The Mirrored Souls

25.

A few days later

Charles paces as Vega checks Oriana's forehead, scared they didn't help enough. When Vega checks for any movement in her hands or eyes, Charles knows she's been spared but not enough to be awake. Neriah has stood taking care of Oriana's sleeping body, assuring her she will be okay. Vega takes Charles to Oriana's to see it's been torn to bits.

"Leon?" Charles asks in a hushing tone.

Vega sighs, "Guessing this is what heartbreak looks like," Shaking her head she bends down, taking her hoodie off, picking up a journal.

"Everytime we get close, it's snatched away," Charles says, then sees his breath in the air as the house becomes icy cold.

Roars of creatures fill the outside of the house while the inside becomes an ice chest on its own.

"Khiona's!" Charles screams petrified knowing the creatures personally.

Vega shoves the journal in her hoodie, grabs Charles, then tries to get them out of there until they're met by a soulless Leon.

"Why the hurry?" He asks almost dead inside.

Charles hides behind Vega as the Khiona's claw their nails into the wooden floors behind Leon as he leaned against the door frame.

"Oriana broke your heart so you go all double agent on us?"

Leon shrugs emotionlessly, "When you feel the way I do towards someone you "thought" you loved, you would do the same."

Vega walks backwards still protecting Charles as the Khiona's stand being as tall as the house, crouching like a hunchback as they snarl in hunger.

"Call them off!" Vega says as they keep approaching them.

Leon sighs then says, "As much as I would love to, they aren't under my orders," he shrugs.

"Leon...yo-your scaring me now," Charles stutters out as the Khiona's charge fully at Vega and him.

With one quick swipe, the Khiona slashes Vega's transparent arm and because she's in fact a mirrored soul, the mark has the ability to hurt her just because of them both being beings in the Specter.

"Vega!" Charles squirms back as another Khiona drags him by his ankle.

"Leon! Stop it! We get it! But not everyone can share the same feelings as you all the time! It's natural! It wasn't your fault!"

Vega rushes out as she holds her arm feeling it almost throb not really knowing the serious damage it took.

"How would you know? You died before you even had someone to love you," Leon viciously says.

Two more Khiona's charged in dragging the two siblings away as they scream in horror to how brutally aggressive they were while doing so.

****

Quivering in the vast dark space with nothing but the sheer skin off my back, had me realize I wasn't awake but somewhere in the Specter where no living mirrored soul that was good would dare enter.

If I was here then that means I couldn't find a way back or worse, I was stuck in between living and non-living like a mirrored soul.

When this happens, that means I only have little to no time to enter back into my body, like my mom once explained to me in case I was ever in this predicament.

Hugging myself, giving my body warmth, small creatures try to attach itself to me feeling the energy I give off.

That's a sign I will be greeted by many, no matter the form they take, a fight for my life and what comes after.

"You filthy disgrace!"

A woman with discolored skin and boils says with her mouth hanging wide, with her tongue split, almost like she was half snake, yells out in wrath.

"You found my home," The deep voice shyly says but meaning it to be baleful.

I wavered side to side wanting to see where the voice was coming from.

"Why am I here!" I yelled out.

The deep voice tittered, still not showing its true form like a predator watching its prey.

"You Soothsayers have been NOTHING BUT A PAIN IN MY DARKENED SOUL!"

Those words cause a ripple somehow making my body spontaneously bleed from my nose, ears and mouth like in my vision when I touched my drawing.

"Why are you here? Why did you get placed in my home?" The voice asks indirectly, really speaking to himself, "You were brought to me because you failed to keep the Specter from falling into the wrong hands." The voice gets closer, having its breath of rotting meat hit my nostrils as I tried to wipe it from the continuous nosebleed I was having.

"You KNOW NOTHING OF ME!" I hollered out, overwhelmed by all that I had to go through just to obtain this power, this gift given to me by my mother.

Cackling laughs from the voice makes my insides turn with anxiousness uncertain what the joke to what I said was.

"No? I don't know anything? Nothing at all?"

Stepping out from the darkness, the face I drew became a reality, 3D with every detail.

Its orange red eyes bore into mine as it drooled slipped down onto my feet.

"Your mother was just as strong headed until I gutted your poor daddy in front of her and you were just a fetus in her stomach."

Holding the tears that's being forced to come up I keep a solid stance not listening to the garbage he was spewing at me.

"Don't believe me?" His voice jumps but keeps a sense of mockery.

"Your mere existence wouldn't even be possible if it wasn't for people like my mother and I," Pokered face and all I looked up trying to gain dominance over it, but it just takes it's daggered like fingers and scooped me up propping me up on a wooden nail that's protruding out of the oozing walls and floors I seen in my vision.

"Stick around, you might learn who really runs things around here in the Specter."

Molding with the darkness, they are gone and I'm left hanging with the nail deep in my back having blood drop down.

****

Neriah rushes in and out as the bed sheets fill up with blood out of nowhere underneath Oriana's sleeping body.

Turning her over he sees a deep hole where the wooden nail would be if she was propped onto it and immediately tries to fix it while trying to stop the blood from pouring out.

"Oriana what is happening..." He says troubled furrowing his eyebrows together.