VISION ✔️ || The Keepers of Astraela #1

8.1 || Of Barbecues and Blood Loss

EVA

"THESE ARE BOOKS. Fiction. It was all just a dream."

A dream that was becoming reality.

No matter how many times Eva muttered the words, she couldn't bring herself to believe them. The black goo in Bobbi's coffee shop that morning. The photos of the feline monstrosity with dark tumors littered across its back. It was all too familiar and terrifying. Despite knowing the events had to be a horrible coincidence, it felt like anything but.

The thought consumed her while she paced the living room, flipping through her novels to find every mention of Corruption. The Darkness was a living plague—infecting creatures and humans alike with a bubbling, black goo by ingestion or contact with open wounds. It sucked the being's life force until it obtained full control of the corpse. The Corrupted then found new victims to infect, spreading its curse until hordes of dark beasts lurked in the shadows, bringing Astraela to its knees.

Over the years, the Darkness had grown stronger until it could even Corrupt nature, turning multiple forests into deadly jungles of goo and decay. There was no cure.

No hope.

And it matched their current circumstance—the goo, the mountain lion, the random victims—with absolute precision. Eva wanted to stop reading. Blind faith had her convinced that if she went to bed, a dreamless sleep would reset her mind and all would be normal by morning.

But she couldn't stop.

Hours passed like minutes until the evening sun dipped below the horizon, and when Eva finally collapsed into her armchair, it was well after midnight. She rubbed her face, exhaustion creeping over her in waves.

"I need sleep," she muttered.

Fatigue weighed her down, making the walk to her bedroom seem impossible. She slouched in the chair and rested her cheek in her hand. Resting her eyes felt like a lovely idea.

The moment she shut them, she was not met with darkness.

Instead, as sleep pulled her under, colorful flashes danced in her subconscious: non-specific blobs of reds, oranges, and browns. They dipped and swayed through a darkened space too blurred to make out.

Sweat trickled down the back of her neck before she registered how sweltering her surroundings had become. It was a blast furnace, nearly drowning her in inhumane humidity. She had never felt anything so... hot. Thrusting out her arms, she reached into the blurred room to find a wall, a door, a window—anything that would help her escape the sauna.

Her hands met empty air.

She tried to drop her arms back to her sides, but she found herself unable to move. An invisible force had frozen her muscles in captivity; no matter how hard she wriggled her elbows, her arms remained stagnant.

Blinding oranges and reds erupted before her eyes. Flames engulfed her, searing her skin and melting muscle from bone. She let out a shrill cry as burning flesh met her nostrils—a stench so horrible that it forced the contents of her stomach from her mouth in heaving waves.

The room went black.

Eva collapsed to the ground, her body meeting a patch of cool grass. She gasped for air, buried her face in the fresh dew, and allowed herself a moment to breathe. When her lungs stopped burning, she planted her hands on the ground to lift herself up. She was almost afraid to open her eyes, as if it would teleport her back into the blazing fire. She ran her trembling fingers across her cheeks and, once she felt her skin still intact, let out a shaky sigh of relief.