neither [https://shadowsprey.com/wp-content/uploads/story-images/01_26i_01_Neither-Stars-thumb03.png]

V:

Kanna pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, bending over to rest her forehead against the ground.

The strange place was achingly familiar. It was a void, and it was everything.

She didn’t want to be here. There was so much waiting for her in the dark, and she didn’t want to understand. It hurt, all of it. It was a weight on her shoulders, a phantom that followed her and was always wanting, evidenced by the scars on her body.

She shut her eyes, willing them to open back to the dusky orange sky of Gegenes.

“Why are you lying on the ground?”

Kanna jerked her head up at the sound of the voice, but shock kept her rooted. She’d stared at the face enough in mirrors, trying to discern it’s secrets, that it was impossible not to recognize it looking back at her.

kannakanna [https://shadowsprey.com/wp-content/uploads/story-images/01_26i_02_KannaKanna.png]

It wasn’t exactly the same as her own. There was a surety to her gaze that she hadn’t felt before.

The other her stood calmly, in control, her hands in the pockets of her white trousers and her shoulders slack.

“Better,” she said, nodding her approval.

Kanna took in the other, clad head to toe in polished white. Her echo slouched, but there was a predatory self-assuredness in it. It was as if the woman never worried about a knife in her ribs or what the darkness held. She was a vision with nothing to lose, and the power to take what she wanted. Kanna’s spine bristled at the implications of it. Kanna’s eyes narrowed on the mirrored image of herself.

“What are you?”

It smiled, slow and sharp. “I would think you would recognize yourself.”

Her reflection’s voice came with an echo, as if spoken across some great divide. It was clipped and calculated. It was unnerving.

“Why are you talking like that?” she asked.

The figure stood straighter, taller. “This is how we speak.”

Kanna straightened her shoulders in response. “I do not speak that way,” she said.

The other chuckled, the sound empty and mirthless. She relaxed her shoulders once more. “There are more important things to discuss.”

Kanna’s body sank and she shook her head. It was like she was a prisoner in a construct that both was and wasn’t hers at the same time.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“What is this place?” she asked.

Her echo shrugged. “It is neither here nor there, so we called it the Neither.”

“You and me?”

“No,” her other self replied. “What is more important,” she said, “is what is here, or what should be.”

The echo paced the ice, the heels of her boots sounding like strikes against marble with each step. “I would pick the end of the world as a starting point. No one looks here, do they? Not even the gods.”

She looked up to the dappled sky. “But he will find me, always.” She smiled and shut her eyes. “He will tear apart the universe if he must.”

Kanna knew she was right. She’d felt it herself. There was an ache in her chest that sung of loss. She had fed it the only way she knew, with blood and violence, but it still screamed.

The echo pivoted, turning her smile to Kanna. It was fearless and knowing.

A sound in the distance caught Kanna’s attention and she turned towards it. Cursing herself, she turned back, but she already knew the woman would be gone.

She choked on her frustration as it curdled into fear.

The bodies were back.

glass [https://shadowsprey.com/wp-content/uploads/story-images/01_26i_03_NeitherGlass_03.png]

VI:

Haru opened his eyes and flexed his empty hands, the cold creaking in the joints of his fingers and tightening the skin around the scar on his hand. The tower was gone, and so was the ghost. He couldn’t shake the emptiness, the heavy need to feel her near him once more.

He had never been able to shake it.

Movement drew his attention away from his hand, and she was there.

Kanna stood in front of him, her hands in her pockets and her shoulders set back. But she was still blurred at the edges, and this one had only a dangerous confidence. It was how she stood before him when they first met, except it lacked the subtle questioning that always hid in her gaze.

“Kanna?”

The vision smiled, and her shoulders shrugged. It was not a no, but it was not a yes either.

He wasn’t sure how many more visions he could stand. He pressed his palms into his eyes, pushing until he felt pain, willing the ghost to leave him to the wreckage. He didn’t want these aspects, these visions, these pieces of her. Haru wanted Kanna. He wanted all of her.

The figure turned, looking out into the distance. Haru followed her line of sight.

A flash of white appeared, stepping out of a rip in the landscape, running at full speed.

Another Kanna.

The smirking ghost flitted out of sight. The other was still running.

The running figure was solid against the landscape. She didn’t flicker at the edges, and she stumbled through this world as if it was foreign to her. He could hear the crack of her boots against ice, feel her fear over the distance.

He felt the thread that bound them pull taut. The echoes had all been empty, void of Kanna’s innate gravity.

He started after her, trying to intercept her as she raced ahead. She was stumbling, sliding, tripping over nothing that he could see.

Haru pushed himself faster, closing the distance between them.

As suddenly as she appeared, she fell. Her arms flailed as the ground dropped from beneath her and she slipped down and out of sight.

He didn’t stop running. Even if he told himself to, he wouldn’t be able. He would never stop. Not until he found her.