neither [https://shadowsprey.com/wp-content/uploads/story-images/01_24i_01_Neither-Stars-thumb02.png]

III:

Kanna tried to gain her bearings but there were no landmarks, only the blank expanse of frozen Ilazkin ground and the fog of her breath. The cold buried under her skin, and she wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to keep it at bay. Then she began to walk, her body hunched against the silent wind.

The last thing she remembered was Hautman’s dinner. She thought of the faces she knew now and there was comfort in that, at least. When she awoke before she’d had nothing, not even her name.

She couldn’t know how far she’d traveled when she stumbled, falling to the snow covered ground. Pressing her palms into the ground she pushed herself up, looking back to see what she’d stumbled over.

It was a body. A young man in a Palamidia uniform, his hand outstretched to her and his mouth open and screaming soundlessly. Dead eyes leveraged accusations at her. She shuffled back, her hand landing in a sticky puddle.

Behind her there was another, a woman, her body slashed and crumpled like a discarded doll.

Kanna’s feet tangled on themselves as she scrambled up to run.

Bodies appeared with her every step. Men, women, even children, mangled into things almost unrecognizable but distinctly human and she knew it was her fault. It was because of her that they were in the dark. She slid in the carnage, but she kept running.

She had to escape, find some place safe.

In the distance, a platform-like structure took shape. She raced towards it, her feet pounding and her blood throbbing in her ears.

The structure became clearer as she neared. It was a bed, its four posters rising up and disappearing into the fog above.

She slowed enough to drop to the ground and pull herself beneath it to safety.

Beneath the bed she shut her eyes, her breath ragged and rasping in the enclosed space. She swallowed to help slow her racing heart. As it slowed, her body began to warm, the ground beneath her softening. She stretched her fingers at her sides to feel the plush surface beneath her.

When she opened her eyes, there was a dim glow beyond the shade of the bed. In the narrow space opening between the floor and bed she could see a room beyond it. The walls were a deep jewel green, and she could see the spindly wooden legs of multiple pieces of furniture lined up beyond her safety field. Crates of glassware were shoved into a corner of the room, their blue, green, and yellows reflecting the sunlight.

A layer of dust settled on it all, the motes floating softly in the gloaming light.

The bed was bigger than when she first saw it, the bottom shifting further away from her body and allowing her more room to move. It was almost comfortable. She turned to look up, the underside of the far enough from her eyes now that she could see the wooden support slats beneath it.

Something hid between them. Kanna maneuvered her arms and elbows enough to fit her fingers between the slats. It was harder than she thought it would be to move but she persisted, gritting her teeth together as she concentrated. The wood tore into the sides of her nails as she pried her fingers between the slats until they shifted. She bit down harder when the wood scraped in the silence, her back teeth aching under the pressure.

Reaching into the space, she pulled out a mask. She spun it between her hands until it faced her.

The closed eyes of a young boy were set in the mask. Not a toddler, but not much more than one. Strangely, it seemed to be the same size of her own face. She brushed her fingers along the boy’s lax brow, down his shut eyes, and over the soft planes of his face. Beneath the clutch of youth, there was something familiar about it. She turned the mask, slowly lowering it over her own face.

“What are you doing here, kidling?”

Despite the calm in the voice, Kanna jerked the mask out of sight, knowing she had been caught with something she shouldn’t have.

A woman knelt next to the bed, her wild deep brown curls spilling over her shoulders and brushing against the carpet as she bent to peak into Kanna’s place. There was something loose in her dark eyes, as if the world had rattled her just a bit too much.

“Child,” she coaxed, the nervous tremble in her voice half-hidden by false cheer. “Will you come out now? I was so worried when I could not find you.”

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The woman held out her hand and Kanna stared at the thin, shaking fingers.

“We have all been trying to find you.”

Drawn to the promise of comfort the hand offered, Kanna reached out. She paused, her eyes searching the woman’s face. She couldn’t feel the woman, didn’t know what she intended, and there was a strange desperation in her eyes.

A thrill of fear shot down Kanna’s spine.

The woman’s hand shot out to close the distance between them and Kanna yanked back.

Before their fingers touched, the vision was gone.

The woman, the room, even the mask in her hands dissolved into the grey.

She was alone again in the cold.

glass [https://shadowsprey.com/wp-content/uploads/story-images/01_24i_02_NeitherGlass_02.png]

IV:

When Haru opened his eyes, he was deep in the Neither.

The ghostlight at his shoulder darted away unbidden. He watched as it zipped through the black and then stuck against the sky, joining the rest of the stars that made the unsettling sky.

With the ghostlight gone, the wind picked up. Haru clutched his jacket tighter around himself as the cold bit into him. The Neither was fighting his intrusion into this space, trying to drive him away. It kept flickering and shifting, the landscape remodeling itself with his every step.

Before him was a tower. It was black and square, it’s windowless facade rising until it became one with the black of the sky. It shuddered when he moved, but it didn’t fade.

As he approached, there was something resembling a doorway. It was cut out of the wall of the tower, a deeper black that opened to more darkness beyond. His breath fogged in the cold as he waited, but the tower stayed. He stepped inside.

The echo as his boots hit marble was familiar. After another step, a room formed around him.

It was illuminated by floor to ceiling windows along one wall, the night sky the same one that appeared before him each night. The spires of Lugos were lit below, but the scene was wrong. Everything was frozen, as if time stilled to a moment. The beacon lights weren’t flashing and no trains moved along the rails. The scene was flat, a painting captured by an amateur hand.

Haru was backing away from the window when he felt a shift around him. He turned.

Kanna was leaning against the wall opposite him as if her legs could no longer support her weight. Her shoulders were sunk beneath the weight of her full battle regalia, and she watched him.

She didn’t know what to do with her hands. She took them from her pockets, ran them through loose ends of her hair, then shoved them further into her jacket pocket. Her elbows stretched out, then relaxed again.

It wasn’t her. The edges of her were blurred, a fuzzy halo circling her.

When he moved to the vision, her eyes didn’t follow. She wasn’t looking at him as he was now, but as he had been then.

This was a moment. She was an echo.

Kanna yanked free of the Legatus jacket, heavy with the symbols of a life passed in service to the Palamidia, and let it fall. She sighed, her shoulders straightening once she was free of it.

The mirror in his room hadn’t been shattered yet. The bed was still made.

It was the night before she left for Ilazki.

When she looked up, he tried to place his body where it had been before so he could see her eyes once more.

“Haru, I just…” she stopped, searching for words.

Her voice wasn’t the same. It was hollow and the pitch flickered almost imperceptibly. She brushed away a tear that fell from her eyes and glanced at the back of her hand where it streaked, confusion casting itself across her features.

He tried to catch the next one that fell. His hand passed through her and he felt nothing.

Haru knew what she was going to say. He’d remembered it so many times he was sure it was branded on the inside of his skin.

“All I do is strangle things,” she said. “Destroy things. But then you look at me like I am more than that, and I can almost believe it.”

She shook her head, and he was helpless to do anything but witness.

“This is all I know how to be,” she said, “and I’m sorry. I couldn’t stay away. I tried to let you go but I couldn’t.” Her voice caught, crackling like static in the air. “I can’t.”

When she looked up, she met his eyes even in this place.

“I’m sorry, Haru, but I love you.”

Haru reached out, unable to stop himself from trying to pull her to him as he had done then. He wanted to feel her skin against his again, watch as the walls she built around herself collapsed, but his hands passed through her body.

He was left holding nothing, standing once again in the wasteland.

Haru shut his eyes, his hands wrapping around himself.

“There is nothing to forgive,” he said. This time, it was to the wind as it howled.