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“Wake up, lazy bones. I’m here.”

He doesn’t answer.

“Christian.” Moving around the table, I grasp at every exposed part of him, shaking with as much strength I can garner.

Where is his soul? So strange how mine had found its way to me with the help of his.

Looking around, the flickering image of him has entirely dissipated, leaving me no way to communicate with him.

The ties between his soul and body have been severed. He used his last remnants to save you.

I don’t answer the demon.

I will need additional human help with the chambers.

“Okay, let’s figure this out.”

The demon lumbers over to me and shows me a simple button connected to the wires that had been clamped into Christian’s chest. It looks like Kieran had been harvesting their blood to keep Christian alive enough to experiment on him. But to what end? How did all of our souls meet in the Limina?

Shared memories of your own myopic world.

It still doesn’t make sense and will likely take me weeks to comb the labyrinth Kieran Lazarus has left me behind.

FIFTY-THREE

October 27, 2010

“Memory should be a home, but its thorns dig deep.”

— MARISA WREN

It takes the demons several hours to carry the bodies from the caves to the house. They lay precariously above them, like a morbid cluster of ants carrying bread crumbs. Some unidentified bodies remain in the chambers for possible autopsy when Arik awakens. Cassandra despite her egregiousness, I’ve called in a favor with a clinic to help her with the injuries. This was all a mess that I now—with all the pressure of memories—will have to face.

I clamber up the incline towards the cavern to ensure everything is taken care of. It’s cleared. Only old, rusted instruments lay in macabre wake. Standing there, I absorb the wave of responsibility. It’s funny how just a few hours ago, I had just crested the mountain of Kieran’s crimes.

Arian, Irene and Arik lay warm beneath towers of blankets. I hope it’s a matter of simply waking up.

Killian Bishop as I’ve learned, has already fled. Maybe it’s for the best that I don’t encounter another acquaintance of Kieran’s. There’s far worse in the Limina, the below.

The demon sidles up next to me like a benevolent creature. There is no benevolence within them, I know they want a trade in return.

“What else is waiting for us?” I ask.

I suspect you’ll see when Christian wakes up.

Inhaling a breath, I’m prepared to be a person I’ve never had to be. I make my way out of the caves and into the house once again. There’s no burning it down. Everything is as I remember, exactly how it was in the Limina, even the trace of salt lines. Did Kieran only do this so the demons wouldn’t attack him for what he’d done? A mere paranoid ritual of a man with enough hubris to fill the underworld? I ponder over his consequences. Nothing seems to fit the vast chasm of wrongdoings he’s committed.

My shadow lays before the fire in the Great Room, resting his sorrows and furies. We have a lot of time to make up for.

But there’s also one more thing I have to do before I even think about myself, one that takes an insurmountable effort to confront—what lies in the forest. What I know could likely rise, or remain fallen. Only the coming days will tell.

There’s only the sound of rustling trees and wild caws of crows coupled with the persistent chirps of round bellied wrens as I trek through the forest trail.

I am Marisa Wren. Daughter of Solomon Wren and Antonella Wren. Two beautiful, chaotic worlds clashing into one single creation. My mind feels full with the cementing of my parentage. It is not lost to the labyrinth. Not lost to the whims of a man who's never known love, and never sought it out.

The familiar route to my animal sanctuary causes goosebumps to rise across my skin, like the incoming low tide that carries a dangerous undercurrent. It is nothing more than a graveyard now. The wooden fences windswept and awash with salt. Wild tufts of grass intersperse throughout the clearing. I wonder how long I’ve been away. Months? Years? Would the town shriek in fear as they welcome the dead from their fitful rest?

Blurry sight cloaks the edges of my vision.