Amaro’s vision went black, a low ringing in his ears until it faded into silence.

A muffled voice bled through, "Are you alright?" It was Kaara. "Are you alright now Amaro? Wake up."

His eyes fluttered open, staring straight up at her as the light blinded him, "Hmmm? Yeah?" His vision adjusted, and he stared at a xia, probably in her late teens, early twenties. He sat up, and looked at her, "Oh, sorry. Are you Kaara's mother? Tika right?" The xia gave him a strange look,

She giggled, "You really must have hit your head hard, Amaro. I am Kaara, are you calling me old or something? And I’m still nineteen, so don’t worry you haven’t been out for that long."

Amaro blinked, looking her up and down, “You’ve grown so beautiful…”

Kaara flicked his forehead, “You wanna look me in the eye when you say that, buddy?” He locked eyes with her, startled at what he saw.

Her right pupil was in the shape of a four pointed star. That was something the Kaara he knew did not have.

“Your eyes.”

“Yeah yeah, my eyes are great. Are you alright? Do you know where we are?”

Amaro looked around. They were in a familiar place, but he couldn't quite remember where. It was a garden of some sort, and in the middle of summer no less. "What- What happened? How long was I out?"

"You don't remember? You've only been out for a little while. The amount of magic you used must have caused some sort of memory loss. Then again I've never heard of magic being able to do that. What’s the last thing you remember?"

Amaro paused. What should he say? Had everything before been a dream? Had he really forgotten the past seven years? Or was he in a dream right now? When she touched him it felt real. He looked down at himself. He had grown older too. What is going on here?

“I remember yesterday- er, yesterday before I blacked out I suppose.”

“So you’ve forgotten everything up to yesterday? I’ll fill you in then. You-”

The words became muffled as a familiar voice rumbled in his head.

“The river that flows endlessly with no end, nor a beginning, but neither beyond the quantity of one, nor the absence of none.”

What are you talking about? Who are you?

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Kaara's face was close to his now. We went crosseyed to look at her. Her palm covered his eyes, "Don’t look at me like that, dummy. I wanted to thank you for what you did."

"What are you-" He felt her lips press against his, and the world returned to black. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears, pumping louder and louder. With all which approaches one, there is equal which approaches none. For all which approaches none, there is equal which approaches the absence of none.

Amaro fell into darkness once more. Images flashed in front of his vision. Too many to see, but all of them involved Kaara in some way. Screams sounded off around him, his heart beating faster. Pain washed over his body, cries for mercy, cries for help, of despair and grief. A weight pushed him down to his hands and knees. His heartbeat was deafening and yet the voice still spoke through.

For every peak a trough, for every trough a peak, every cycle has an end and beginning at every point on its curve. How does one escape? The voice asks.

Hold on, what are you saying? Who are you? What is this? Why have you shown me the future?

The heart stops.

And so the cycle repeats. Until the past and future are one and the same with little variation in the end.

Amaro is flung forward, the darkness giving way to the light as he opens his eyes. He was back in the cave, his head resting atop Kaara’s lap as the dim glow of the torch began to fade.

“Are you alright?” She asked.

“I am. How long was I out?”

“A good ten minutes. Rorik is coming through with a rope so we could get you out.”

“I see. Sorry if I worried you. Where’s the scroll?”

Kaara lifted its case, “If you can read it, then we’ll have you read it somewhere it’s safe to faint next time. There’s a few more scrolls inside, and they’re all blank for me.”

“Gotcha, should we head back through?”

“Once Rorik gets here, yes.”

Amaro swallowed, thinking about what he had seen in his dream. Was that real? Or was it just his own imagination? For some reason, he wanted to believe it wasn’t real. He was having trouble remembering what that voice had said to him. He tried to repeat it in his head, but it kept slipping away. Like a word that was on the tip of his tongue, thinking about it only made it vanish quicker.

But he remembered what he saw. He remembered what he felt. He touched his lips. As Rorik crawled through, Amaro sat up, “Sorry for the worry.”

“It’s alright. Are you alright? Kaara said you’d fainted.”

“I’m alright now. Let’s head back.”

“Okay, but just in case, your coming out last with the rope around you. Can’t have you fainting again in front of us.”

“Understood.”

Amaro watched them both crawl back through, holding the torch in his cold hands as he ran through that dream again and again in his head. It had felt so real in the moment, but as he tried to remember it, that vision had felt like more of a dream than a memory now.

He snuffed the torch, but he was not left in darkness. All across the cave walls luminescent crystals returned the light they stored from the torch. He blinked, noticing they were positioned in an uncharacteristically ordered pattern. Lined one after the other like constellations in the night sky. They formed letters. Amaro traced the pattern as they dimmed.

Loktiir