DARKHAVEN | "Three Sisters" Book One

Chapter Forty-One

Roslin

Blodwyn went through the left door. Gia went through the right door.

And Roslin went through the door in the centre.

Youngest, middlemost, oldest.

Moving through this passageway was not like moving through the main door: there was no pressure, no pain, no claws that tore. There was just...there wasn't anything.

Cold shadow whispered over Roslin's skin as the darkness swallowed her, then she was alone in the silence. There was no sound, no sensation, no light, only the oppressive weight of nothingness pressing in from all sides. This wasn't the darkness she'd grown used to, not the darkness she'd walked with.

When she held up her hands, she couldn't see them. Not this time. No feeling of ground beneath her feet, no hint of solidity to anchor her existence.

She couldn't feel anything. And that included her magic. "Phos," whispered Roslin in a shaking breath. Nothing. "Solis." Nothing. "Lumerien." Nothing.

It was as if she and the world were empty together.

She wanted to call into the nothingness, but she was afraid of what might hear.

Or worse, what might answer.

With a final calming inhale, she started forward. Each step was slow, deliberate, and a blind gamble. She didn't know how long she walked like that, but her blood rushed in her ears, and in the emptiness, her heart beat in her head like the ticking of a clock. Tick, tick, tick.

But the unseen world in the blackness began to change. She felt it on her skin first: the air grew heavy and humid, not warm, but not cold, either. Just uncomfortable. Then, with each step, the ground beneath her feet shifted, growing soft, pliable, and yielding like damp earth. The air was heavy with the scent of moss and swamp, and it smelled like...summer.

The miserable summers of her childhood.

At last the ground changed again from soft earth to stone. A singular, broad stone. Tap tap tap went her foot against it as she tested it. She gingerly placed her weight upon the stone, ensuring its stability before stepping onto it.

Opposite the stone, her foot found water. She recoiled, initially afraid it might be acid or poision, but it just seemed to be little more than tepid water. Stretching her foot further, she found another stone. Stepping stones, then, and if she had to guess, it was in some kind of bog or swamp. Insects were droning in the distance and a whip-poor-will cried its signature call. The stones went on like this, and she followed.

She followed them until she saw the first light in the distance. It was some sort of orb. It swung back and forth lazily as if in a wind, and the colour seemed to be prismatic and ever-changing. Naturally, Roslin followed it. The stones ended and put her back on grass, and the grass led her up a hill.

Up a hill and towards the light—which illuminated nothing around it.

At the top of the short hill, Roslin stopped a few feet away from the light. Looking at it made her whole body hum the way her magic did, and it was as if she could feel every ounce of blood in her veins where magic should have been. She wanted with everything she had to reach that light. It could be a trap, it could be a test, it could be...it could be anything. Roslin reached one hand out for it.

"Solis," said a voice all too familiar.

The light flared out, and the hill was illuminated. Roslin shielded her eyes instinctively at the sudden flare of light. Looking down with her hands raised over her head, she saw grass, orange dirt, and a sharp square stone out of the corner of her eye. A tombstone.