Back on Earth....Vicky's Office... Night of Ashers Suicide
The phone slipped from Vicky's fingers and hit the desk with a sharp crack, bouncing onto the floor and shattering into countless glittering fragments. It was a fractured mirror of her own heart, teetering on the brink of breaking apart. For a moment, she stood frozen, shock tightening around her chest like a vice. Her breath hitched in her throat, her blood turning ice-cold in her veins.
“Asher,” she whispered, her voice trembling, the single word carrying equal parts desperation and disbelief.
Her office felt like it was closing in around her. The cluttered desk, stacked high with reports and loose papers, seemed more oppressive than ever. The acrid scent of stale coffee mingled with the faint hum of the overhead light, buzzing faintly in her ears. Yet all of it faded into irrelevance as her mind latched onto the echo of his voice. It wasn’t quite the Asher she knew—it was raw, rasping, and hollow, stripped of the strength she had always admired. It clawed at something deep inside her chest, a primal fear she couldn’t shake.
Vicky lunged forward, wrenching her keys and holster from the chaos of her desk. Her hand brushed against the stack of unfinished reports, scattering them across the room as her chair toppled backward with a clatter. She didn’t stop to fix it. She couldn’t.
Bursting through the doors of the Seattle Police Department, her pulse thundered in her ears as her eyes darted across the parking lot. The car—her sedan, which she had lent to Asher two weeks ago—was nowhere to be seen. Panic surged anew as she unlocked her spare vehicle and threw herself into the driver’s seat. The engine roared to life, and without hesitation, she slammed her foot on the gas, tires screeching as she tore out of the lot.
The needle on the speedometer climbed steadily past eighty, ninety, then a hundred miles per hour. The city blurred around her, a kaleidoscope of neon lights and towering buildings fading into streaks against the night sky. Tears streamed down her face, blurring her vision as uncontrollable sobs ripped from her throat. She didn’t try to stifle them.
She had known Asher for years, had seen him endure hells that would have broken lesser men. And yet, in all that time, she had never heard him sound so utterly defeated.
Her knuckles turned white against the wheel as she veered onto the on-ramp for Asher’s subdivision. The familiar streets seemed alien under the oppressive weight of her dread. The house came into view, and her stomach dropped. The door was unlocked, slightly ajar, with no light spilling from within. A vicious chill clawed its way up her spine as she screeched to a halt.
Vicky threw open the car door and ran toward the house, shivering despite the adrenaline coursing through her. Her gun was in her hands before she even realized it, her grip trembling. The metallic tang of blood hit her nose the moment she crossed the threshold, thick and unmistakable. She gagged, nearly doubling over, but forced herself to push forward.
The entryway was chaos—a shattered lamp, overturned furniture, and in the center of it all, a man in a ski mask, beaten beyond recognition. His limbs were bent at grotesque angles, jagged bone piercing through shredded flesh, as though he had been torn apart by something feral.
For a brief, fleeting second, hope flickered in her chest. Asher had fought back. He had to be alive—injured, perhaps—but alive. Yet something in the air was wrong, deeply wrong. The metallic tang of blood was laced with an acrid scent, sharp and unnatural, like ozone after a lightning strike. A low vibration seemed to hum through the room, almost imperceptibly at first, but it grew stronger as Vicky stood there, rooting her to the spot.
But as she turned the corner into the living room, the hope was snuffed out in an instant.
Her breath caught in her throat as the scene unfolded before her like a waking nightmare.
Asher’s body lay slumped beside Delaney, his gun still loosely clutched in his hand. The blood beneath Asher’s head spread outward in dark, curling patterns, like the macabre artistry of a painter driven to madness. Each rivulet traced the uneven cracks of the floorboards, blooming into shapes both unsettling and mesmerizing, their edges jagged yet deliberate, as if the ground itself were drinking him in. Tendrils of silvery light snaked through the blood, faint but undeniable, writhing like threads of liquid lightning that pulsed in rhythm with the low hum reverberating through the room.
Delaney’s small form lay just inches away, her tiny hand clutching the frayed edge of a tattered blanket with the fragile determination of a child clinging to the last remnant of safety. Her pale face, serene in its stillness, carried an innocence so stark it felt like a knife to the soul—a cruel juxtaposition against the jagged crimson streak slashing across her chest. The blood had dried in uneven lines, stark against her lifeless form, transforming what should have been a moment of peace into a silent accusation, echoing louder than any scream.
Rachel lay just a few feet away, her body contorted in an unnatural twist, as though she had been dragged with brutal disregard. Her lifeless eyes, wide and unseeing, stared blankly at the ceiling, frozen in an expression of raw terror that seemed to echo her final moments. A dark bloom of blood had spread across her abdomen, its jagged edges stark against the fabric of her once-pristine blouse, now irreparably stained. The crimson seeped into the floorboards beneath her, pooling in uneven trails as if the very ground sought to swallow the evidence of her suffering.
The silence was suffocating, broken only by the faint, monotonous hum of the refrigerator in the adjacent kitchen. Yet beneath it, the thrumming was unmistakable now—a pulsing rhythm that seemed to emanate from the very floor itself. The air felt thick and charged, like the moments before a thunderstorm, and the shimmering tendrils of light winding through the blood began to stretch outward, twisting in patterns too deliberate to be random.
Vicky staggered forward, her knees threatening to buckle under the weight of the scene. Her vision blurred at the edges, tears spilling freely as she struggled to take it all in. The thrumming grew louder as she approached, and the shimmering patterns of light seemed to crawl along the floor, coiling near Asher’s outstretched hand.
Every detail seared itself into her mind—the unlocked door she had pushed through, the shattered phone still clutched in her trembling hand, the scattered toys abandoned in the chaos, and the stark, unrelenting truth carved into the tableau of death before her. But now, as she stared at the bodies, the light near Asher’s hand flared, illuminating the scene in a ghostly glow for the briefest of moments before dimming again. The energy in the room pressed against her skin, raising goosebumps along her arms and setting her pulse racing. Whatever had happened here, it wasn’t just murder—it was something far beyond her comprehension.
Her boots scuffed against the floor as she stood, The scene was chaos: the scattered toys, the overturned furniture, the still forms of the family she had failed to protect. But her attention kept returning to the blood—not just Asher’s but the trails pooling beneath Delaney and Rachel.
It didn’t behave like blood should.
She knelt beside Asher’s body again, her trembling hand hovering over the faint shimmer within the pool beneath his head. Her breath hitched as she hesitated, dread curling in her stomach like a coiled snake. Summoning her resolve, she pressed a finger into the edge of the liquid.
It was cool—unnervingly so—and thicker than blood should have been. As she lifted her hand, the substance clung to her skin like sap, its faint shimmer intensifying under the dim glow of the streetlamp outside. The texture shifted between liquid and solid, trickling unnaturally before freezing in jagged trails along her fingers.
“What the hell...?” she muttered, her voice trembling.
The substance didn’t stay still. A sudden heat lanced through her fingers, searing and bright, as though molten fire had been poured beneath her skin. She gasped, clutching her hand as the crystalline streaks began to sink into her flesh, vanishing before her eyes.
“No, no, no—what is this?” she hissed, trying to shake it off. But it was too late.
The burning intensified, radiating up her arm in waves that stole her breath and sent her heart pounding against her ribs. She collapsed back onto her heels, clutching her wrist as though trying to stop the flow of pain. Tears blurred her vision, but as suddenly as it had come, the searing sensation vanished, leaving her panting and wide-eyed in the suffocating silence.
She turned her hand over, frantic, searching for any sign of what had just happened. Her skin was unmarred, free of the crystalline substance. It was as though it had never been there, but the faint hum crawling under her skin told her otherwise.
Her fingers twitched involuntarily, a strange warmth lingering just beneath the surface of her palm. She flexed her hand, swallowing hard as her thoughts spiraled. Had it melted into her? Was she hallucinating? Nothing made sense.
Her mind raced with questions, none of them yielding answers. What she had just touched wasn’t blood—not entirely. And whatever it was, it had done something to her.Her gaze swept across the floor again. A thin line of the shimmering substance trailed away from Asher’s body, pooling faintly at the base of the stairs. A single droplet of the crystallized material clung to the wood like a jagged gem. She pried it free, her pulse pounding as she slipped it into her coat pocket.
This wasn’t natural. This wasn’t human.
Her instincts screamed at her to leave, to call for backup, to let someone else deal with it. But she couldn’t—not with what she’d just felt, just seen. If she handed this over to the department, they’d dismiss her. Worse, they might think she’d lost it.
No. This was hers to figure out. Asher deserved that much.
With shaking hands, she grabbed an empty evidence bag from her jacket pocket and scraped another sliver of the crystalline residue into it. Her eyes flicked back to Asher, his body crumpled beside Delaney, her heart aching with the enormity of what had been lost.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “But I’ll figure out what happened to you. I swear.”
She grabbed one of the tattered toys from the floor—not for sentimentality, but because it was stained with more of the strange substance. Every detail of the scene burned into her mind: the shapes in the blood, the static hum, and the impossible way Asher’s body seemed wrong, as though he had been ripped apart in ways she couldn’t see.
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With her pockets heavy and her resolve firmer than ever, she slipped out of the house, locking the door behind her. This wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
Over the following week, Vicky threw herself into an unrelenting quest to identify and understand the strange substance. She combed through every resource she could think of, leaving no stone unturned. Chemistry professors listened with raised eyebrows as she presented the crystalline fragments, their theories faltering under its baffling properties. In her own kitchen, she improvised experiments, heating and freezing the substance, shocking it with electricity, submerging it in water, and even subjecting it to the pointed edge of a knife. Nothing changed. The fragments remained impervious, their shimmering, otherworldly glow defying her every attempt to unravel their mystery.
Her desperation drove her to the shadowy corners of the city. She wandered into occult shops, their dimly lit interiors heavy with the scent of incense and worn leather. Shopkeepers inspected the residue with skeptical curiosity, muttering about ancient relics and lost alchemy, but none could provide a satisfying answer. Paranormal investigators offered wild theories, spinning tales of ghostly manifestations and interdimensional anomalies, but their eccentricities only left her more frustrated.
Each night, she returned home exhausted, her mind a tangled web of dead ends and unspoken fears. Yet she couldn’t stop. The substance wasn’t just a clue—it was a thread connecting her to something far larger, far stranger than she’d ever imagined. And though she didn’t understand it yet, she knew one thing for certain: whatever this was, it was far from ordinary.
Then the dreams began—strange, vivid visions that clawed at the edges of Vicky’s sanity. In the dead of night, grotesque abominations towered over a lone figure, their distorted forms writhing like shadows come to life. Darkness spilled from them in a relentless tide, consuming everything in its path. A brilliant, blinding light would pierce through the void, illuminating a throne that seemed both ancient and impossibly distant. None of it made sense, yet the images etched themselves into her mind, as vivid and unrelenting as the burn of a brand.
Each time she awoke from these nightmares, her chest heaved with ragged breaths, her sheets tangled as though she’d fought an unseen battle. But it wasn’t just the dreams that haunted her. Every time she returned to consciousness, a searing pain flared in her finger—the same finger that had touched the strange substance. The sensation was sharp and unyielding, burning as though molten fire coursed through her veins, only to vanish without a trace moments later, leaving her trembling in its wake.
As the nights passed, the visions grew worse, more insistent. The abominations became clearer, their grotesque features etched in horrifying detail. The throne, once distant, seemed to pulse with a gravity that pulled at her very being. And every morning, she woke with the same unnerving certainty: for the briefest of moments, it felt as if she had been somewhere else, somewhere far from the safety of her bed. Her finger throbbed as though reminding her that whatever this was, it was far from over.
Vicky had grown weary of the dreams—fragmented glimpses of chaos and figures that tugged at her heart with their cruel familiarity. They made no sense, yet they haunted her relentlessly. One night, she entered another dream, and this time, the figure appeared again—a man whose presence was painfully familiar, even if her mind rejected the possibility. She desperately wanted it to be Asher, but it defied logic.
Focusing harder than ever, she willed the hazy image to sharpen, ignoring the burning sensation that flared in her finger—the same finger that had touched the strange substance in his blood. With a flash of searing pain, the scene crystallized before her. It was him. Somehow, impossibly, it was Asher.
She screamed, but the void of the dream world swallowed her voice. She waved arms she didn’t have, a futile attempt to reach him as he conversed with a strange woman, her features otherworldly. Come to think of it, Asher looked different too—changed in ways she couldn’t quite comprehend. No matter what Vicky did, she couldn’t breach the barrier between them.
Panic set in, but then she tried something new. Something desperate. She began to imagine a bridge—a direct path into the image itself. She envisioned herself walking across it, each step a battle against the heavy weight of her fear and doubt. Time felt meaningless, an eternity stretching as she willed herself not to wake, refusing to lose sight of him.
The bridge in her mind began to take form, but not without cost. She poured all her focus into constructing it from the strange, shimmering substance she’d found in Asher’s blood. The effort was agonizing, as if her body were being flayed and remade, her skin ground away only to regrow and be stripped again. Her atoms felt as if they were scattering, separating from her very being to form the structure.
Terrified yet resolute, she doubled her efforts, forcing herself to focus. Asher was alive—somehow, somewhere—and she was determined to reach him. She clenched onto the image, channeling her will into creating a body for herself on the bridge. It felt natural, as though she were following an instinct buried deep within. The substance shifted wildly, crystallizing and liquefying in a dizzying cycle until, at last, it erupted into a form—a radiant structure of pure light and energy, neither crystal nor liquid but something entirely new.
Then a voice broke through, deep and resonant, tinged with a note of curiosity. It was as if the speaker had only just awoken.
“Who are you? Wait… I’ve seen you before. You’re Vicky.”
Vicky froze, her disbelief spiraling into shock. “I’m Vicky,” she said, her words trembling. “Who are you? Do you know Asher? I don’t know what I’m doing, but… I know I have to find him. Even if it kills me.”
The voice chuckled, warm and ancient. “Hmm. Vicky, I’ve seen you through Asher’s memories. My name is Aetheros, and I felt you prodding at the Aether that remains in your world. It seems you found fragments of me left behind when I pulled your partner into mine.”
Her head spun, each revelation striking like a hammer. But instead of hesitating, she demanded, “Take me to him. Now. He owes me an explanation.”
Aetheros paused, the silence heavy. Then the voice replied, “Vicky, it’s not that simple. The only reason I could pull Asher through was because he shed his mortal coil. I caught his soul, rebuilt his body, and anchored him with Aether. You are still alive, bound to your world.”
Her frustration boiled over, spilling into her words. “You’re telling me my partner is in some death world, fighting God knows what, while carrying everything that happened to him on his shoulders—alone—and you expect me to stay here? Just tell me what I have to do!”
The voice grew sharp, its power palpable. Vicky felt it pressing against her mind, threatening to shatter her into pieces. “If you truly desire to be by his side, you must shed your mortal coil. Only then can I pull you across time and space to Aeloria, my world—my body. The Aether inside you, those fragments of my world’s blood, cry out to return home. I can use them to link you to my world, to Asher, and to me. But understand, once you cross over, there is no return. Do you still wish to do this?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation, her voice steely. “Get me out of here. That man has some explaining to do.”
Aetheros laughed, the sound like an orchestra of celestial harmonies. “Very well, mortal. But know this: you are entering a world on the brink of destruction, and Asher himself is barely holding on. This will hurt—a lot. I hope he forgives me for what comes next.”
The next moment was agony. The Aether inside Vicky ignited, starting as a searing heat in her finger before surging through her body. Flames of raw energy consumed her, racing through her veins until her entire form was covered. She screamed as her body crystallized, fracturing and shattering into a thousand radiant shards. All that remained was a glowing orb surrounded by tendrils of Aether, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Her consciousness burned, unmoored from her physical body, and then she was hurtling through a void at incomprehensible speeds. Light and darkness twisted around her until, in an instant, everything stopped.
She slammed into the ground, the impact jarring her into awareness. Vicky blinked, her senses reeling as she found herself standing in a training yard beyond a small cottage. A glowing lantern stood at the settlement’s center, its light familiar—the same shimmer she had found in Asher’s blood.
Then she saw him. Asher. Alive.
Her voice cracked as the words spilled from her lips, raw and trembling. “Asher, you left me alone.”
Asher’s body tensed the moment he heard her voice, raw and trembling, cutting through the still night air like a blade.
He froze, his heart slamming against his ribs as if it were trying to break free. For a moment, he thought he was hallucinating, that his guilt had finally twisted itself into something tangible. But when he turned around, the world itself seemed to shift, the edges of his vision narrowing until all he could see was her.
Vicky.
The training yard stretched before her, its compacted dirt smoothed from countless bouts, faint grooves etched into the surface marking the weight of past struggles. Wooden training dummies, scarred and splintered from repeated blows, stood like weary sentinels along one side. A rack of practice weapons leaned precariously against the wall of a small shed, their hilts polished smooth from years of use, the metal dull yet steady in its quiet readiness.
The area was bordered by a low wooden fence, its slats uneven but sturdy, with patches of wild grass creeping through the gaps. The faint scent of damp earth lingered in the cool night air, carrying whispers of the lives lived and battles fought here. Beyond the yard, the silhouette of Duskshade’s cottages framed the horizon, their rooftops jagged and irregular against the soft glow of the distant lantern in the town square. Its light flickered faintly above the house at the yard’s edge, like a distant watchful eye, steady and unyielding.
As she stood in the center of the yard, her faint golden glow seemed to meld with the night. Rune-like lines pulsed beneath her skin, casting an almost ethereal shimmer against the subdued surroundings. The light that coursed through her veins felt strangely at home in this place, as if her very presence was a new addition to the quiet history etched into the yard’s soil.Her eyes, wide and brimming with a thousand unspoken emotions, locked onto his. He took an involuntary step forward, his breath catching as he saw the faint sheen of crystalline Aether along her fingertips. Her chest heaved, her face pale but resolute. It was her, but she was changed, the echoes of her journey etched into every fiber of her being.
“What… how—” His voice faltered, breaking under the weight of everything he wanted to say and couldn’t.
“Asher.” She said his name again, softer this time, and it struck him harder than any blow he’d taken in this new world. “I watched you die. I held Delaney, Rachel—they were gone. I saw the blood.” Her voice cracked, and she took a shaky step forward, the rune-light under her skin flaring brighter. “I thought I was losing my mind. But you… you’re here. Alive. Somehow alive. And you didn’t think to tell me?”
Her tone was sharp, but the pain laced through her words gutted him. His chest ached as he stared at her, at the way the light in her eyes burned with fury and grief and something he couldn’t yet name.
“I—” He stopped, his voice strangled. What could he say? That he had wanted to tell her? That he had thought of her every moment since arriving in this hellscape? That he hadn’t because he believed she deserved to move on, to live a life untouched by the shadows that followed him?
Vicky’s hands trembled at her sides, and he noticed the way her fingers twitched, the light beneath her skin flickering like a flame in the wind. She looked like she might shatter at any moment, but her gaze stayed locked on his, unwavering.
“You don’t get to do that,” she said, her voice rising. “You don’t get to leave me in that world—alone—and not tell me why. Do you have any idea what I’ve been through? What it took to get here?”
Her words hit him like a tidal wave, and he stumbled back, his mind reeling. He wanted to reach out, to pull her close, to make her understand everything he couldn’t say. But the sight of the glowing Aether beneath her skin held him in place, a stark reminder that she had touched something she shouldn’t have, that she was here because of something far beyond his control.
“What have you done?” he whispered, his voice barely audible.
Her eyes narrowed, and she crossed the distance between them in a few determined strides. “What I had to,” she snapped. “You think I could just stay there? After everything?” Her hand shot out, her fingers curling around his wrist, and the moment they touched, a spark of energy surged between them.
Asher hissed, jerking back instinctively, but Vicky held on, her grip unrelenting. “What’s wrong, Asher?” she asked, her voice trembling with anger. “Afraid of what I’ve become? Because I am.”
Her confession broke something inside him. He saw the fear she was trying so desperately to bury, the weight of the choices she had made pressing down on her shoulders. And he knew, in that moment, that there was no going back—for either of them.
His hand covered hers, his grip firm but gentle. “You shouldn’t have come,” he said quietly, his voice thick with emotion.
“Too late,” she replied, her voice barely more than a whisper. “You’re stuck with me now.”
For a moment, they stood there in the flickering light of the lantern, the air between them heavy with unspoken words. Asher’s mind raced, trying to reconcile the woman standing before him with the memories of the partner he’d left behind. But as he looked into her eyes, he realized something: she wasn’t just Vicky anymore.
She was something more. And so was he.