The Forgotten Light

8. Ritael

Ritael sat up abruptly, breathing loudly and ravenously. She immediately began coughing through the dust that had entered her lungs. At the same moment, something painfully twinged her stomach. She put her arms around herself, cringing and holding her breath for a moment.

It was so quiet around her, the sun was already shining. The girl began to wonder where she was, why she was almost crushed by the furniture and why she felt all sore.

Suddenly she lifted her head from above her knees.

No... Why did she feel so alive?

Confused, she emerged from behind the sofa behind which she lay hidden, although if she remembered correctly, the sofa had previously been in the middle of the room. She rolled up her navy blue shirt, which had a hole in it and was dirty with blood, and examined her stomach.

"What the hell...?" Her knees buckled under her and she sat back against the wall.

With her fingers, she touched the red scar on her blood-stained skin. She was reminded of her exhausting battle with the Invicta creature. Her body remembered the pain he had inflicted on her; after all, he had stabbed her with a dagger - her own damn dagger, which he had whipped from her hand earlier - mercilessly and deeply into her abdomen.

She had died. So how was she still alive?

She remembered the moment of dying perfectly. The moment when she felt literally everything inside her freeze. When her heart gave one last farewell beat. And suddenly there was a complete, peaceful... nothingness.

However, she still remembered what she saw before she was sucked into the bottomless abyss of silence and darkness. It was Fairlight's despairing look when she realized she was seeing her for the last time.

She also remembered what she still managed to feel, in addition to the overpowering pain - boundless sadness and terror, when the blade of Invicta's sword shone over focused on her Fairlight.

Ritael suddenly jumped to her feet, leaping nimbly over the dusty sofa.

Fairlight! Where was she? What happened to her? The friend had no chance to protect herself from the impact of the black-haired Being.

Shocked, the girl began to search the house. Three dark blood stains. Akio...

She took off her gloves, tucking them into her pocket. With pain in her heart, she knelt by him on the floor and, grasping his still hand, said a silent prayer. She stayed by his side for a long moment, until finally her gaze fell on the fireplace. She started up to check it, but found nothing. She flagged to the ground as a sudden, uncontrollable sob shook her body.

Where had they gone? The children had disappeared, maybe run away again, and there was no trace of Fairlight and Harlyn. Since they weren't there, they must have been okay. Had they returned to Florence, leaving her and Akio in that collapsing hovel? Or were they alive, but taken by the Invicta Beings?

She screamed at the top of her lungs in frustration and despair, pounding the floorboards with her bare fists.

What the hell had happened there? Why was she left all alone?

How did she survive?

Or rather...

What was she?