VISION ✔️ || The Keepers of Astraela #1

44.1 || Of Scythes and Shattered Illusions

EMRYS

EMRYS WOKE TO HAZE. His mouth was cotton, his ears were cotton, and his head was cotton; it felt criminal that the room around him was not a matching white but instead drenched in shadow and lamplight.

As he blinked, he no longer found the grand staircase he'd left behind. Much like the great hall, the room was made of solid onyx, with ornate gold and white embellishments. He laid upon a plush king bed, draped with a silk canopy that stretched to the vaulted ceiling. Fluffy, tasseled pillows kept him propped in a reclined position. Brilliant hellfire lamps illuminated the space, casting ominous shadows in their flickering light.

For a room so large, it felt so painfully empty; not a single piece of artwork adorned the walls, and the furnishings were minimal. In fact, the lack of personal touches made it feel as if it had remained uninhabited for an indiscernible length of time.

Despite its oddities, Emrys couldn't help but find familiarity in its walls. He didn't believe he'd ever been there, nor the mausoleum that had sucked them into Hell in the first place, but everything about it felt as though it had once been—as the Demons had said—his home.

And, at the center of the luxurious bedroom, was Thana. Her blurred form swayed back and forth at a long wooden bar, humming a staccato tune that reverberated off the walls. She poured from a bottle that was darker than night itself. Slowly, carefully, she filled two glasses with midnight green Ambrosia.

Emrys could almost taste it on his tongue, despite never having consumed it in this lifetime: sweet and smokey and bitter all at the same time. Something that contradicted itself just as much as its pourer. Something that went down too smoothly—a poison that was easy to consume too much of and find death's embrace before the glass was finished.

It was fitting.

"There's something breathtaking about being yourself for the first time in centuries." Thana turned over her shoulder, smiling as if she knew he had woken without him making a sound.

When she corked off her bottle, Emrys forced his muddled brain to focus. There wasn't much clarity in his memory, but he recalled how he'd been frozen in place the moment the Demons were banished. Voices had swirled in loud, bitter tones that sliced his expectations of what their reunion would be. There was a blur of action: Eva with the stone, falling to the ground, and being beaten with swift kicks from Thana's boots.

Emrys' blood boiled. Raw emotion forced definition into the world's fuzz. His anger rose as he flashed back to Eva vanishing into smoke, succumbing to the same fate as the Demons, and sent somewhere in Hell's bowels. Somewhere that wasn't with him.

"Simmer down." Thana's voice, which had brought him peace in the midst of every catastrophe, was anything but comforting.

Her undertone was almost slimy. Unsettling. Enough to make his skin crawl.

It wasn't her. It couldn't be.

"Where did you send Eva?" Emrys' words were slow and slurred. Panic rose through his anger, twisting and spiraling with conflicting emotion. "What happened to you? This... this isn't you."

His voice fell, but she turned with a grin wide enough to tell him she'd heard him loud and clear. He blinked, trying to force clarity to her approaching form. It was like attempting to see a whisper, with spinning vision and colors fading in and out of shadow.

The next thing he knew, she was upon him, sitting atop the bed and handing him a chalice. Emrys raised his hand out of habit, but his fingers only brushed the stem. Taking it was not an option.

"I know you're afraid," said Thana. "You've never met the real me... not in this lifetime. But I promise, I will change your mind about my true self."

Thana's expression shifted rapidly from malicious amusement to a more gentle, kind smile. Her eyes returned to the same hue as the Astraelan sea—a shade so easy to be lost in that it could drown someone who stared for too long. As she reached out for him, he recoiled.