Lightless Twin Souls | ONC 2023 ✔

Chapter 3 - Calling Soul

The contrast between laying on a mattress and the ground and staring at the wooden ceiling and the stars in the night sky was not something JD thought he'd miss for a while. But it was something he was forced to compare after tonight's event.

After a moment of confusion and mixed emotions, the cold of the night finally broke in past JD's long sleeves, prompting him to gather his stuff and take a short walk around the town's borders. Aimless and still confused about what had just happened, he got to a spot that led to a forest.

With the tall and dark bodies of the trees and the silent coos of night owls in the distance, paired with the peace between the forest and the town's side walls, it was evident that the forest was safe enough to hide in a short while. Hunters usually went to the woods more than a kilometer away from the gates of Abarly, and none had stepped further into this one after making sure it didn't have much to offer.

JD wandered further into the forest and eventually reached a sign that stated its name, Tamethe and proved as the last point of human travel. It was the center of the forest, Tamethe, and the more JD stepped forward from the sign, the more the area proved empty of any other creature than owls.

There was a hillside, however, and only once JD got to its little peak did he drop his luggage on the ground and allow his body to fall onto the short grass fields clear of most of the trees in the forest, lost in thought.

Only then did the events with Zalden fully sink into his comprehension.

"Why?" He mumbled, eyes tracing the familiar formation of the stars above.

Abarly was a small town by the southeast of the continent known as The Great Gemini, rumored to be ruled by the Gemini gods in heaven. And the sky changed forms and appearances based on which land one stood and gazed above. So, whether it was a constellation of any of the gods, JD guessed it must be the constellation of the Gemini gods.

The move Zalden's CEO made last was odd, and while the townspeople themselves threw JD out of the town, it all didn't shake his resolve. None of it made complete sense.

But as the night grew deeper, and so did his thoughts and wonders, exhaustion seeped into his bruised body. The forest called Tamethe had also been swaying his soul left and right. For a moment before his consciousness vanished, something in his very core made an unfamiliar, burning reaction to somewhere beneath the hill.

A low growl, or maybe a snarl. It echoed lightly as the colorful fur of a mythical creature ventured on untouched land and sturdy, towering pine trees. Cyan claws so bright they glowed against the cold moonlight and cautiously trudged onto an area in the forest. An area past the sign humans put up where the grass always stayed up had been flattened. Someone walked past the signage.

Hours might've passed until JD woke up to the startling alarm noise from his phone. An alarm set to a point where dawn hadn't even peaked yet.

JD turned and tried to grab his phone somewhere nearby. It shouldn't be too far away, but a piercing noise against a screen not only killed the alarm noise but also shot his senses and eyes wide awake.

Somewhere close to his hand reaching out to his phone were traces of cyan, magenta, and white fur enveloping bright, cyanic claws. Right there stood a creature whose two clawed fingers held his spare phone in between, the sharp edge of the paw against the screen screeching, and eventually, both edges stabbed through the phone.

If that wasn't enough to get JD's frozen state up and running, the creature—the monster's bright blue eyes shifted from the phone to JD. He flinched, and as if frozen water were poured on him, he found himself sprinting down the hill with his mind going blank.