Destiny Destroyer

Prologue - Niveous Halls

Her eyes rip open like a bullet slicing through a paper bullseye. Her breath stutters out a second later, fractured by the transition from darkness to the blinding light of her surroundings. Her hand flies up to her forehead, searching for the bullet hole that should be leaking blood. Instead, her fingers slide across smooth skin. There isn't even a scar to imply that a wound was once there. It was as if she were healed by some mystical force.

Or, she suspects as she looks around, she's dead. She pushes her hands against the ground, helping put her onto her feet. She turns in slow circles, taking in her surroundings. A huge hall made from white stone and roman pillars. The roof directly over her head curves and stretches out like a rectangle with rounded sides made up from colored pieces of glasses creating a picturesque mosaic. The glass continues down the far wall, showing an image her mind cannot comprehend. On the other side of the hall, a pair of doors stand open, showing a courtyard dominated by a single, large tree with leaves of every color and all their shades that exist in the world, even some from beyond the world. The walls hidden in the shadows of the roman pillars and the overhang are decorated with portraits of people and places she doesn't know.

She is not alone in the waiting hall. A figure stands several feet away from her. Its skin has been painted with the black of the night sky, and its gray eyes stare out like two waxing moons. It wears robes of light blue with darker accents and a stylized red heart on its upper chest. Its hands are crossed over its stomach, fingers interwoven like a tapestry. It bears no expression, nor does it seem to carry any weight upon its shoulders. It stands so still that one could mistake it for a statue. It is only the subtle shifting of its eyes that would give away the autonomous quality of the Entity. However, even though it is not a 'statue,' it is not alive, either. Not in the way most would agree with, not in alignment with the proper definition.

"Is this finally my end?" She asks solemnly, shifting her weight from foot to foot. She's barefoot in this world, wearing a plain white smock. She feels like an angel or otherwise some being of purity. She flexes her fingers, closing them into fists. She's no angel, and this place isn't heaven. If anything, it's purgatory. It is the realm between the living and dying worlds. It is a place she has been once before. That time, it was by her own hand. This time, she thinks as she puts her hand back on her forehead, it decidedly wasn't her fault.

"It is. You have died this time. There is no way to send you back," The Entity explains with a voice like the unforgiving wind, moving and emotionless. The Entity has always answered all of her questions when she asked them truthfully, not entirely like an angel or a demon. If anything, the Entity might be a classical fairy, but it hasn't asked for her 'name' yet or whatever fairies do. Whatever it is, the Entity will either answer her question or tell her pointedly that it cannot answer.

Because she knows the Entity is telling the truth, her anger flares inside her body immediately. She starts marching towards the Entity, her footsteps echoing in the hall as she passes from one pool of colored light to the next. The Entity does not move an inch as she grabs onto the edges of its robes, pulling at the material with a righteous anger resounding through her very bones. "You promised! You said that if I wrote your stupid stories, you would give me what I wanted most!"

"I will fulfill my end of the bargain," The Entity says, moving its hands to behind its back as she pulls at its clothes. Its apathy towards her anger only makes everything sting worse. She releases her hands, feeling tension pull her muscles taut. She stares at her shaking hands as they remain close to the Entity's chest without touching it or its clothes.

"How? I don't suppose I'm going to find a family in this desolate place!" She snaps, gesturing her hands around. Unless the portraits and the mosaic above her that she can't even comprehend without feeling her sanity slip away are going to become her family, the Entity has not even gotten close to giving her what she wanted, what she was promised.

"You are correct. While not entirely impossible, a family would be hard to come by here," The Entity agrees, looking around without actually seeing what its eyes pass by. It stops looking around to stare at her. "For that reason, I will be taking you somewhere else."

"I don't want to go anywhere else! I want what you promised me," She complains childishly. Then again, isn't she a child? She was certainly close. She was a few years off from getting away from her foster home, from all the foster homes. She was only a few months from leaving behind every broken home she had been thrust into by a government that didn't care about her. She would never be yelled at or hit by or ignored by the people who were supposed to be taking care of her again. She would never feel the urge to end it all ever again. She was so close, and yet, here she is, standing in the waiting place between life and death, arguing with a strange creature that might as well be the devil for all she knows.

"I have never once lied to you. I am going to give you a family as I promised. You are going to be loved and have someone to love," The Entity declares steadily, reminding her so much of a night a few years from this one when she was first met the Entity, when she first swore to write her dreams as a published book in order to get the family she's desperately wanted since she was a baby. Warm tears fill her eyes, and she swears the Entity's expression grows a little softer, a little kinder, at least around the edges.

That warmth dissipates as it places a hand on her forehead. A dark liquid– purple, she thinks— spills across her face. She can see through the liquid, though her vision isn't exactly clear. The Entity blurs, but she swears she can see a pair of wings on its back. Something shifts in the wings, and suddenly, she is looking at a strange, white eye. "But I have use for you yet."

Suddenly, the purple gets too thick, and she cannot see anything other than it. The sensation of her body fades away from her mind, and she's suddenly a floating spark in a vast ocean, clinging to life and luminance.

And then-

And then she smells sea salt in the air.