But he controls the dark? How could he be trapped in the thing he controlled? My lips part, ready to ask, I lift my gaze and—
What the fuck.
What thefuckhas happened to him?
My heart pounds as a deep anger spears into my chest, my blood boils, the room flickers from light to greyscale in seconds.
“What happened? Who did this to you?” I’m walking towards him before I can even stop myself, his form changing from solid and bold to a blurry silhouette as I try to shake my head clear.
But the closer I am, the worse it gets.
His caramel skin is laced in dark grey lines. Harsh, jagged shapes that plague his entire body, dipping beneath the collar of his shirt, marking his cheeks, unpleasantly outlining all his sharp, hard angles.
And his gaze… that bone-chilling, penetrating, all-consuming stare flickers all over my face… warily. Noting all my features, tracing the edge of my jaw, searching my eyes.
“When you suggested I went,” he says. “I couldn’t refuse.”
“I—Idid this?”
I feel sick. Dizzy.
The colours bleed from the room again, and Kane becomes nothing more than a shadow.
We can help him.
But we did this!
No. They did this.
I’ve hurt him. I’ve—
He appears in the realm before me, and those grey lines marking his skin instantly darken.
“What—what are you doing? You can’t be here!” I shout, frantically watching the lines as they grow thicker. “You need to leave!”
“I need to… be with… you,” he pants, shoulders bunching, breaths ragged.
I watch him, eyes wide, utterly terrified.
This was his realm—why was it doing this to him?
“Let’s go, right now.” I clap my hands, like that will spur him into action. It doesn’t. “Come on, Kane. You need to leave, now.”
“I… I’m s-sorry… I—”
“No. Nope. You’re not apologising here. Not right now! Not like this!”
The lines grow. He falls to his knees. He’s… he’s in pain.
The sensation floods me, overwhelms all my self-preservation, all my burning hatred. All I feel and think and taste is his pain.
He’s in pain.
I reach out, my fingers gripping his shoulder—an action I’ve watched them all do to one another, time and time again. “We’re leaving,now.”
And we do.
Light spears into the darkness, shattering and fracturing the realm within, blinding me with the suddenness at which it does. Pieces of the dark break away, then fall, like ashy specks of dust, until the light consumes them too.
