SHADOW || The Catalysts Series, #2

XXXVI || Catalyst

Things are changing.

With the recent stir of events, it brings an ominous message to the City of Leatia and its founders.

The day the explosion in the restricted zone went off, the entire City shook. It wasn't just the explosion that rattled bones—it was the demonic shrieks and screeches, and the aftermath. The mighty Walls of Micah trembled throughout the waves of explosion, resonating with the barrier encasing Andromeda Sector.

Even the demons are restless, stirring aggressively since the wave of tremor. Demon activities have been increasing, leaving the Catalysts understaffed. Defences were doubled, the cleansing frequencies sent at consistent waves across the City in an effort to control demon activity.

The signal sends a wave of nausea to the redhead perching on top of an abandoned building, observing the destroyed sector beyond the still standing purple energy barrier. They still keep the barricade even after they set off the explosion, and nothing might have remained. The smoke has long cleared, and probably only ashes remain.

A trickle of blood falls from his nose, and he disregards it with his fingerless leather gloves. Only after the sonic settles is he able to regain his focus and bearings—that idiocy in the air never fails to make his head hurt.

When he is sure the cleansing in the air is over, he shifts the eyepatch he always wears around his left eye and uses it to cover his right instead. The left eye he sees through is stark clear... and inhuman. He doesn't need another eye if he's got this one. Adjusting to the foreign senses, he forces himself to look at the City before him with this otherworldly sight.

There's always a red hue in the corners of his vision, but he notices the darkness spread across the City—the foul presence undetected by the naked human eye.

And while he expected nothing of the destroyed sector, an even concentrated darkness is lurking beneath the domed-barricade of Andromeda Sector, as thick as plumes of dark smoke. Seems like the demons survived, after all. Switching back his eyepatch to his left eye, he wonders about the rift that was reported, and what this means for the City of Leatia. Even if there was the slimmest chance that Andromeda will be back to normal one day—what with the research effort the government put in—it is unsalvageable now despite the City's previous beliefs. It was merely under lockdown before with unknown reasons, but both the discovery of the rift by the S-Class and the explosion create more uncertainties. Hence there is no restoring the place.

No sane man will simply walk into a once forbidden area now turned demon-site, even if a bomb has been planted in an effort to destroy the monsters. If there really is a rift in there, it will only lure more beings into this realm. And without anyone to counter the source, it may never close, forever being a plague in this City.

The redhead with one good eye scrutinises the news carried by the blimp that hovers in the sky. The authorities are telling different tales of the story, addressing the public concerns to suppress worries. They proceed on good news, announcing the return and success of the S-Class, and the one captured member of the Shadow Syndicate. The screen reads: A SMALL STEP IN A LONG BATTLE, AND ONE TOWARD VICTORY. Next up, Arcana is declaring that the obstacles Arcane Academy encountered will not impede his students' ability to perform, and to undergo the compulsory trials in the coming week.

Everything—anything—but bad news. But as the young teen retreats from his scouting site, he knows things are never going to be the same.

Something riding on the brink of two universes snapped, and their world knows it—recognises it. And it's only a matter of time before everything unravels.

𖤐

Lena begins to remember. Or perhaps, she is starting to acknowledge what she might have suspected from the beginning.

Before the City of Leatia, before Arcane Academy, there was emptiness. She remembers nothing of her past. She didn't even know how she appeared on that street that night, with the knowledge of how everything in this world works and what she goes by, but just nothing else.

But the pieces of her blur together. Lena often finds herself with images of a normal life. An ordinary one, beyond the City of Leatia. A family, and herself growing up. A world without demons or supernatural abilities; a vision without the concept of Catalysts.

Her first memory was of a grey stormy sky, and rain-filled streets. She was stumbling around the corner of a narrow alleyway before running into the man who introduces himself as Arcana, the headmaster of an elite school for students who posses superpowers. The man who offered his hand to her in the dark, taking her to the other side of what remained of the world: the City of Leatia.

Arcana never questioned her origins. Instead, it was as if he'd showed up just to be there to guide her, and help Lena find the way to Arcana Academy. When Lena is first introduced there, she speaks of a life she merely has vague memories about—of a life she now realises she's never had.

The glass, the visions—sometimes they look as if there are worlds within them. Lena has a purpose in arriving here, and she needs to remember what that is.

Before she is able to, she must first overcome the splitting headaches that arrive after transversing through the many possibilities her little visions allow through any glass surfaces. And sometimes, the darkness that beckons.

When Lena wakes from the nightmares that plague her each time she closes her eyes since the extraction mission, her head pounds as if it might break, some visions flashing through her head even without a medium of glass. She's always been looking at tiny messages through glass shards, but her dreams sometimes piece them together, the pieces forming a solid image. They blur together, thousands of visions and worlds in them, past and present, real or fake. Pieces of Lena's life—some of which that only lived in her imagination, some that she wishes to one day live, and some she may never ever get back.

And every time she rises from these deep slumbers, Lena finds herself crying, waking from a dream that she will never grasp.