Darkness, as black and inky as the Prophet's eyes, closed in on me.

Where was the white room that the Door of the Gods had always led me to?

My body felt as though it stood in the library with Nash and Piercey, but my mind wasn't there. My mind was floating in the darkness, floating everywhere and nowhere.

This wasn’t right.

Panic drudged up in storming thoughts as violent as the worst lightning storms I'd ever seen.

And then, I felt him. My father. I couldn't see him or hear him. But I knew he was here.

No…

The gods had closed the door in my face and abandoned me to slip into the past. I searched for my time, clawing back for Nash and Piercey in the Sacred School, as the void dragged me in the opposite direction. I was slipping in slow motion. Slipping to Dad. To the Eclipse.

The darkness beneath me shifted into shadowy blades of grass until I looked down upon the hill where I'd once stood with my father. In the sky, a ring of light pierced the black moon, arcs of red burst in faint lines, and the earth fell silent as the source of life and light vanished from our sight. The villagers crowded together to watch the totality, their forms blurred in my mind by a dark film, like I could only see them from the furthest edge of my peripheral vision, even when I looked right at them.

I had to block them from my mind, even now.

Dad knelt before the eleven year-old me with his arms outstretched. Like a faint mirage, Nash came into view on the hill with them. There, but not. Fear shot through me. Between the father and daughter, beneath the dark of the Eclipse, Nash lowered to his knees and met my young eyes with pinched brows. “Max...”

I tried to scream. Time and space had swallowed me whole. It wasn’t him the girl below saw. Her eyes lit for the man behind him. The one that was really there. Nash was fading, fading even from my sight. He didn’t belong here. And I wasn’t here. I was dangling between, one foot in the small boot and one on the other side of time.

Pain filled Nash’s expression as he watched the old me run right past him into the outstretched arms of the tall man.

“Can you believe it?" The girl I'd once been bubbled with laughter. "The moon swallowed the sun whole.”

“It did." My father took my cheek in his hand. "Can you feel it?”

“Feel what, Daddy?”

“The sun.” He placed his hand upon her heart. My heart. “Burning in your soul.”

“Not yet.”

“Focus.” He whispered. “Focus, baby girl…”

The scream I couldn’t unleash burned in my soul.

I could feel what the young girl felt mingling with my own as she looked into Dad's eyes. We brimmed at once with love for Dad and with the rage I’d been abandoned to carry alone. Two points in time converged into one. It felt like the sun burned within me, ready to burst free.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

The bastard.

My dad.

Pure chaos churning in the deep of my soul.

“The light…" My young voice said. "Look, Dad! The light…”

His voice blared, deep and knowing. “Your strength is greater than even an eclipse. Release it. Release it from within. It’ll be beautiful, child. I promise. It’s okay.” A warm whisper fell against my ear my ear now. “Show them the light. Free them.”

Nash had faded but I could feel him here with me, here in the heat burning within me, in the timeless mourning of this moment. I wasn’t alone. Never was. We'd always been here together, here with her, the girl I'd once been.

The heat of the flame swelled out of control, even though I tried to hold it in, tried to push Dad's voice away. Power erupted from my body. The Prophet wasn't here to stop me this time. Dad's body jerked and froze in the air, his fingers popping first, and then his arms, his legs. I clenched my eyes shut.

Brightness erupted from the small body I’d once inhabited. It washed over the people below in a beautiful array of golden hues and vibrant reds and purples as deep as a setting sun. The power washed over them and tossed them to the ground in waves, leaving their bodies stranded and useless, while their souls moved on to what came next.

A wail exploded within me–one that had begun during this eclipse and never stopped. I couldn't utter it or hear it, just felt it, blaring as it always had, battering my insides.

Black snapped shut the curtain on my view of that day. I drifted between the eclipse and now and the nothingness separating the two. Time collapsed in on this one point and exploded forward. Entangled forever.

Memories popped in the black void like bright stars in the winter sky. Hundreds, thousands, millions of events surrounding me.

I couldn't let them distract me. I had to find Nash. My mind reached through a lifetime in the void.

I could see Nash then, watching again from above as he flashed over the void. His smirk the first time we’d met, where he'd sharpened his blade and looked at me. Drinking and fighting in the field. And then I saw us dangling from the cliff. Climbing up the stairs. Tangled in each other's arms on the cold cave floor.

I wanted to warn him of what was coming.

I saw the spear flying for him. The guards racing for us. Nash reaching for me in the Library as I faded, catching my fingertips, catching me before I slipped away.

“Hold on!” The words broke free from my silenced mouth and I caught my time by just a thread. Had to hope I'd caught Nash too.

The void was stripped away, and I was alone, kneeling in a pure white room.

Pain wracked my chest as I fell onto my hands and forced my voice to croak out of my throat. "Hello?" I wanted to scream the words but I didn't have the energy. "Answer me…" I kept seeing the golden hue wash over the villagers beneath the eclipse, each time I blinked, flashing against the dark of my lids just as it had over the dark of the void. "I'm here. Like you wanted. You have me right where you want me."

"You think this is where I want you?" Her voice whispered warmth in my ear, even though I couldn't see her, or feel her. "I wanted you to lead. Not shatter on my floor."

With my head still bowed, my eyes snapped up to the place Dr. Henderson had stood in the last time I saw her. I imagined how she'd looked that day. "What did you do with Nash?"

"He's safe."

The white wall beside me faded so I could see him drawing his hands along the perimeter of the room. His eyes stared past me. He couldn't see me.

I clambered to my feet and fell against an unseen wall. "Why did you let him in?"

"He traveled all the way up the mountain with you. It was impolite to leave him behind. I'll let him join, if you promise to be good."

My tongue clung to the roof of my dry mouth. I nodded, holding my breath. My ego be damned. I couldn't leave him alone in that room. "I will."

Nash stepped back with wide eyes. Then, he was looking at me. Really looking at me. "Max…"

He ran forward a step and I wrapped my arms around his neck. I told myself if I held on tight enough, Dr. Henderson wouldn't be able to rip us apart. That was what I hated most about the power she had over us. That she could take me from the people I loved. Nothing could be more cruel or unfair. The bitterness burned on my tongue.

"You were supposed to stay behind." I clung to him tightly.

"You were supposed to take me." He held my head against him anyway.

Then there was the feeling of a presence behind me. Nash stumbled back, taking me with him.

Dr. Henderson had finally appeared.

"Who are you?" Nash asked.

Her long hair laid over one shoulder. She looked so young despite how many years had passed. It wasn’t that she aged well. She looked exactly the same. Same haircut. Same manicured nails. Everything was the same, like years for me had only been weeks or days for her. Maybe hours.