Shattered Legacies: Book 1, Holo Change

💠 Chapter 12: Wicked Dreams💠

The night before the festival of Gaia was.. an odd one. For it marked the very first changing point. The first threshold for our heroes. Because that night, it wasn't merely Alex, Ezekiel, or Anna, who experienced something blood curdling. That night, whether coincidence or influence, all three of them had a dream feeling all too real. All three of them had an encounter that would, unbeknownst to most, forever engrain a splinter in their paths. One of many to come.

Dead silence rang through the night, like a soft current gently carrying the ginger along. It was soft, allowing the world to fade in around him as it sat him in position. Alex's eyes slowly pulled themselves open, the thick dusty air making its tones of rock and time present along side the uncomfortably hard feeling under his body. And soon with it, a stagnant thickness pushing against the harsh surface he was leaning against. As if he'd been knocked out. His head fuzzy and since of balence a bit off feeling as he moved himself with a soft staggered grunt. Letting his tired eyes make out what he could through the night that enclosed him. On his right where he moved from, head swaying slightly as if it held a weight, was a long dark beige dirt brick wall, spanning high to the ceiling with lines of black and white ribbons braided together and hung like Christmas lights. Making him blink and narrow his eyes, rubbing them with his hands to try and clear his vision or confirm the sight. For some reason, these ribbons felt.. familiar. He couldn't put his finger on why, but.. they just seemed like he'd seen them somewhere before.

As the thought moved around inside his mind, so too did the ribbons. They twitched. Causing a buzzing creek sound as they glitched and turned to odd lines that zigzags every so often. He didn't know what to make of it. Thus, he looked away. The floor was made from large tiles in the same beige, gray, and a diluted lifeless blue that made up circle patterns with the tiles that weren't square like the rest, with a very blurry imagine in the center. Trying to make it out felt like it were straining his eyes, but it appeared as a round shape in the blue surrounded by gray. The floor led him to notice the rows of wooden pews with a cream colored seating, two rows right in front of him. He was sitting at an angle where he could see through a space between the seats, and see them go from what looked like a an endless abyss to his left, a darkness that bled into the room as it made the seats disappear. Facing away from it, and coming to an end a few steps before a single step set of stairs that sat on each side to his right. Leading to a small stage, a podium holding some sort of book, a door on each side, and a large metallic gray and fancy looking picture frame that seemed to mirror the endless nothing and only the endless nothing. Where the picture was supposed to be, there was nothing but black. And it sat where you would have expected a religious symbol. The room was nearly symmetrical. The only difference was that the far wall opposite of him didn't have a row of glitching ribbons. It had high rectangular windows that allowed an odd moonlight to bleed through, and land in the middle of the room. Odd only because the window too held a sky of nothing.

This wasn't a place he recognized. He knew it was a church of some kind. But he didn't know where, what, or why he was here. The thought of curiosity and caution fueling him to move. Push himself off the stone floor and slowly stand, his body feeling as though it were having trouble getting through the air. Sluggish and giving the world a blurred after effect of his movements. Possibly thanks to the fatigue his limbs were radiating through his system. It felt like they didn't want to move. Like even holding his head up was straining. Once up he tried to take a step, aiming for the unexplainable flow of moonlight absentmindedly. And as soon as he did, he was stopped by something chilling.

His entire body coming to a frozen halt, his breathing stopping dead in his throat at the shrill blood curdling sound. It was the voice. But this time it disturbingly clear, to the point it allowed him to identify something about it. It was female. And more than that, it was in pain. He could hear the gutteral nature of it, like a cry of agony with no words spoken. He could feel it flip a switch, sending a shooting warmth through his chest like an arrow and igniting the tangerine light that shown from between his breasts, under his skin. It blared like a flashlight, and made his mind turn to the one girl that it could have been in his mind. However, he couldn't judge which way it was coming from. It sounded like it was right in front of him, happening right before his eyes, but.. there was nothing there. Nothing but the moonlit blurry spot he was now afraid to step on. The voice was hard to listen to, striking him with a fear that took away all signs of the unexplained tiredness. His limbs trembling, shaking like he were in the middle of the snow. The voice began to get softer, though she were calming down from whatever had happened. Becoming slower and smoother, once again guidance, but with a bit of residual pain.