"Desmond."

It was no big deal, really.

One foot in front of the other. Repeating that over and over would get him to his destination before he knew it. Yes. Before he knew it.

"Desmond."

He had to focus on the pace of walking, not on anything else.

To make it at least a little easier. He didn't need to see himself in third person to realize that he was unsteady.

That he had to give the impression that he could lose his balance at any moment.

And when that happened, he would fall. Because he wouldn't be able to regain it or stand up.

Not on his own, at least.

"Desmond!"

He had been forced to go so far because he had lost his crutch for the second time. It hadn't broken, but he'd made the decision to leave it behind when.... When that happened.

And then he didn't have the energy or the courage to go back to that place, just to retrieve the crutch.

So he had no choice. It couldn't be helped.

But it's not like he was walking around with nothing to lean on. Right now what was supporting him was his own magical energy. He was aware of the danger of using that magic, especially in his sorry new state. But, to be honest, he didn't mind it too much.

Still he was pushing himself onward. Onward, onward.

And why?

This was the path that led to the mysterious mountain that guy had told them about. Him and...

"Desmond, please."

Desmond snapped out of his thoughts. He was not alone in this. Abigail, as usual, was accompanying him. She had been walking behind him all this time.

The boy shook his head.

How many times had she called him?

He turned around and it was too much for him. He staggered, lurching forward. This is going to hurt, he thought vaguely. Like it had nothing to do with him.

It didn't hurt. He was caught in time. By Abigail's arms, of course. Who else?

"Desmond, you're not well. You don't have to... try so hard." She spoke to him slowly, very carefully. As if she was afraid of breaking him. Yes, as if he were made of glass.

He raised his head, looking back at her.

Those eyes, red as blood moons. Those beautiful eyes, in which it was so easy to get lost....

His destiny had been written there from the beginning, without him realizing it. The gods had sent him that message, hadn't they? That he would end up alone in a sea of blood. All alone.

He looked away, shaking his head again. As if to rid himself of something physical.

The voice in his heart couldn't be pushed away so easily, unfortunately. He could only suffer it.

He opened his mouth to say something. He didn't know what, but something.

He didn't.

He didn't have the energy for it. Instead, he turned around, with Abigail's help, and continued on his way.

He had to focus on the rhythm of walking. On nothing else.

He couldn't afford anything else.

He was too tired. Too tired.

It would be great, really, if the tiredness was only physical.

If the only thing he was carrying on his back was his broken, weathered body.

Body.

Body... broken, weathered.

Desmond grimaced. He kept going, slightly increasing the pace. That is, increasing within the limited measure of his possibilities.

He didn't turn around. And he did not respond to Abigail.

She seemed to accept it, for she said nothing, made no protest. Internally she might be offended. That would be her right.

But it's just that, he thought. He didn't complete the thought. He couldn't do it.

It would be dangerous.

What was he doing? It was already clear to him, wasn't it? One step in front of the other. And so on. And no more. He didn't have to think about anything else, or strive for anything else.

That was all he could do.

A little further on, Desmond licked his lips.

His mouth was very dry, his throat. He knew that not long ago he had told himself repeatedly that he just had to concentrate on walking. But hey, this was a sure thing to think about. And related.

He wouldn't stop to drink some water. He had a bottle on him, but....

He wasn't sure he could get going again if he stopped. He wasn't going to risk it.

After what seemed like hours, he finally had... had the destination in sight. At the highest place on the mountain was the entrance to a cave, which looked like the great black mouth of some monstrosity. Ready to engulf him.

(As they engulfed)

Desmond clicked his tongue, pressed on, more encouraged now that the objective was almost within reach. Despite the fatigue.

Well, it wasn't really the objective. More like the starting line.

It would all really start from there.

But... It was a step.

By the time he finally arrived, he had no choice but to stop. He practically collapsed against the cave wall, breathing heavily, in a way that made his whole body tremble. An effort to breathe even if it was just one more breath of air. Because he needed every last breath.

Abigail didn't ask about his condition.

Such questions were unnecessary, it was enough to look. What she said was the following:

"Are you sure about this?

Desmond closed his eyes.

He couldn't believe she had asked him a question like that. What else could he do? Turn around and go back to...back to....

(you have no place to go back to)

(you break everything you touch)

He exhaled.

"Desmond." Abigail softened her tone of voice for some reason.

"I know it's risky, but.... But... We've come this far and..."

(don't cry)

(don't cry)

(don't cry)

(you don't have the right to cry; she was right, it was your fault)

"We have to go on to the end. Otherwise, what's the point?" Frustrated with himself, Desmond wiped away the tears that began to fall with the back of one hand. Rubbing carelessly, vigorously.

"Okay," Abigail replied, finally. And they went into that cave. They let that huge mouth, that darkness, engulf them.

Dark. Too dark.

He hadn't strengthened his eyes because it was too risky in his current circumstances. And he wasn't about to start now, nothing had changed. If they had a torch or something....

Abigail held out a hand, creating a small flame on her palm to light their way.

Of course.

Sometimes he forgot how many things Abigail could do, as she rarely unleashed her magical abilities, for some reason.

To the point that the display of power the shadow had made, controlling Abigail's body and abilities, had caught him completely by surprise.

It sounded like a bad excuse, but it was true.

They walked on, with Abigail ahead of him, showing him the way.

"The legend of this place is nonsense, isn't it?" Desmond brought up the subject more to distract himself than out of genuine curiosity.

"In my two thousand years of existence, I've never seen any ghosts. But who knows. There are things in heaven and earth that philosophers haven't dreamed of." From the way she said it, Desmond assumed she was reciting a text.

"And even if it were true, what would he be looking for here? Insecurity about his future? But he wouldn't need to doubt if he hadn't left it all behind."

"It's true."

"Something doesn't fit," he muttered. "No matter how much I think about it, something doesn't fit."

What was it that man wanted?

Theo, the man who had saved the kingdom from a great plague.

Theo, the man who was supposed to fix him. Even if they found him, he...

Desmond stopped suddenly, his heart leaping into his throat. It was easy to be brave when you were strong, so strong you had almost nothing to fear.

There was someone there.

He saw someone humanoid in the narrow, dank tunnel, and the first thing he assumed was, of course, that it was an enemy. It was a safe assumption; with the life they led, they made more enemies than friends.

But he was wrong.

At least he hoped he was wrong. Because the person in front of his eyes?

"It can't be," Abigail murmured.

Desmond fell to his knees, his gaze fixed on a single point. Fixed on the person who had suddenly appeared.

None other than Christina herself.

Her appearance was normal. She was so pale she seemed transparent, except for the hints of blood on her cheeks, her mouth, her neck.

Her chest. A red rose bloomed on her chest, opening and closing. As if she were alive.

A perpetual cycle of agony.

Of death.

Then Desmond noticed the most telling thing. She had no feet and a good chunk of her legs that had been reduced to a fine mist that fluttered as if moved by an invisible wind.

She simply floated a few inches above the ground.

It was almost as if she were standing.

Almost as if she was there, right in front of his eyes. Desmond waited for it to disappear. For the hallucination to pass.

But it didn't.

The legend is true, he thought vaguely.

Desmond cried harder. He couldn't help it. Everything he tried to bottle up in some dark corner inside him suddenly came out, exploding, without Christina, what had been Christina, having to say a word.

"I'm... I'm sorry. If I had been stronger... If I had seen it coming, even. I'm sorry. Please forgive me."

Desmond bent until his forehead touched the hard, cold ground.

"I beg you. But, if you can't forgive me.... Are you here to kill me? Kill me."

Silence. Absolute silence.

Long enough for Desmond to feel the need to raise his head, even though he had prostrated himself to show his sincerity, and see what was going on.

Nothing.

The... The ghost just stood there, looking at him.

His expression, if you could call it that, hadn't changed one iota. He had just realized it, but he didn't blink.

Legend had it that ghosts were gathered on this mountain. And that they could tell you your future. But that didn't mean they had to do it in words.

There were many ways to say something. The ghost began to move away, suddenly, deeper into the cave. So, he could almost hear... a shovel stirring the earth. That must have been stirring the earth, away from him. Because Amy... hadn't let him. And... he could almost... He almost smelled blood, too. The death that permeated it.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"I think she wants us to follow her," Desmond said, his voice shaky and his eyes blurred with tears.

"I'm not sure that's a good idea."

"I know. But I can't leave her here... Alone, in the dark. I can't."

Abigail said nothing. There was nothing to say. Instead of the many things she could have said to him, like maybe that wasn't Christina, she simply held out her hand.

Desmond took it, and Abigail helped him to his feet.

They followed her without difficulty. She was waiting for them, keeping their pace.

Maybe that wasn't Christina, or Christina at all.

Maybe.

But she had some kind of conscience, still.

It didn't mean she meant well toward them. If this was really Christina, entirely or not, she had every reason... for just the opposite.

Misery loves company, after all.

And maybe this was what he deserved as punishment. To be stuck on this mountain. Wandering in the dark forever.

Together again.

It sounded almost... poetic, in a morbid way.

He began to hear a strange noise. At first he thought his ears were ringing. Then he realized that what he was hearing was crackling. He looked down, watching as the ground beneath his feet was cracking.

"So it was a trap after all!" Abigail shouted.

He wasn't so convinced.

Neither one way or the other.

He couldn't think.

He simply tried to escape, to save his life. Abigail reached out to grab his hand and pull him away.

It was too late.

It only took a few seconds. The floor collapsed, and so did he. He fell, fell into the darkness. With the face of Christina's ghost consuming his vision even as it drifted away.

He thought he saw a smile on that dead face, which bore so little resemblance to that of his fallen friend, though it was exactly the same.

A smile.

He didn't want to think about what it meant. He was going to die soon anyway.

There was no need to burden his heart or his mind with more weight than that of his impending death. He wasn't one to give up, but giving up was different from acknowledging reality.

If it were like before, he could have avoided death even after falling.

In fact, it wouldn't have been difficult for him at all. It would have been enough to do the same as now. To do nothing.

But with his current state. It wasn't enough for him to do nothing.

He really couldn't do anything.

He was wrong.

He was absolutely wrong. It was enough for him to do nothing. All the debris fell away from him or around him. He would say it had been a matter of luck, but it was too much of a coincidence.

Additionally, there was the risk of breaking his neck in the fall. Or something like that.

But not only did that not happen. The impact didn't hurt.

He fell like a feather.

This was unnatural. It had been set up beforehand, it was clear, but maybe it wasn't a trap, as Abigail had feared all along. Maybe now Christina, or something else, had led him exactly where she wanted him to be.

He didn't know what this place was.

Too dark.

All he knew for certain was that he must have fallen far, though it hadn't seemed so long a fall to him, because Abigail's voice wouldn't reach him. And now she would be calling out to him desperately, wanting to know if he was all right.

She wasn't dead, he could feel his heart in his chest. So she would be doing that.

But her voice wasn't reaching him.

Desmond bit his lower lip. He considered strengthening his eyes, as he used to, to see in this absolute darkness.

To do what he had to do and then look for a way out.

The risks paralyzed him with fear, however, unable to come to a decision. They could explode. He was already weak, infirm. And blind on top of that? It would be too much. Well, blind, but not for long. In his current state he would surely die from it. Without help.

He didn't have to, in the end.

Christina's ghost appeared, floating in front of him, instantly illuminating his surroundings. Not much, but enough. The light seemed to come from the center of her chest.

As if it was... the glow of her soul, wandering in this cold, dark place.

Alone.

He couldn't stop thinking about it. It was unbearable. She, of all people in this world, had ended up like this. She didn't deserve it.

She didn't deserve to suffer so much simply for choosing him. For giving him a chance.

"There you are. I'm... I..."

He couldn't get the words out, and how could he? It was all his fault. From the beginning. She should have rejected him. She should have known that he broke everything he touched.

He left behind nothing but misery and death.

He hadn't broken Abigail, but she couldn't be broken. For that reason, perhaps above all other reasons, she was the best person for him.

Desmond tried to stand up. He couldn't. Of course, ha.

So he crawled toward her on hands and legs. He noticed that Christina was no longer smiling, if she ever had been, if it had been anything more than his imagination.

Her face wore the dead expression it had from the beginning.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

"Do you want me to help you?" Desmond asked, but inwardly he was sure. She had every right to be furious with him, of course she did, but getting out of here would be her priority. Anyone would go mad, trapped deep in this mountain, far from light and heat, far from everything and everyone they had ever known. "Tell me what to do. Tell me how I can..."

Free you.

That was what he was going to say.

But then he felt something wrap around one wrist. Desmond looked down, saw a tentacle. His first thought was that it was a shadow.

That Christina retained her magic, even after death.

But it wasn't like one of her shadows. It was some kind of black goo. At some point, he had started walking on it instead of the stone floor. He just hadn't realized the transition.

He hadn't realized that, from the beginning, Christina's ghost had been hovering over that substance.

He had only focused on the girl and her light. And on what he had to do.

Everything else had become a blur. Until now. Desmond struggled against the slimy tentacle. Uselessly. Not that it was especially strong, but he was especially weak. He was as trapped as if Christina had indeed caught him in the iron grip of one of her shadows.

He had full freedom of movement and, under normal circumstances, he suspected that only a tug would have sufficed to break this thing, freeing himself with ease.

But now he couldn't free himself even with physical reinforcement.

Desmond needed the physical reinforcement to be at the level of an ordinary citizen, who had never trained a day in his life. An old man on top of that.

He had no chance of getting out of here. Not without help.

Abigail wouldn't make it in time, wherever she was.

His other wrist was grabbed as well. Next his legs began to sink into the black substance beneath him.

He hadn't stood a chance from the beginning, but now even less so.

Abigail would definitely not make it in time. But Christina was right in front of his eyes. Could he help her? He wanted to, but could he?

Knowing it was useless, he struggled against the substance he was sinking into, against the tentacles.

He had recently begged Christina to kill him, but now he was struggling with all his might as if he still saw value in his life. It was pathetic of him.

Thinking that didn't stop him, though.

Not that it was going to make any difference either, though. Of course.

"Christina, tell me what to do!

She'd led him here, so maybe she didn't even care that he was trapped. Maybe she could help him before this thing dragged him to the bottom, drowning him to death.

If he could do whatever it was he had to do, he would accept that death with a smile on his face.

That she'd died...

That she was trapped here because of him, forever....

It was more than he could bear.

The least he could do was to free her from this confinement, to go to..... whatever was on the other side. For the first time in his life, he wished fervently that a paradise awaited her, at least.

Where she would have everything she had lacked on earth.

She deserved that, at least, a person as wonderful as she was.

Christina said nothing to him.

Her ability to respond was irrelevant. She didn't need to. For it was she who had the smile on her face.

She was looking at him silently, smiling from ear to ear.

Now he could be sure it wasn't his mind playing tricks on him as he fell along with the rain of debris. She really was smiling. Delighting in what she saw.

Desmond stopped struggling.

Of course he did.

He had desperately asked her what she wanted him to do and she had given him the answer, in a way.

This. She wanted precisely this.

She had him where she wanted him.

She hated him and she wasn't wrong. And she wasn't the only one. She wasn't.

***

"It's your fault!" Amy spat at him, beside herself. She had turned all her grief into rage. He didn't know what her face looked like, for her gaze was fixed elsewhere, but he could imagine it. A face that wouldn't even look like Amy's, carved by maddening rage.

Amy was lying protectively over Christina's body, still on the clinic bed.

As if to protect her.

But that right there... it was just a body. There was no one to protect Christina from anything anymore. She was already gone. For good.

The dead didn't come back.

Only Abigail had that privilege.

Amy was certainly not wrong. He could have done a thousand things better. If he'd realized he was being followed, he could have warned Christina and avoided all this.

Or he could have even thrown himself in the middle. Taking the knife meant for her with his own body.

Something. Anything.

"I'm sorry. I... I tried to... I tried to get there so fast...

And that too. That too. If he had gotten there even a little faster, maybe the healer would have had time to save her. But by the time he arrived, despite his efforts and Christina's own tenacity, it was too late to do anything besides ease her pain as she died.

He tried, but... it was too late.

The healer had known it from the moment he arrived.

Her gaze had been riveted from the moment they entered the room on Christina's milky white dead eyes, directed toward the ceiling.

He had thought to close them before Amy arrived. He had even reached out to do so.

But he couldn't.

It was more than he could do, and besides, it seemed grotesque, even. He couldn't say why. He wouldn't even know how to say his own name.

It felt like everything in his heart and mind was slowly pouring out. This is a nightmare, he suddenly thought. Any minute now I'm going to open my eyes, wake up. This is a nightmare.

"No, it's not! You made a decision. Which forced us to make such a dangerous journey. You chose her. And Christina was the one who paid the price.

"I...

He couldn't get the words out. Of course not.

He had no right to object and no way to object.

She was right, after all. He had made a decision. And it was not he who had borne the consequences. That would be the natural and acceptable thing to happen, for the person himself to pay for his mistakes.

Christina had paid for them. With her own life.

While he would have to go on living, bearing that weight on his soul. It didn't seem possible. Even if it were possible, he didn't want to do it. It was bad enough that he had died, but this?

It was as if he had killed her. With his own hands.

And all for what?

For a woman who had lived hundreds of lives. A woman who wanted to die, even. She had offered herself as a sacrifice. She had been willing.

Everything had been in his hands and he had made a decision. There was nobody else to blame.

Couldn't hide from the crushing truth.

He had chosen to put Abigail above all else. An immortal woman who had lived for two thousand years, and had long ago had her fill of life.

So a young girl, with so much ahead of her, was dead before his eyes.

A person he had loved with all his heart.

Family.

I...

I, he thought.

As if caught in a loop.

And trapped he was, indeed. In a loop of misery that had no way out, where the worst possible thing had already happened.

***

"Okay," Desmond mumbled, slowly coming back to reality. "All right."

Then he closed his eyes, silently accepting his fate. He was afraid, no one could take that away from him. But deep in his heart he felt that this was the right thing to do.

That this was how this whole mess had to end.

Or maybe he simply wanted to escape the fear, the pain, the guilt.

Either way, he would do this. He wouldn't back down.

The black substance pulled him down harder all of a sudden, as if recognizing that its prey was no longer struggling. Avidly. Yes.

It was as if it were a living creature. Hungrily.

The blackness engulfed him completely, head to toe, choking him.

***

Desmond stuck his head out, almost out of breath.

He was breathing greedily, as was natural, feeling like he was choking on nothing. His whole body was burning as if he had a fever that could kill a horse.

His mouth tasted... His first thought was of blood.

But that, whatever it was, wasn't blood.

He gathered strength in his arms and legs, and crawled to the shore. He did it without thinking. Pure survival instinct, what anyone would do in his situation.

When he reached the shore, he collapsed, hitting the ground with his head.

His mouth was wide open, trying to gather as much air as possible, but he still felt like it wasn't enough. As if he had a punctured lung.

It seemed as if almost all the air he gathered was escaping through the hole.

But that was not the point.

Desmond coughed several times, loudly.

Spitting something blackish onto the floor in front of his eyes. It was blood after all, he thought. But it wasn't blood that had turned black with time and exposure to the air.

Desmond remembered his situation, remembered that that must have been from the black sea he had almost died in.

In which he should have died.

He turned around, staring at the ceiling. He still wasn't breathing properly. But he was doing so with less urgency.

This didn't make any sense.

Why am I still alive? Christina... Have you forgiven me?

I had been prepared to accept death, I had closed my eyes, and stopped fighting. And I should have died.

Yet I was still here somehow.

It had to mean something, didn't it? He wouldn't have gotten out of there alone, so.... Christina had pulled him out, regretting it at the last moment?

It seemed possible. But he wasn't sure he wanted that.

For a few moments, Desmond contemplated throwing himself back into that black sea, letting those tentacles drag him back into its dark depths.

A second attempt to make things right.

Finally decided... that it was out of his hands in the first place.

"Christina! Answer me, please! Tell me what to do!"

His voice echoed through the narrow, stifling stone walls all of a sudden. In other words, he received no answer. Nor would he.

That is, Christina was nowhere to be found.

The last time he had seen her was before he closed his eyes, accepting his fate. After that she disappeared at some point.

And it seemed she had no intention of returning, or at least that she couldn't hear him.

Was she gone, perhaps believing him dead?

Gone forever? He quickly dismissed it. Accomplishing the goal of freeing her without having to sacrifice his life. Ha, as if anything in his life was going to be that convenient.

No, she was surely still here, somewhere.

He supposed the more pertinent question was what he should do now, after all that.

The fact that he could still see perfectly well in the dark distracted him from that line of thought. That was odd. Enough to be not curious, but disturbing.

Physical reinforcement was something to maintain.

That is, as he lost consciousness, what he thought was death, should have dissipated. And it had. He could feel it.

However, it hadn't affected his eyesight.

The eyes could get used to the darkness over time, but he had spent the 'time' unconscious, drowning in that black, slimy substance.

Moreover, this went far beyond merely getting used to it.

He saw as if he were in broad daylight and not in the dark depths of a cavern.

Like when he was reinforcing his eyes, but without the reinforcement. It didn't make sense. He couldn't even begin to think what that was about. He couldn't just accept it even if it was a good thing. He wasn't that stupid.

And... And neither...

Desmond couldn't feel Abigail's heartbeat echoing in his chest either. That worried him more.

He put a hand to his chest, squeezing. His heart was pounding so hard it hurt, and a lot of it no longer had to do with the fact that he had been about to drown.

This is silly, he thought.

Why worry so much?

Abigail must have died somehow while searching for him. It was nothing. It couldn't be nothing.

Desmond got to his feet. Then on the move.

He didn't know what to do, but there was no need to rush and think everything through beforehand. He wasn't good at that, he just didn't work that way.

It was better to take things slowly, as much as possible. Take it one step at a time.

That was the only way he would get anywhere.

And the first step, naturally, was to meet Abigail. Wherever she was. Or however she was.

After that...

After that...

He would think about it later.

With the appearance of Christina's ghost, the legend had proven true. The legends, he corrected himself. Both the one the owner of that bar had told them and the one about ghosts in general.

If it was enough to die violently near the mountain, or with unfinished business, then there would easily be hundreds or thousands of ghosts.

All around here. Wandering in the dark.

If he had been trapped here for who knows how many years, surely he would have come to hate the living simply for having everything he lacked.

Warmth. Love. Bonds.

He had no trouble imagining other ghosts swooping in to finish what Christina had started, simply out of envy.