Chapter 10 - Above The Sky
“What should we do?” Osefin asked, looking at Vevlan with a stare that he didn’t even know was as hopeless as it was. A lesser version of him would have got down on his knees and prayed to the Lightkeeper in a time like this, but he knew that he wasn’t weak like everyone assumed him to be. He was a respected healer, a shell that housed a heart of joy and of resilience. He wouldn’t cry to his god like… like Dom did.
The response was cold, and utterly uncaring.
“Nothing.” Vevlan said.
“No, you and I need to do something here. We need to make some kind of choice!” Osefin pleaded. He wasn’t afraid, no, not at all. Fear had released its grasp from him a long time ago.
“I have made up my mind. Dr. Phantom isn’t worth my time, nor my life. I have bigger things to worry about, and that suicidal mayor can die if he wants to.”
He just didn’t want to accept that this was Vevlan. His self-serving, spineless attitude. His only reason for helping Pouria was to further his own interests. But this… It was him, it was who he was, and Osefin knew now that he needed to cut him loose.
“If you aren’t going to save him, I will. It’s the right thing to do, and you don’t understand that. You never have, and you never will with your head held so high.”
Vevlan paused as he was about to move toward the ladder. A look came over his face that Osefin couldn’t understand, but he suddenly felt uncomfortable. Tremendously so. It was a look of fear.
“You can say that.” he said, his breath shaking like he was looking into the eyes of a monster. “But I have to hold my head high to see the boots of the people above me, coming to stomp me out. And I cannot look down, or else…” his words slowly died out. His voice trailed off into the ether, his eyes glazed over. But quickly, almost like his candle had been re-lit, he pulled himself back to reality.
“It is how I’ve lived, and it won't change no matter what I do. I just want you to know, Osefin, because I respect you. You are a lucky man to be where you are in this cruel world. I want to be like you. But I can’t.” he said. Osefin didn’t know how to respond to it, but in his confusion, it gave Vevlan the chance to leap down into the hole, and run back down the tunnel.
A heavy sigh left the doctor’s lungs. His mind now had to switch focus, almost unnaturally, to how a man without a Soulflare could defeat a man with twice the body mass as him, and a flare of his own.
And then the lightbulb in his head illuminated as he peered down the hall toward the auditorium in the distance. There was one person missing from the auditorium, at least he hoped he wasn’t missing them. He was sure they were somewhere in the asylum, and if he found them…
“Kaino can fight him.” Osefin said to himself, his smile rising.
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One year ago…
“So, uh, Kaino. How’s the lab been treating you?”
Kaino gazed out the window at the steeple of the church with a distant look. He was lost in thought, again, as usual. Sometimes it was intentional, like when he wanted to stay out of Vevlan or Sillah’s droning and meaningless conversation. But sometimes, he truly couldn’t get out of his own head.
The lack of sleep lately didn’t help his lack of social skills. He never liked speaking, but he never intended to offend anyone, even though it happened often. Unlike Pouria, who was used to him getting distracted, neither of his new business partners seemed to understand him. He knew they would in time, but for now he would have to attend these afterwork ‘hangout meetings’ and sit in relative silence until someone insisted he say something.
“Kaino? You there?” Sillah asked in her aggravating voice she used when she was crying for attention. Kaino’s gaze turned up to her, but he dismissed her twee expression as he ran his judgemental eyes down her spiraling hair, and expensive fur coat, her disgustingly delicate flesh exposed in many places across her form. He wondered if her body was half the reason she got wealthy, along with her lineage’s inherently deep coffers. He, for one, wasn’t ever a fan of her, nor her body, but she did fund his operation, all in exchange for the gift of a Soulflare. He often felt like he owed her something more than just that, though, and it wasn’t just gratitude.
“He’s been like this all night.” Vevlan muttered as his business partner set three drinks down on the table, and sat down beside him, uncomfortably close. Kaino noticed how Vevlan inched to the side to avoid her presence, and how it caused her to only come closer to him. It was a disgusting dance of young love that he had never experienced and now far outgrown. Love was useless, love was a cycle doomed to end in failure and heartbreak, love wasn’t going to help him solve the mysteries of Soulflares.
“Just let him wallow in his… science stuff or whatever.” Sillah replied, ignorant as ever. “I just bought us another round of martinis with my dead mother’s money. Cus tonight, we are gonna honor her legacy, as well as my giant fucking bank account that just got even bigger. We are going to live like kings, gentlemen!”
She raised her drink to propose a toast, and her phone to take yet another selfie. Kaino couldn’t take it any more, he couldn’t think here, and as close as he was to a breakthrough, he didn’t want to lose his train of thought to this meaningless celebration.
“I need some air.” Kaino finally announced, shuffling out of his seat. He took decisive footsteps to the door of the glamorous restaurant without even looking back, despite the muffled cries from his two immature coworkers. They quickly faded into the background as he stepped out onto the street, and made his way to the church.
Something about that building was odd that night, and despite never going there, he felt drawn to it, compelled and called by something deep within to go inside.
Three blocks, and he didn’t stop. He pushed through the passerby on the sidewalk in a trance, his eyes affixed to the steeple throughout it all. He crossed streets, nearly getting run over multiple times, but the angered horns of the nighttime cars were drowned out by the voice in his head.
“Kaino. Stare into the Eye of God, he will lead you to where you belong. What you seek is ours, and you are us, thus it belongs to you too, the answers await.”
He didn’t understand it at first, months ago, but the voice spoke more and more with each passing day. He had honed his mind to hear it. Sometimes it was unintelligible, but now he could understand what it said.
He had been given a secret, a secret that had made him a beacon of a man, a legend revered and doubted. The secret to unlock a human’s inner power and manifest it as a wieldable ability. Pouria, his old friend, was the first to unlock his Soulflare in a mysterious event, and ever since he met him, he became obsessed with this power. It was that obsession that made him follow the voice, and thus far, it hadn’t led him astray.
He stared at the light of the full moon behind the Central Cathedral, illuminating it with a beautifully blinding outline. He knew moonlight was only the sun’s light reflected off the lunar rock, and he knew Soulflares were somehow connected to the sun. He guessed the voice would explain it to him one day, but this was the sign he needed.
A small memory flashed in his mind of a time when he would have discarded ‘signs’, ‘visions’, and all other symbolism as nothing more than trivial nonsense invented by astrologists and the religious. Now, he was about to set foot in a place of worship for the first time in his life. He was unsure how to feel, but knew that if he wanted answers, he needed to enter, and the signs told him to do so.
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The creaky wooden door, added recently, in the entrance portico gave way to massive ceilings that sprawled high above, lit only by candlelight and the streetlamps through the stained glass. The imagery in the hallowed hall depicted biblical scenes that Kaino had only heard of, but never followed close enough to understand their meaning. In that sense, he felt alien here, utterly unwelcome as an atheist. But something else made this holy ground feel comforting all the same, like a warm sense of nostalgia that he couldn’t understand.
Lines across the painted ceiling, woven through artistic masterpieces high above, all led to the centerpiece of the massive cathedral; the pulpit backed by the statue of a four-winged angel. Sculptures of vines and trees growing bountiful fruit wreathed their form, like they were birthed from them. Script in an ancient language upon a golden banner at the sculpture’s feet read ‘Non dubito pro mori, vere devotus es’. Kaino understood a couple of the words, but not all.
The most dubious thing was the lack of any sort of crowds here. Only one singular soul sat in the pews, not bothering to look up from their devout prayer when Kaino entered the building.
Kaino had no clue what to do here. The signs had led him here, but no further.
The words in his head hadn’t said anything. But perhaps the Eye of God held some secret that he could decypher. He saw the angel and guessed it may have something to do with it.
The eyes of the massive statue weren’t anything special, mundane half circles on a much more detailed sculpture. Kaino sat down on a pew and stared. And stared. All until he became nauseated. He gazed for multiple minutes at it until he found it pointless. His resolve slowly gave way to boredom, and with that he rose back up from the seat.
As he headed for the door, he walked slowly, hoping something would happen before he left…
“Kaino?” A voice called out to him from behind. When he turned around, he saw the man in the pews was standing up behind him.
He was a blind man, wearing pitch-black tinted glasses indoors, he approached with a dirty smile, and even dirtier hair flapping around. He held out his wrought hands in a cup, sleeves rolled up on his stained, black-woolen coat. People like this, beggars, the downtrodden, they were unsightly to Kaino. He wanted none of this… but as he took a step back, he remembered why he was here.
“Can you spare some change? The Lightkeeper’s favor will shine upon the generous.” He said, his voice shaky as it weaved guilt in the echoed halls.
“I am looking for the Eye of God. If you can help me, I’ll give you some of my spare change.” Kaino said, that uncomfortable, cautious feeling that one gets when dealing with the less fortunate searing in his chest.
“Look up, he is always watching.” The man said, further creeping Kaino out. Despite that, he took a step back and stared up, and up, and up… all the way to the roof.
He didn’t know how he’d missed it, his eyes moved up past the angel statue, past the dream-like stained glass portraits of long-dead saints, all the way up to the ceiling…
The brilliant light of Heaven. The most detailed painting in the whole chapel, a circular sun with hundreds of figuratively blinding rays that squirmed down the domed roof. It hung above where the priest would speak before the altar, as if it spoke to them, giving them the words of wisdom from Heaven itself.
“Go up there.” the beggar told Kaino. “Stand and look into the sun. It’ll give you the answers you seek, the Lightkeeper will allow you to remove your bias.”
Kaino didn’t know if to listen to the man. He was lucky to even be inside this place. He wasn’t allowed to go up on the stage, he knew that much about church. This stranger was telling him to break the law, he’d be pushing his luck if any priests were in the building on that night.
But the answers he wanted… were they up there? Would he finally understand how Soulflares came to be? So many of them already burned bright across the city, and each year, a handful more ignited.
And yet, religion was nothing more than a source of false hope for those who needed it in a cruel world though, surely this ‘Lightkeeper’ was nothing more than a false deity that hopeless men and women prayed to. No… The Soulflares weren’t an act of God, not a gift from the Heavens like most said they were.
Besides, his replica flares were just as strong. He was no God. The ones that randomly appeared were probably just another person who had discovered the secret. It was hard to tell which of them were given by this mysterious third party though, with Blueberry Corporation now possessing his secrets, finding ‘Original Flares’ was near impossible…
Kaino looked distantly up at the domed ceiling. Whoever this third party was, it couldn’t be a God. But despite that, he knew that the voice had led him here. That voice was clearly leading him, and it was hard to deny it. He’d never heard anything like it; it was absolutely mystifying. He couldn’t afford to let it slip.
This was the next step. He had to take it.
Upon his own volition, with no force from the beggar, Kaino Phantom walked over to the stage, climbed over the fence, and went up the stairs.
His steps crossed the marble floor, echoing throughout the chapel with a hollow tone.
With a deep breath, he stared up into the sky, and in his eyes, glistening, reflecting, bathing his whole body…
Light. Glorious light.
Joy in its purest tingled across his body, the sounds of bells large and small rang out in his ears, it was like he was floating, flying, launching into the sky, the Sun guiding him and holding him.
The voice came to ear, whispering to him in this moment of utter euphoria. “Do you see him?” he asked in a thankful, joyous voice. “Our cause? Our true lord? This is the secret you were meant to find, and you… you understand now, right?”
“He… He is real… The Lightkeeper…” Kaino said, words slipping from his mouth like smoke from a burning building’s window. He felt his own True Soulflare dancing within him, like it was being held in a warm hug.
He saw things in the sky that he couldn’t even describe. Words formed into sentences within his mind, shaping into a voice that he had heard many times before, but only now could understand. He saw them, four wings orbiting their body, hair made from the leaves of a thousand fruit trees, a figure so spry and tall that they looked like a radio tower, broadcasting their frequency of paradise to all in the city. The father of mirth, the one who brought the cataclysm to Soulflare’s skies, and yet despite that, he wanted to show him the-
He felt a finger tap his shoulder.
The light faded, but it didn’t disappear. It was within him now.
He peered down upon the beggar from the stage. No, he was no beggar, he didn’t look anything like a beggar now. He was fashionable, he was a force of change. He was Alua, Kaino already knew his name somehow…
“Turn around, Kaino, someone is here to see you.” Alua said, pointing to the shadow approaching behind Kaino’s on the floor. He looked at it, and then turned his body around in shock.
Kaino was met with a familiar face.
“Pouria?”