Skye is dead.
How she perished is a mystery. All she knows is that she is trapped in After, a makeshift city of souls surrounded by infinite darkness and terrifying monsters that tear ghosts apart.
But while all other ghosts accept the eternity of...
Webb and Vale were relieved when I finally returned to them in the Dark, shambling and shivering with torn clothes and healing scratches. Then they were shocked to learn that I'd run off past the border chasing a voice in my head. Then...they fell mute when I revealed to them the stone I'd found. To my dismay, neither of my friends seemed very keen on my revelation. They held the piece between them while I prattled on and on, ignoring the shivers racking my body. Their lenses reflected the scrawled man and his monsters back at me, but they betrayed no hint of any emotion. "It's time to head back to the city," was all Vale said in return.
Since our return from the Dark, Webb insisted I was crazy for clinging to the etched tablet I found instead of selling it for, as he eloquently put it, "a metric crap-ton of lux." Vale had been silent. Not that she'd ever been chatty to begin with, but she had been even more taciturn ever since our moment in the apartment just before we left to go scavenging.
Every time I showed them the tablet, or tried to offer theories about the illustrations, both she and Webb would flinch and their eyes would flick to the windows as if wary of eavesdroppers.
I was scaring my friends.
Worse, I was putting them in danger.
These were crazy things that anchored hollows—dreamers as Blackburne had called them—would say.
And that was the kind of talk that would get a ghost thrown into the Pit.
So I stashed the tablet. I buried it under an old crate in one of the spare rooms, out of sight, but never out of my mind.
I sat alone by the window, my designated moping spot. Though I left space next to me, should Vale want to join me again. But the other ghost, without a word, left the apartment to go do her 'Vale things.' I watched her leave, biting my lip at the memory of the two of us drawing closer together earlier. What would've happened had we not pulled apart from each other? Wait. Why was I wondering this? I still ached for Dominic.
Another memory unwound itself from the tangled mess of my brain; the two of us walking together, hand in hand, as fresh snow fell over us. Gently, he'd cupped my snowflake-dotted cheek, and I soon forgot the stinging cold of my red fingertips as our lips met—our first kiss.
I could almost feel the ghostly warmth of that moment stirring in the pit inside me.
Yet a shiver ran down my spine.
The noise in my head was deafening, and the apartment too stifling. I needed to walk. No. I needed to talk. But both my friends were out in the city, leaving me alone.
I turned to the window. After called to me again. The painted red sword sign of Orville's forge beckoned me.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I stayed away from gilded zealots in the square at the foot of Blackburne's monument. In the shadow of After's king, I passed beggars sitting on curbs with signs asking for spare lux. Their eyes were glazed over as if they could keel over and go catatonic at any second. And I took care to keep my distance from any trapdoors I found, though I wasn't oblivious of the glowing eyes observing me from shadowy hovels while I wandered over to Orville's place.
