He knew only that he’d fallen into a long and dreamless sleep, and if he wished to wake up…
“Choose.”
Karr flinched as the whisper echoed through the throne room. He looked around, but there was no one to be found.
“Choose,”the whisper came again.“Choose a side.”
Karr felt it rumble into his bones, as if the word were sidling up beside his very soul.
Not a suggestion, but rather, a command.
He knelt and reached a fingertip to his right, to touch the dark black ice. It was surprisingly warm and welcoming. Frozen, yes… but like tendrils of sunlight reaching out to soothe a shattered soul.
He turned left, and touched the white ice next.
It was cold and chaotic, a spiraling wind let loose from a raging storm. So bitter cold, it felt like it burned his skin. He flinched away from it.
Back and forth, Karr tested the two sides, wondering about each of them. The dark was sweet, and safe. But the white light was intoxicating, a taste that kept begging him to come back for more. A little tug and pull that whispered like a devil on his shoulder, its bony finger waving for him to draw near.
Karr wanted to obey. He wanted to sink into that white abyss, that pool of sly whispers, and let it swallow him whole.
He took a step.
Then another, his feet sliding on the grey rug, as he stepped away from the light.
It was then and there, Karr standing with one foot halfway into the dark, that the child suddenly appeared on the throne.
Bone-white hair cascaded down her shoulders, shimmering as if the strands were alive. When Karr looked closer, he saw that her hair was made of stars. Hundreds of thousands of them, a galaxy hanging in strands down to her waist. And it wasn’t just her hair, Karr realized. Light poured out from the girl’s body, arcing and swirling, as if she had a force field surrounding her. Planets ebbed and flowed across her skin. Nebulas danced in her eyes.
A blink, and suddenly she faded from the throne before reappearing on the rug just before him, a smile on her lips.
For a moment, her presence pulled Karr away from the dark.
He took a step back into the grey and faced the girl.
“Who are you?” His voice was missing the shock that, in any normal world, it would have been drenched with. “Where am I?”
Her laugh sounded like a song. “I am the Beginning,” she said, and though Karr knew in his heart that he’d never met this girl, he had the strangest sensation thatshehad methim,that she knew more about him, perhaps, than even he knew about himself. “And so are you.”
Her eyes were ancient and all-seeing. In her gaze, he felt laid bare.
She stepped closer to him. Though her head only reached his chest, when he looked down into her knowing eyes, something inside made him feel as if he were really lookingup.
“Karr,” she said. “The lost soul.”
The light around her pulsed and expanded, until his eyes ached just from looking at her. She placed her hand flat on his chest, and for one moment, he saw a vision of blue light; of raging wind; of hot blood sliding towards his bare toes.
“Choose,” the girl whispered. “Darkness, or Light?”
She stepped aside and held out her arms.
Tendrils of swirling, cool white snaked towards Karr’s hands, while warm, delicate darkness swept around his feet.
“Choose.”
It was impossible.
The pale abyss to his right whispered his name, and promised power and pleasure, greatness and glory, while the shadows from his left sung sweetly a single word:Peace.
