The demons who watched her didn’t speak. They never did. They fed on presence—on hope—and the dimmer her light grew, the stronger they became.
She closed her eyes.
If no one’s coming…
Then I’ll send something out.
Sasha focused her remaining divine spark. Her fingers trembled under the pressure, and the chains tightened as if they could feel her defiance.
With one final pulse of effort, a small orb of pale light pushed free from her chest—her consciousness woven into its glow.
The light flickered, pulsed, and began to drift. Slowly, it shaped itself into something harmless. Something easily overlooked.
A tiny, glowing fly.
The demons, unaware of the fly's divine essence, continued muttering and gnawing at the dark. The insect-like form buzzed upward, squeezed through a crack in the prison wall, and took to the air.
Sasha, her body fading, her eyes shut, now saw through the fly.
It flew for miles.
Mountains of stone. Forests long since dead. Oceans made of smoke and tar.
Yet… there was nothing.
No life. No souls. No sound.
Sasha tilted her perspective through the fly’s senses, trying to make sense of it.
Then her blood ran cold.
She was back where she started.
Again.
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And again.
The path was not broken—it was looped.
“I’m stuck… in an endless loop.”
Tears welled in Sasha’s closed eyes.
She recalled the soft, rugged voice of someone she had nearly forgotten. The warmth of it. The fire that surrounded him. His promise to find her—wherever she fell.
That fire had once been her light.
But now… she was alone.
She began to pull back the fly, drawing the light into herself to conserve her energy.
But just as the spark began to retreat, it paused.
Something was there.
A glimmer in the dark.
A pulse.
A frequency she hadn’t felt in what felt like a lifetime.
Him.
“Shadow…?” she whispered.
He stood on a distant ridge, staring across the ravaged land, unaware of the glowing insect moving in the air above him. But his energy—his divine essence—was unmistakable.
It was him. She knew it.
And somehow, impossibly, he sensed her too.
Shadow stood before a holographic model of a thousand broken planes, projected in swirling motion by Todd’s strange device.
“I need to find her,” Shadow said.
Todd stirred a cup of something that looked like glowing ink and sighed.
“That’s... not so simple,” Todd muttered. “She’s not just hidden. She’s sealed.”
“Sealed?” Shadow repeated.
Todd nodded solemnly.
“Yes. In a realm that only the creator of that prison can freely access. A closed dimension... layered in loops. It was designed to trap divine beings—forever.”
Shadow’s jaw clenched. “So, how do I reach her?”
Todd shrugged lightly. “I can tell you the last place she was seen. Beyond that… you’ll have to rely on instinct. On connection.”
And just as Todd said that, Shadow’s gaze drifted west. His eyes narrowed.
Something—something was pulsing. A soft, radiant energy, like a flicker of a soul calling to him across realities.
“There,” he said softly. “She’s trying to reach me.”
Once Shadow was out of earshot, Todd turned to Varn, who had remained unusually quiet.
“Now’s a good time to talk.”
Varn glanced sideways. “Let me guess—you’re going to tell me I’m more than I look?”
Todd chuckled. “You already know that. What you don’t know is this: you’ve lost memories too. Like Shadow. But yours were taken... not forgotten.”
Varn’s expression faltered just slightly.
“And?”
Todd’s voice turned serious.
“You’ll recover them soon. When you do, you’ll be forced to choose a side. Light or dark. Order or chaos. There won’t be any middle.”
Varn’s smirk returned.
“I’ve always liked the side with better drinks.”
Todd grinned but didn’t laugh.
“Joke all you want. When the time comes, make sure you stand by him. Because when the war begins… he’ll be the last line between us and unmaking.”
To be continued...