sensation was enough to ground her, shaking her awake. She dug her nails deeper into skin. The agony that came after had her alert, the bubbling warmth of blood had tears pouring from her eyes. This wasn't a dream. She wasn't unconscious. She hadn't woken up safely in her bed from a nightmare. Everything had happened. Every terrible, awful fucking second of it had been real.
Cetus had been like some kind of nuclear fire. It had killed her mates. A ragged breath escaped her as tears immediately began spilling down her cheeks. She doubled over then, dry heaving on the ground. She retched but nothing seemed to come up but spit.
The horror she had been holding back came flooding forward without restraint. It felt too much for her body, too goddamn overwhelming to contain it all within her soul. In the darkness, her mind was breaking. She wanted to wake up. God, she wanted to wake up so badly. She wanted someone to shake her shoulders and tell her none of it was ever real. She wanted to be anywhere except here. She wanted to wake up on the cold lighthouse floor and just cry. Nausea billowed in her. She just wanted to go home.
Home. Home was 69, with Mama and the aunties, and the smell of piss and rot—No—Home, was the smell of a good stew on the stove. The gentle bickering of Alphas. The sweet delightful scent of bakeries and desserts, sugary florals and petrichor, whisky and coffee. The musk of her Alpha. Hands on her shoulders. Lips on her cheeks. She could cry. She could sob. The ache of yearning was so sharp she almost doubled over. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. She was losing her mind. She pinched herself, trying to stop because Rue would not give up now.
Where was she?
Was she dead?
Was this limbo?
Was this hell?
She sat up slowly. Her eyes were adjusting now, and she was beginning to make out shapes. Dark silhouettes. She knew that in the darkness, the mind would try to find faces, try to find figures. She could be insane. She told herself. She could be losing it. Then she turned her head. Air exhaled sharp from her lungs, for a familiar figure laid several feet away. For a brief moment her mind refused to process what she was seeing. The shape seemed almost impossible against the endless hell. It was just so fucking bright. He laid like a glowing star in the night sky.
"Kieran?"
His name escaped her. Then she was scrambling, fucking running. She ran across the dark surface, nearly tripping over her own feet in her desperation. The ground was silky, there was barely any friction. Her knees slammed against the floor as she reached him, barely feeling the impact. Her entire focus narrowed onto the man before her. But she could barely fucking see through the tears.
It was him, she was sure of it. The pulse in her chest told her that it was him, anchoring her towards his soul. There was no doubt in her mind that this was her mate. But was he dead? Fear clawed through her chest as she remembered the last time she'd seen him. She remembered flesh melting from bone. She remembered his hands melting as if burnt as he continued to push himself beyond his limits. She remembered the terrible peace in his eyes as he sacrificed everything for her. She remembered his death as he was eaten alive.
The memory was so vivid that for a heartbeat she expected to see a corpse. For a moment, her mind seemed to cover him in an illusion of death. And for a second, he was a corpse, the pale skin like bone, a mere skeleton on the ground. Her hands trembled. But instead of the cool stony body of a rotting corpse, she found warm skin.
Warm fucking skin.
Rue froze.
Was she hallucinating? If he'd been eaten by Cetus he should be fucking minced, he should have came out of that as mashed up bone. Had he missed its mouth? How the fuck had he escaped Cetus? How was his face still intact? Her fingers moved shakily across his arm, then his shoulder, then his neck. She groped at his throat. Fucking hell, she could barely find a pulse. She slammed her head to his chest, ear to his heart. She could hear it now, the steady thumping of someone alive. The thumps of a beating heart.
The realisation slammed into her so hard she almost collapsed.
A broken sound escaped her throat; a half laugh half sob. Tears blurred her eyes as she desperately searched his body for injuries she could fix. And now she felt grounded. There were wounds. So many wounds. There were tears in her eyes as she looked at crusting blood. But they weren't the horrific injuries she remembered. Where bone had once been exposed, there was now tender flesh. Pink skin stretched over areas that should have been impossible to heal. The damage remained obvious, and it did look like he had been chewed by a shark. There were bites marks all over him, layered like some kind of pattern, but it looked as though his body was slowly rebuilding itself. And at least his face was mostly healed, eyes closed, long lashes fluttering over skin. There was even a pink flush on his cheeks.
How fucking amazing.
"Kieran," she whispered again, her voice cracking under the weight of her relief. "Oh God, Kieran. You godly miracle." She broke. "I can't believe you survived all that. What the fuck are you?" she scolded through a barked out laugh.
She shook him gently, the answering exhale from him was soft. More of a groan in protest. But the sound shattered whatever remained of her composure. She pressed a hand over her mouth as tears poured down her face. He was alive. Somehow, impossibly, unbelievably and incredibly, he was fucking alive. The anchor in her chest seemed to hum. How? She smiled. How the fuck was he fucking alive? She couldn't comprehend it but for now she applauded the healing abilities of a helios in her head. It seemed that an SSS class Esper could rise from the dead.
But the movement at the edge of her vision had her freezing.
Something black drifted towards them. At first, she assumed it was her tears blurring her vision. Then she realized something was moving. She snapped her head that way, hands on Kieran, ready to pull him away to safety. She squinted in the dark, struggling to pinpoint the movement. Then her eyes widened. It was the ground. The substance flowed across the surface in slow currents, thick and fluid. It moved with a strange grace, curling and twisting as it approached Kieran's unconscious form.
It was ink. She knew it, knew what it looked like in Edmund's fucking cave. Instantly every protective instinct inside her roared to life. She threw herself over him without thinking. The ink continued approaching. Fear sharpened her voice.
"FUCK OFF!" she roared.
The darkness seemed to freeze and its reaction was so sharp, so abrupt that it startled her. The flowing currents became perfectly still, tendrils paused. Rue stared. The darkness stared back. Or at least it felt that way. Her heart hammered violently inside her chest as she watched the strange ink slowly retreat obediently. The black tendrils withdrew across the floor, sinking back into the void until a respectful distance separated them from her.
Rue's eyes widened. Nothing about this place made sense. But the darkness had listened to her. The thought should have comforted her. Instead, it frightened her. Because that implied that it had some kind of awareness. That implied that the thing was sentient. She looked out across the endless black landscape surrounding them and felt a chill crawl down her spine. The realm no longer felt empty. It felt fucking dangerous.
She swallowed hard.
She couldn't stay here forever. She couldn't leave Kieran unconscious on the ground. If he woke up injured and alone, if something happened while she searched for help, for a way to escape, she would never forgive herself. They had to escape, they had to leave.
Determination slowly pushed through the panic. She needed to move. Needed to find an exit, she needed to explore. Taking a shaky long breath, she crouched beside Kieran and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. The effort immediately proved too difficult. Kieran was tall. Broad. A dead weight in her arms. He was impossibly heavy, and her usual strength was gone, weakened from days without food and water. She was exhausted thanks to Cetus. Her body trembled with a bone deep fatigue.
"Come on," she muttered through gritted teeth. "Fucking hell."
With all her effort she managed to get him partially upright, propped against her body. For five glorious seconds she thought she might actually succeed, stumbling forward, lugging him along like a bag. Then his weight shifted. His body slipped from her grasp. Rue stumbled. Her feet tangled beneath her. She couldn't risk his injury and she leapt under him as he crashed onto the ground. Pain shot through her shoulder, and she hissed. Frustration exploded inside her. She tried to stand, but she was pinned to the ground, trapped under his weight. Her body shivering as she tried and then failed to stand.
"Fuck!"
The curse echoed through the void. Tears immediately sprang back into her eyes. She was exhausted and terrified. And now she couldn't even carry one unconscious man. There was no end in sight, how long could they survive in here? How long could Kieran survive without help? She pressed her palms against her face as despair threatened to swallow her whole. The reality of their situation felt crushing. She had no idea where they were. No idea how to leave. No idea what she was supposed to do next. And despite it all, she was hungry.
Hunger made her certain that she was still alive.
The darkness stirred.
Rue lowered her hands. The ink had returned, shadowy veils. This time it approached more carefully. "Leave!" she shouted. The things paused, then continued approaching gingerly. "Fucking get lost!" They ignored her. She watched in stunned silence as several tendrils slid beneath Kieran's unconscious body. "Don't touch him!" she snapped. "Don't—"The shadows gathered around him. Lifted. She was freed momentarily, and she spun out of the way to stand ready to grab him and fight those stupid things.
Kieran rose smoothly from the ground. The darkness cradled him with extraordinary care, supporting his weight far more effectively than she ever could. They had created some sort of bed under him, a flat surface that allowed him to sleep peacefully. Rue stared. The ink seemed to pause. Waiting. Almost as though it were awaiting her command.
Her confusion deepened.
The darkness was helping? The knowledge settled over her slowly. A strange emotion tightened in her chest. Gingerly, she stepped closer. The tendrils remained still. Rue hesitated before carefully placing her hand against the flowing black substance. It felt cool beneath her fingertips. Not slimy, or sticky. Just cool. The shadows immediately rippled beneath her touch. It was nothing like ink, nothing like Levi's shadows. She'd recognise those veils, the way they always seemed to call to her, a little warm on her skin, a little tingly.
These felt like nothing, more cool than warm.
But perhaps, was this a part of his shadow realm?
The thought echoed through her, had hope growing. For the first time since waking inside the endless void, Rue felt something swell within her. And as she stroked the things. A strange recognition seemed to grow. The sensation itself was impossible to explain, like discovering a missing limb. The darkness curled gently around her wrist, almost as if to comfort her. And standing in the middle of that endless black, watching the shadows carefully support Kieran's unconscious body, Rue finally understood one thing with absolute certainty. Whatever this place was. Whatever power lived here. Whatever it was.
It was on her side.
And it was under her control?
Rue stood frozen for a long moment, stared at the shadows that carried Kieran's unconscious form. The black substance held him effortlessly, supporting his weight. More disturbingly was that they seemed to be waiting for her decision. The knowledge settled upon her shoulders as she slowly turned her gaze outward. Still, she pressed a hand to Kieran's shoulder, unable to part from him.
She took a step to the left. The newly made bed followed. She took another step to the right; it shifted that way too. She frowned. Huh. This was…Convenient. There was no time to play with the shadows, no time to figure out the mechanics of things. She continued on forward.
The realm stretched endlessly beyond them. Now that the initial panic had begun to subside, she could properly explore, and the sight filled her with a growing sense of unease. There was no horizon. No stars. No moon. No sun. No visible source of light. Yet somehow, she could see. The darkness itself seemed illuminated, and everything appeared as shades of black and grey. What seemed to be the occasional mountain loomed in the distance, emerging and disappearing within the shadows. It felt like she was hallucinating and it was only Kieran's presence that grounded her.
The silence was perhaps the worst part. It pressed against her ears amplifying every breath she took and every beat of her heart. The absence of sound felt unnatural. Clearly, the realm itself swallowed noise and buried it within its surface. The only clear display of movement came from the drifting currents of shadow that slithered across the ground like rivers of ink.
It was like one big pot of inky, shadowy soup.
For a moment, her mind drew back to her hypothesis. Her mind worked, trying to figure out where the fuck were they. Edmund's cave had felt awful. The sticky dribble of wet ink. The cling of dripping viscous liquid. It had squelched and sucked on her flesh. Levi's shadows were gentle, warm and frothy like misty veils, like a soft fog. She compared the two. This seemed too liquid, too cold, too indifferent. But she likened it to Levi's shadows.
Perhaps Levi had summoned her to a strange spot in his realm. That had a spark of hope bubbling within her. But it seemed so different, lacking the heat she was familiar with. The gentleness of his touch. This world was unfamiliar yet familiar. Fear lingered at the edges of her thoughts after that. A part of her was sure that this was a new realm. Maybe her initial theory was correct and she was dead. But she felt alive. She was hungry. Still, perhaps the hunger was merely her stomach coiling within her from the ordeal. Maybe she was just losing her fucking mind and this was her mind, seconds before death— She swallowed hard and forced herself forward. She could not spiral, not with Kieran depending on her. The inky shadows carrying Kieran moved with her swiftly, accompanying her in the dark.
There was nothing else she could do but try to survive. She continued. But the farther she walked, the stranger things became. The shadow and ink were like water, swaying in the world, and the world seemed to ripple like a heat wave. Whenever she looked directly at the trembling waves in the distance, they vanished into a smooth endless darkness. It was like some kind of illusion. Time seemed to disappear. She had no way of telling how long she walked, and only the steady warmth of Kieran's skin kept her going.
The realm remained unchanged despite the distance they covered.
Then something caught her attention. The first sudden change. Far ahead, there was a silhouette on the ground. A glowing shape. Rue immediately broke into a run, dragging Kieran along with her. Hope and dread collided violently within her chest. She knew almost immediately what she was seeing. A body.
God.
A body.
As she drew closer, recognition struck. Her heart stopped.
"Levi."
The name escaped her as a shattered whisper. The anchor in her soul tugged her forward and she stumbled three steps before falling to her knees. He laid motionless upon the black ground. His body was stained with blood. There was so much blood. Blood on his chin, puddling on his chest, crusting in his hair. And the world seemed to tilt as her eyes swept over him, understanding the full extent of his injuries.
His left arm was gone. The limb ended in torn flesh and bone at the shoulder. One of his legs was missing below the knee, leaving behind a horrific wound that appeared as though something had ripped it away. His body was covered in burns. Cuts. The darkest, deepest purpling bruises. Deep lacerations that painted his skin. There was an open wound to his side, briefly revealing ribcage. She had never seen so much blood on him. And now with her hands on the ground, something squelched beneath her fingertips. She lifted them, smelling rust, seeing blood. He was lying in his own puddle of blood.
And he was dead. His eyes were open, had the blank muted stare of a corpse. He stared blankly into the sky. The sight slammed into her harder than anything she'd witnessed so far. The grief she had been carrying suddenly splitting open, floodgates unleashed. A sob tore itself from her chest. He was supposed to be indestructible. He was supposed to have the skin of a hephaestus.
"Levi."
She dropped to her knees beside him. How much had he suffered in his death? How painful had it been? Tears immediately flooded her vision. Her hands shook violently as they reached for him. Her inhale was sharp. His skin was still warm. Her eyes darted sharply towards his face. But his eyes were wide open, glazed. He was dead. And with his death, all hope that this broken world was his, was completely gone.
He was dead.
He had died minutes ago.
"Levi. Oh Gods."
The words dissolved into desperate tears. She gathered as much of him as she could into her arms, cradling him against her chest despite the injuries. His head rolled against her shoulder, completely limp. The sight broke something inside her. Every horrible memory returned at once pounding in her throat. His shadows protecting her. His smile. His voice. The way he'd healed her first over all else. The realisation that she might have arrived too late, that he might have been alive not long ago, destroyed her. He was warm.
Warm.
It had been mere minutes.
If she had been any quicker—
He was a God.
He was an SSS-class Esper.
The thought snapped in her head. And immediately she was hovering over him, hands over his chest. Compressions. She reminded herself. Heart compressions. CPR. She could try it. Kieran had survived all that after all. She was pumping away, counting, her muscles burning, arms working. Ugly, broken sobs that echoed across the empty realm. His eyes were wide open. They stared at her.
"Levi, please," she begged. "Please."
The darkness responded immediately. The shadows surrounding her surged forward. Rue barely noticed at first. Her attention remained fixed entirely upon Levi, on trying to save a corpse, knowing there wasn't much she could do. It wasn't until cool tendrils brushed against her hands that she finally looked. The black ink had gathered around his wounds, around the ruined shoulder, around the remains of his leg. Around every torn piece of flesh and wound.
"What are you doing—"
Rue watched through blurred vision as they began to knit. They were knitting him together. The darkness was sifting into flesh, and she could see it come away to fresh pink skin. The injuries remained horrific, but the process had begun. Her jaw dropped open.
Healing.
The shadows were trying to heal him. This was how Kieran had survived. This was why he'd been healed. Her breath caught. The black tendrils brightened faintly glowing grey. The wounds continued closing. "Please," she whispered to the darkness as she continued, hands pressed to his heart, pumping and pumping. "Please." The shadows responded by tightening gently around Levi's ruined body, like bandages over his limbs. "His heart," she encouraged desperately. "Can you try?" she asked.
A long silence followed. But they surged forward then and she was shoved back onto her ass. They swallowed him whole, stretched across his body. She could see them collecting into a swelling hill over his chest. His body rose, the shadows pressed down hard. Thump. It was fucking trying to restart him. Thump. She could see blue lightning, the shatter of something that resembled Dante's electricity. Her heart jumped to her throat.
Thump.
It was trying to restart his heart.
It was fucking trying to revive him.
Rue watched as hope grew in her chest. The shadows continued their work, pouring through his pores, flooding his eyes. They frothed through his veins, seeped through every crevice, healing, healing, healing. There was a golden light that appeared as they moved, like a snail's trail. A shimmery byproduct that painted his skin gold.
"Levi," she wept, breaking apart. "Please. Please. We're waiting. Kieran and I are here. We're here. Please, you need to come home."
And now the shadows were writhing like waves, like something that was alive. It was beginning to glow as it flowed over torn flesh and broken bone again and again. Fresh tissue emerged from black tendrils, vessels reconnected, bones mended. But he wasn't waking, the waiting was suffocating. They managed to regrow his fucking arm and leg. But he remained asleep, chest still shocked, eyes still closed, skin still pale. Miracles were miracles, but it seemed even that had its limits.
The hope that had flared in her chest was now cracking apart.
"No," she whimpered, her hands shook violently as she crawled forward. The shadows seemed to part, continued with its constant compressions, trying to keep his blood flowing. "Come on," she begged. "He was warm!" she cried. "HE'S STILL WARM!"
The tears could not stop and they fell, hot on his cheeks. The sound of compressions echoed in the realm like a grotesque imitation of life. More lightning erupted, the flash now illuminated the darkness. She could see enormous silhouettes watching from afar, shadows that seemed to stand waiting. But she didn't fucking care, all she saw was Levi.
Levi. Levi. Levi. Her hand brushed his cheek. His voice echoed in her head. Goodbye, my love. The sob bubbled from her throat. He was always fucking smirking at her, always protecting her. And he had always looked at her like he loved her. And he did. He did love her. Fresh tears. Everything hurts, the collapse of hope was worse than his death itself.
She fucking hoped that he was alive.
The despair was crushing.
She pressed her forehead to his. His skin was cool, cooler than before. The understanding of that burned her. He had been close enough to save. Her breathing came out of her in pants. God. God fucking damn it. She was so fucking exhausted, everything was crashing.
Goodbye, my love.
But the words that emerged from her was anything but a goodbye.
"You're not allowed to die," she whispered. "If you love me, you'd come back. If you love me, you must come back."
She swallowed hard. He did not respond. There was nothing she could do and it was time to go. Kieran was weakened and he had to be saved. She must be smart; she had to cut her losses. She had to—she leaned forward, lips brushing his forehead. A trembling kiss to still warm skin. She lingered, eyes squeezed shut, pretending that he was alive, desperately trying to imagine that he was well. A sob escaped her throat. And then she was pressing another kiss to his cheek, to his nose, and then she lingered as her vision blurred. She traced his features, the almost feline like beauty. The dark curls. Her gaze fell to his lips, her chest constricted as she leaned forward.
A final kiss on cooling lips.
She pulled away, defeated, utterly fucking broken. And then beneath her, his chest suddenly jerked, violently, roughly, seizing in the darkness as the shadows on his chest erupted into gold.
And Levi inhaled a noisy lungful of air.
A/N - Read ahead on
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