The Dark Between Dreams | ✔️

Chapter 7 🔻 Wretched Souls

The three of us all stumbled into a cavern lit by a scant number of dangling red lanterns. Movement from all sides made me scramble to my feet, braced to flee or fight.

A whole hoard of anchored ghosts gazed up at me.

"Another anchored soul," their ranks whispered amongst scattered columns that stood like stone trees in a petrified forest. "Another ghost rejected by After." Their voices echoed from every dark recess of the vast cave.

Above ground, I was just hunted like I was some rabid animal in need of being put down. Now there I was, amongst kin in a crypt. This wasn't much better.

The mass of anchored souls surrounding me surged forward as one. Skeletal fists knotted in my clothes. Shaking fingers caressed my skin.

I squealed and kicked them all away.

"It is alright," said the ghost of the old white-haired woman beside me. She raised a palm to the other hollows, and they obediently backed away from me with heads bowed. "You do not have to fear us. We are like you."

I saw it then. A gleam in her pupils, easily perceptible in this near utter blackness, glowed in her pupils.

Light.

She waved a hand to gesture back at the other anchored souls, who all stood in an underground temple; a dark sanctum devoted to the Light before a bas-relief of a crow, wings outstretched across an entire cavern wall. Two lux stones burned in place of its eyes. "Come," she said. "Join us. Fall into the Light with us."

A pool of Light spiraled into existence on the floor before us like a whirlpool. My heart threw itself against my ribs, struggling to free itself. My pulse pounded in my ears.

A single hollow separated from the crowd and dove into the Light.

Then another.

And another.

An endless line of anchored ghosts leaped into the Light to haunt the Realm of the Living—to whatever their soul was tethered to. I just stood there, mouth agape.

Finally, one hollow returned, clutching at the glowing pustules that throbbed in place of an arm. The other anchored hollows shoved past their injured friend while his arm slowly regrew. They, too, slipped into the pool. Some of them returned with limbs and body parts missing. Some didn't return at all.

And was this my future?

"They're dying..." I whispered.

The hollow at my side nodded slowly. "It is a sacrifice we must pay to the Prince of Light and Shadows, for he is the one who has given his Light." Murmurs of reverence rose from the crowd at the mention of the prince. "We embrace his gift fully. And we follow in his footsteps. One day, he will let us live in the Light as he does."

Another ghost returned with a black void where her face had been.

I spun on my heels fast enough to make my long hair fly and ran from the pool.

"No!" the elderly hollow cried. She caught me again, surprisingly spry. She fixed me with a pointed stare while the other anchored swarmed me. The Light flared within her pupils. "Stay with us! Stay with the rest of the anchored hollows where it is safe! You want to return to the Light!"

"No! No, I don't!"

Yes. Yes, I do.

The red-eyed crow glared down at us all. The sound of festering boils filled the cavern. I was done being polite. I stamped hard on the old woman's foot. She didn't yelp in pain, but her grip slackened enough for me to wriggle free. "Get off!" I made a last desperate break for the open trapdoor above us all. I stretched out my arms, my fingers clawing for the intangible glow from above.