~Amorella~

The Veil is thick, almost sticky, and I pass through like walking underwater.

It swallows all life around me, all sensation. My ears are muffled like before a big storm, and muted colors dance across my eyes, all somehow appearing gray when I try to identify them. My body feels submerged, warm and cold and pressurized, and for the eternal heartbeat it takes to pass through the Veil I can’t breathe, suffocated by the gelatinous blanket of the Veil. It’s a jarring, surreal experience- and yet nothing compares to what waits on the other side.

I emerge in a hollow, timeless zone. A sweeping expanse of black dirt and fog extends endlessly before me, the fog rising into the dark gray clouds overhead. A thin, misty rain drizzles over the nothingness. When I turn around, the Veil is gone.

I’m stranded here.

I push my hand in the space directly behind me, but find only the white fog that surrounds me everywhere, none of the suffocating, viscous pressure of the Veil. I try to turn back, the way I’d been facing when I’d come in, but there is only white fog in every direction.

I’ve made a mistake.

The thought comes with a swell of panic that chokes me, my heart hammering in my chest. Why did I think this was a good idea!? I should’ve waited, should’ve gotten myself taken, should’ve-

With a slow breath, I center myself. There is no more should’ve. I am here, and I am unable to return.

There is nothing else to do but to start walking.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

The air around me seems to hum, a tense buzz filling the emptiness that sets my bones ill-at-ease. The ground underfoot does not crunch nor clap nor echo, my footfalls eerily silent, the world vacant of any markers. When I stop and try to listen to the hum, to identify the source of the ethereal uneasiness, it is silent, empty, vast, and utterly hollow. After the third time trying to identify it, I feel like I’m going crazy. I try not to stop anymore.

My father’s face flashes in my mind. You are too brash. You must think through your actions. How he would scold me now, if he could see me, but he chose his death long ago. Foolish I may be- but he hunted a wolf in the winter. Both of them were too hungry to reason; the wolf was simply stronger. I inherited my brashness from him.

My mother’s face flits in the echoes of my father. Brown eyes, the curls Fawn inherited, the same heart-shaped face we both share. She is little more than a faint memory of a face and a voice, singing honey-sweet nursery songs to a more innocent form of me. She could not save herself, and she cannot save me now.

Fawn.

As I push through the endless fog, I think of Fawn.

My sister was named for the tawny color of her skin and the freckles that dotted her cheeks even at birth. She lived up to the name: doe-eyed, innocent, preyed upon by every boy in the village. I spent most of my girlhood protecting hers, aware of what the men in town would do the heartbeat she was unprotected. Our father trusted far too much. After his death, I kept Fawn as almost a shut-in. We only went out with Cullen, only-

I balk at an impact.

My nose stings and I step back, rubbing it and wincing, my eyes squinted against whatever collided with my face. Then I open my eyes, lower my hand, and suck in a breath: rising before me, towering into the sky, is a wall of infinite black bricks, imposing and indomitable. There is no sign of entrance, no immediate discovery of how to penetrate this limitless wall, and my heart is thick in my throat at finding yet another obstacle.

But I made it through the fog. I will surpass this, too.

But as I begin to walk the perimeter, a familiar whizz hisses past my face. I follow the sound to see an arrow lodged in the ground.

He’s on me before I can draw Cullen’s knife.