When the last of them were gone, the priests peered out at the rest of us, expectantly. It was a few moments before someone moved. Unsurprisingly, it was the girl from the Second Ring. She said no words. She didn’t introduce herself. She didn’t speak to the priests. She just closed her eyes and walked straight into the swirling blackness.
The Third Ringers glanced at one another nervously. One of them would be expected to go next.
The Deckers were jumpy, terrified. One girl, very small and perhaps the youngest of them all, took a shaky step away from the archway as if to flee, but Darius’s hand shot out and gripped her forearm tightly.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice a low warning.
Darius turned back to the archway, releasing his hold on the girl once her feet settled. Then, he looked at me and offered one singular nod, jaw tight and sorrow clear in his sapphire eyes. I reached for him and he reached back, our fingertips brushing in this final farewell.
My heart sank when he pulled his hand away.
Darius approached the priests. They smiled expectantly at him, holding out their arms in a tender greeting far kinder than anything their ilk had bestowed upon us before. But Darius stopped a foot away from them and spat on the ground at their feet, then turned—and stepped into that swallowing darkness.
I stopped breathing.
I couldn’t look away from the archway. He’d been there, my best friend, an instant ago. He’d been here, alive and well, speaking to me, looking at me, reaching out to me. He’d been at our apartment this morning, had attended the party last night. He’d been smiling and laughing, shooting me looks from across the room and meeting us after for drinks and telling the same stories we’d all heard a hundred times. Stories I would never hear again.
I didn’t hear the name of the next Third Ringer who stepped forward and shakily announced themselves before disappearing forever. A loud wailing behind me turned into a muted buzz, and I hardly registered the disgusted looks the priests hurled toward the Lower Ringers at their display of grief. I just stood there, staring into the void, and waited for Darius to come back, towalk back through laughing as he always did. I waited for him to return, to tell me it had all been an elaborate joke, like always. I waited until every one of the Culled had stepped out of our world and into the next, waited until their families pulled each other away, sobbing and screaming, waited until the priests clapped each other on the back at a job well done and dispersed as well.
But he didn’t come back.
And some part of me shattered.
Chapter Three
“Balance. This is the key to life in Sanctuary. The Trials and the Culling exist to measure the delicate balance between this world and the next, between the Geist and their people. Pray, Preach, Practice. Do not upset the balance.”
— The Rite of the Acolyte, 1,280 Age of Sanctum
Ididn’t leave my apartment for a week.
I went straight from the Culling to the Reeds’ home, where I told Darius’s parents what had happened.
I stood in the doorway, weeping. Shameful, angry tears streamed down my face as Orson and Dionne fell into one another’s arms, collapsed onto the carpet of their battered home’s entryway. I would never forget the wails of my best friend’s mother. The way she screamed and sobbed, clinging to her husband who just kept shaking his head and calling me a liar. I apologized again and again and fought my cowardly urge to bolt.
But that’s exactly what I did when Dahlia emerged. She took one look at her parents broken on the floor before turning her gaze to me. She’d spoken my name in question only once,her voice breaking, and I couldn’t take it anymore. This dark, burning pain in my chest and these people it had broken. So I ran.
I ran all the way to my apartment where I locked myself in and didn’t reemerge.
For a week, I lived in semi-darkness, sleeping when I wasn’t crying, forgetting to eat more often than not. I sat in the shower and stared at the stained off-white tiles, clutching my knees to my chest and letting the water cleanse what it could. Most of the time, I couldn’t even remember if I’d used soap.
Sophie came once. Her eyes were red-ringed and puffy, just like I imagined mine were. She sniffled when I opened the door and reached to embrace me, but I pushed her aside and asked her to leave. The hurt in her gaze as she turned away should have mattered.
But it didn’t. Nothing mattered.
Darius was gone. He was gone, and there was nothing that was ever going to bring him back.
Six days after the Culling, I didn’t want to answer the knock at my door. It took every ounce of whatever energy I had left to drag myself out of bed, walk into the living room, and throw it open. My mother stood on the other side, concern etched in her expression.
“I’m so sorry, Adrian.” Her voice cracked with sorrow.
I just turned away, eyes closed and arms crossed.
She strode through the open door, shutting it behind her.
“Sophie told you,” I muttered, irritated.
“She’s a good friend. She was worried about you. But I knew already from Orson and Dionne. Dionne hasn’t left the house since, but Orson…Maurice saw him at the northern gate, and he mentioned what happened. Oh, Adrian.”
