March from Darkness | ✓ (to be edited)

TWENTY-EIGHT

DEMITRI

I stood in the room Sāma had been given. Phrer and I had just come back from our talk when Sāma had called me to come speak with him. I entered his room, a red and brown affair with Cherrywood furniture and a large bed that sat facing the door. There were windows in the room, but they were covered with thick, red curtains. Everything was more subdued than anything else, the colours reminding me of fall in Vermont.

He stood in the centre of the room, his arms extended in front of him, his palms facing each other. A bright white light rolled between his hands, mimicking his hand motions, morphing into various shapes and forms before he tossed it into the air. The energy hit the ceiling and stayed there, spreading out until it covered the entire ceiling and the walls, wrapping us in a glow that I remembered well.

Sāma turned to me then, opening his arms to me. I quickly walked to him and wrapped my arms around my brother.

I felt it then, the true feeling that the Decran had tried to replicate. It was this indescribable peace in my soul, a calmness I couldn't remember ever feeling before.

"It is because we are soulmates, my Daraya," he said softly. I pulled myself back slightly at that. He laughed at my expression of repulsed confusion.

"No, not in the way mortals think soulmates are. The concept was never meant to be romantic or sexual in nature. Rather, a soulmate is the being that was formed alongside you by either Osphysus or, as in our case, the Center.

"It has just happened that some soulmates are romantic, but it is incredibly rare, which is why mortals have given it such a strange connotation," he finished.

I nodded in understanding before stepping away from him. I had so many questions running through my head that I knew were bombarding his mind, so I decided to ask the first one that came to mind. "Why didn't you look like this in my visions?"

It came from a place of genuine curiosity. It made no sense to me as to why he looked so similar to me prior to Latvaya forcing memories into me.

"Would you have believed I was your twin at the time if I had appeared to you in this form?" I averted my eyes from his strange gold and red ones, earning a slight chuckle. "Exactly. You were not in a state of mind that would have permitted my given appearance. Your soul forcibly forgot who I was, and I refused to frighten you any further that night. It was simply more practical to portray myself as a projection of yourself."

His voice tightened as he brought up the night we had met, his eyes flashing black for a split second before they returned to normal. I felt a jolt of rage, but it hadn't come from me. Anger radiated from his soul to such a degree that I felt it as if it were my own.

"Why didn't It defend me earlier?"

I didn't have to say what "It" was, thankfully; I still had no idea what It was in the first place.

He was silent for a moment, his eyes raging before he sat down on the bed. I followed him, sitting beside my brother as his eyes stared at the ground. "You had never felt such anger prior to that moment," he explained, still refusing to look at me. "Even when Latvaya was Silenced, you did not feel rage. You felt agony. When it came to this life, despite your misgivings, you still did not feel anger towards your attackers. It was only when that insolent woman that gave birth to your current physical vessel betrayed you, when those disgusting low-life humans betrayed you did you finally snap and allow Sakayek to do Their job."

Protector. My mind automatically interpreted the word to mean "protector." I was a little shocked at that, but given everything else, I wasn't that surprised.