Silent Shadows: Book Two - The River of Secrets

XXX

Death.

A part of the natural order of life, the ultimate state of everything that experiences the happiness of knowing it exists.

Wouldn't it defy everything if you existed after it?

This is Verzweiflung, the reality your mind created.

Shimmerspark's eyes opened. This feeling was strange. It was like being born again. Yet her whole life was behind her now, charred with a burnt ending.

She opened her eyes to a labyrinth, a mess of black and white splashes. Whenever she stared at what she believed was black, suddenly, it was white all along. This place was silent, yet the silence was overwhelmed by an overpowering droning, a droning that fell lower and lower forever, never reaching any bottom.

"Where are we? What is this place?" Pebblestar's voice surprised her.

Shimmerspark didn't reply. She simply walked onward, wandering the other side of reality. She saw agonizing memories, of fire and of death, of her own torture, of so many deaths, smeared by how her mind perceived them.

"What did you do? Tell me!" Pebblestar hissed as they walked together, through words of pain and, laced among every agony's edge, joy. She saw battles, painted into an unimaginable hell by the way she saw reality. 

"Are we...dead?" he asked. He stood still as he realized the truth, a mischief of rats running around his paws when he stopped walking. They were both dead.

Pebblestar struggled to remember his death. As if it was an event of another universe, another timeline, and not something that happened a minute ago. Yet, as he stared at the swarm of rats at his paws, suddenly it became more clear to him.

He nearly screamed at the memory of what'd happened, of the agonizing feeling of the flames burning him as he howled in pain, before everything suddenly became silent. A silent slumber deeper than time. Had he really died? He was beyond death, he'd thought. 

At the rage and despair he felt when stricken with the thought he'd truly failed and been killed, flames began to light up the path, finally prompting Shimmerspark to turn around and face him.

"You...you monster!" he hissed. "You killed them all!"

She stared with a stone-cold face as the landscape around them began to distort in her fury and terror. The flames pushed against it, with their own idea of the universe.

"Fine," he replied. "I'll torment you forever, for the sins you committed against my world. You'll relive your Clan's massacre, and the time you were helpless and tortured at my claws for days, again and again for all eternity. It's what you deserve."

Her expression didn't change, she didn't even twitch. Pebblestar felt the flames begin to die down as terror filled him again. "Why aren't you afraid?"

"I'm not my mind anymore. My mind's what's all around us, now," Shimmerspark replied. Pebblestar turned to stare at the world around them, only for them to be surrounded by a maze of terror, having found physicality before being twisted into an infinite spiral.

"You don't have to hurt me," she spoke. "You are a God. Your throne is up behind us."

Pebblestar stared in shock, as Shimmerspark unsheathed her claws and cut upon a door in reality. However, what laid beyond was pure light. She took a step away as he slowly stepped forth into the light. Instantly, he found himself in a deficit paradise, yet with no company around him.

This is destiny, this is causality. 

The currents are now yours to control. Whatever will happen, will happen, by way of your mind.

Yet, what you wish for will not happen. You are simply apart of fate. You will do what is right in the name of destiny, what happens will be what you do, and what you do will be what happens.

Pebblestar felt the door close, leaving him behind in paradise. A feeling of loneliness instantly fell over him, as he stared around at what was supposed to be his paradise. There wasn't anyone else here. His Heaven was small. There was no food, interaction nor entertainment. Was it really a paradise?

A feeling of fear began to creep in, and a realization struck him with madness. This place would be where he would spend eternity, in isolation with nothing to do. He felt his heartbeat slow as he turned over the idea of infinity in his mind, again and again.

Oh, God. This is what forever feels like.

"In the end, getting to be a God like he wanted was the worst possible fate." Shimmerspark laid upon her own sky, finally ascending from those flames. 

"He has become a God, as it was supposed to be. How it happens does not matter," the energy told her. "However, you must understand that because of this, you won't exist anymore, in any realm. You will simply be gone forever."

"I know," she replied. "It's okay. Everything has to end eventually."

At that, her soul slipped between a crevice in reality. Her mind ceased the form it'd taken, and finally she grasped it again, within her own being. Everything came flooding back.

Damn it, my time's up.

Guess this is the end of everything.

-

Current scene: Queen - We Are the Champions

-

I did it, Shimmerspark thought as she fell downward into the nothingness. I saved the Marthanoirí, and I took down Pebblestar and all those cats who'd ruined my life

Did I do enough? Had I enough purpose?

She suddenly realized, she didn't need to have a purpose. She didn't need accomplishments to matter, she was someone. She had a life, she had thoughts and feelings, and so she mattered. 

I did it, I won the challenge of existing.

It hadn't been easy, yet she'd done what'd been worth it. She still existed despite the pain. She'd lived her life.

Her form began to dissipate into the darkness.

This was the end, but that was okay. This was what was meant for her. This was when it was supposed to end. But just by going on existing, by staying alive until destiny stopped her, she'd won.

She was a champion.

In her final moments, she felt joy that she'd been born, that she'd lived, that she'd existed.

And then there was nothing.

//

A/N

R.I.P Shimmerspark. At her death, she was 13 moons old.

She's possibly one of my oldest OCs. I was I think around 9 when I came up with her. She was like, my main OC. My favourite OC. I sorta forgot about her and made other characters, but after a bit I decided to pick Shimmerspark back up and finally give her a book. 

And now, she's gone.