The sounds echo in my mind, slowly fading out until it’s replaced by the soft slinking of shadows, and Jasmine’s quiet cries.
“She was the first creature I’d ever killed. There was no remorse, no guilt, only a sense of relief. Of freedom. Of my darkness growing. And I remember my first thought after that, my only thought: go to The Divide—to them.”
If only I’d gone sooner. If only I stopped being a coward sooner.
“But when I arrived at The Divide, I was too late.”
I close my eyes, forcing myself to relive the moment. To remember what my years of cowardice had done.
“I saw Ezekial holding his dying sister.”
This time, I don’t look away as Jasmine’s tears fall.
I want to stop immediately, to end the pain I’m inflicting upon her, but Jasmine shakes her head slowly, as though knowing my thoughts.
My darkness slithers around me, grounding me, obeying her.
“I took them both. And The Divide—without beings to power it—collapsed into itself. But when we arrived at the Pit, it was too late.” My voice drops as I remember. “After all those years in The Divide, my father’s cruelty, it was too much for Ezekial’s sister.” I clench my teeth, remembering. “He held her as she died.”
Jasmine’s breath catches, but her tears never stop.
“And the soundshe made… I don’t think I’ll ever forget.” I squeeze my hands together, his guttural screams, deep and aching, pulsing in my mind.
“That was the day everything broke,” I say. “For him. For me. That was the day we fell. When we sealed our fate. Because we could have left. The Earth Realm was open to us, hospitable to us both, it was right there. We could have left and never returned.”
She leans over the table, just so, just enough for her warmth to seep into me.
“But you didn’t,” she whispers, silent tears slipping over her cheeks. “Why, Kane? Why didn’t you justleave?”
“Tragedy changes people.” This time, I hold her gaze, because I need her to hear it. I need her to understand. See what it did. What it made. “And it turned us into something vengeful.”
She never looks away.
“It was a massacre. Those who didn’t manage to flee, we killed. Ripped apart. The realm was littered with limbs and blood and we didn’t stop. We lost ourselves to the dark, and we allowed it.Iallowed.” Even then, even at that age, I could control the dark somewhat. I could have pushed it back, but I let it consume us.
“Then we found my father. And although he was immortal, powerful beyond imagination, he was not indestructible.” I clench my jaw, fragments of the memory trying to pierce through. “He couldn’t compete with us. Not together. Ezekial and I, we are two halves of a coin. Both sides of the moon. Light and dark, and fuelled with so much darkness, so much vengeance.” My hands curl into fists. “He was nothing but a torso and head when we finished.”
A bloody lump of flesh and broken bones. A man who I once revered. A man I feared. My father. Nothing but carrion.
“We wanted him to suffer, so we left him, abandoned him to die in his fallen realm, to watch it crumble, to rot away with it.”
Why that makes my chest ache, out of everything that happened, I still do not know.
“What happened then, Kane?” Her voice is so soft, soothing me out of the depravity. “To you and Ezekial?”
I take a moment, just a moment, to cherish the sound of her voice when she says our names.
“We went back to the Pit, and we stepped out of the dark, together. That’s how we ended up here. The Earth Realm. The Council District.”
Jasmine exhales slowly, like she’s been holding that breath for too long. But she doesn’t speak, just waits for me to go on.
“Only then did I—did we—realise what we’d done. Realised the amount of darkness we’d consumed. We were still so young, our bodies could barely contain it, we could barely control ourselves. And I’d spent too long in the Dark, Ezekial trapped in The Divide, being in some in-between realm with nothing to anchor us was… hard. We lost ourselves, again and again. We weren’t immortal yet, still just boys, boys with too much power, and no one to teach us what to do with it.”
And those years, although challenging, filled with pain and struggle—with Ezekial, they were still better than any second I’d ever spent in the Dark.
I’d do it all again, as long as I had him.
“But we had each other,” I say quietly. “Ezekial’s remnants of light were just enough to calm the dark, and eventually my ability to control it developed.” I pause, tapping the table, grounding the thought. We realised quickly that forming physical objects of the dark helped. “Then one day, when we were still stumbling through it, enforcers found us.” I huff out a laugh, remembering our opposite responses. “Ezekial says one of them saw something worth saving. But I believe they saw two things too dangerous to be left unchecked.”
