Aunty Melisa woke up late in the morning feeling groggy and struggling to speak and move. Noah was sitting with his knees to his chest against a tree, staring blankly at his parents. Aunty Melisa tried to speak to him, but he did not react. With a stiff neck, she followed his gaze and when she saw what had captivated him, she broke down in sobs.
Her body betrayed her as she crawled to his mother. One of her arms hung limply at her side and one of her eyes was swollen shut. A thick mat of dried blood covered the side of her head. When she finally reached his mother she cradled her. Noah’s tears were gone, but he felt her pain as he bore witness to her going through what he had. A part of him envied her. She was only here for the aftermath. It was a long, ugly affair to watch, her body racked with sobs, but Noah just looked on as a distant specter.
She was hoarse by the time she managed to piece herself together. Tenderly, she lay her sister down and straightened her and his father’s bodies. She stood on shaky legs and managed to walk like a broken puppet. With tears still dripping from her chin, she ambled to Ronin. Noah lazily followed her as she went, eyes red and sore from weeping. He thought about checking on the poor dog, but his limbs would not obey him.
Aunty Melisa knelt, catching herself on a tree, and pet Ronin. He lifted his head just enough to lick her fingers then flopped back down. A minuscule piece of Noah’s psyche reemerged. Like a corpse rising from its grave, he went to them and helped his aunt sit in the shade of the tree with Ronin. The dog’s tail thumped happily, but he could not stand. The soldier had shot him through his front legs. His paws twitched, though, so maybe he would walk again given time. It looked like the bullet had gone through cleanly, but the pain was enough to tether the dog to the ground.
Aunty Melisa winced, trying to raise her arm to hold him. Noah grabbed her hand and put it to his chest as he fell to his knees next to her. He put his head to her chest and let her arm settle over his shoulder. She was trembling. As she drew slow, labored breaths, her lungs bubbled with liquid. Her swollen, bloodied head settled on his.
“Noah, I-I-m so s-sorry.”
She sobbed and clutched him as tightly as her fading body could manage. Noah could think of nothing to say to her to ease her pain. His body and soul felt like they were wrapped in razor wire. Breathing hurt. Moving hurt. Having to open his eyes and look at the world hurt. When her sobbing stopped and her arm fell limply, Noah braced himself for yet another death, but her chest still moved in a shallow rhythm.
Noah felt like a stranger in his body as he stood and made his way back to the troop carrier. Survival instinct drove him onward. The woods were alive with birdsong and a gentle breeze. The sky above had cleared as well, the rain clouds from before far on the horizon. It was cruel how beautiful the day was.
The carrier was a smoldering ruin. The flames had spread in their absence, leaving only the front of the vehicle somewhat intact. Noah wasn’t surprised when he found no weapons or medical supplies in the storage spaces. The Colonel sent her men back to strip it like vultures. The only things her men overlooked were a few packets of food and a bottle of water. As he turned to leave, he grabbed a hand-sized panel of metal skin that the missiles blew off the carrier.
Aunty Melisa’s eyes were open just a sliver when he returned. She shifted when he arrived but could not speak or move at all anymore. Noah tried not to look at her face. Another storm welled within him, but he could not let himself break before her. His aunt had suffered enough for a lifetime.
He tipped the bottle against her lips. She managed a few sips but could stomach no food. Her mouth broke in a tiny sliver, and she spoke in a ghostly tone. “I love you so much.”
Her neck failed her, and her head tilted back, so she gazed emptily at the sky. The rise and fall of her chest slowed.
“I love you, too.”
More pain surged inside him, but it no longer mattered. He was overloaded, too broken to process or care. Deep down, some part of him stirred him to action, no matter how small and pointless it was. Noah made her as comfortable as he could and set Ronin in her lap before he started digging with the piece of metal he’d brought back with him. It was painfully slow to dig into the rocky earth. Blood seeped from his fingernails as rocks scraped him with every stroke. For all his effort, though, he could only scrape out a knee-depth grave.
It took all his force of will to drag his father into the grave first. Noah’s legs burned and his arms felt like they would pull from their sockets as he moved his father. By the time he settled his father in his resting place, the sun was starting to set in a blanket of blue and orange. His mother was easier to move. Noah set her in the grave on his father’s chest so that in their sleep, they lay in each other's arms. It was only just that they rested together. Noah kissed them on the forehead and pressed himself between them as he had so many times before. The river of tears he thought dry flowed again. They dotted his parents' faces as he undid their dog tag necklaces and clasped them tight in his hand.
“I love you.” With this final farewell, he tossed dirt onto them until late in the night.
When he was done he tried in vain to silence his mind. The night was hot but he felt cold inside. He didn’t want to face what came next. He clutched his chest and tilted his head to the night sky.
Eyes shut tight, he forced out a question he knew would get no answer. “Aunty, are you there?”
Silence.
Her departure hurt so much, ripping apart what little remained of himself. Aunty Melisa was so kind, so gentle. He screamed into the night, so hard and loud he started getting dizzy.
She would have been an amazing mother, he thought. Yes, she had faults, but she was beautiful all the same and overflowing with devotion.
Noah pounded his hands against the earth. The rocks stung, stripping his hands in bloddy ribbons, but none of that mattered.
She never hurt anyone. Pain creased her tender face when she took an animal during their hunts. What human lives she had taken she did to protect him. To a woman she knew for less than a day, she gifted a new chance at life with no regard for herself. So why, why was someone so pure taken from him, too?
Noah wrapped his arms around her neck and held her still-warm body. At least whatever harsh power coursed through this cruel world granted her the strength to say goodbye to her sister, to take in the wilderness one last time in her final moments. Ronin mourned with his master’s son. A tiny, shuddering murmur of a howl joined Noah’s muffled sobs.
Noah wished he was dead.
At least death would take him away from this anguish.
Digging her grave took most of the night. He was so tired, but sorrow kept sleep at bay. Aunty Melisa was never one for trinkets or jewelry. All he could find as a memento was one of the empty lighters she kept in her pocket. Noah kissed her as he had his parents and sent her to a place where she could meet her sister again.
Noah piled rocks and branches over the two upturned plots of earth. He curled beside Ronin and the true magnitude of his solitude settled over him like a heavy, cold blanket. Though his body could no longer weep or scream, his heat anguished all through the night until he finally passed out.
Sleep thrust him into an abyss, and he felt himself plunge down and down until he struck something cold. His eyes snapped open only to find that the world he woke in was not his own. As Noah jerked upright, his heart pounded against his ribs, and he looked around anxiously. The world had shifted, transformed into a spectral landscape of icy desolation. Fat snowflakes drifted around him on the tails of a blistering wind that moved silently through the trees.
The canopy of lush greenery that had once thrived in the warmth of summer was gone. Trees, stripped bare of their foliage, stood like silent sentinels, their gnarled branches reaching out like skeletal fingers clawing at the bleak, gray sky. Everything was encased in a layer of frost, devoid of all life and color. This was a lonely place.
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Even when there were no people or animals around, Noah always thought the trees gave the forest a subtle energy that said life still inhabited the space. This peaceful winter scene was a façade, however. He could feel nothing in this place. These trees were not just hardened for the winter; they were dead, and nothing else alive dwelled in this abyss.
A shiver raced down Noah's spine, sending tremors through his limbs as he struggled to comprehend the sight before him. His fingers twitched involuntarily, a primal instinct urging him to flee away from this hellscape. Nausea suddenly came over him and his hands raced to cover his mouth.
There were no devils with pitchforks, no people in a pit of fire, and this place was maddeningly silent, but this was hell on its own all the same. Noah pushed his back up the tree he reclined against, pulling himself onto his feet. He pressed his eyes shut and grabbed his hair in his fists, shaking his head furiously. Something about this cursed place felt like it was draining his energy and picking apart his mind bit by bit. Fire ants crawled over him, every cell burning in pain.
The all-encompassing silence and the complete lack of life were beyond Noah’s comprehension. This was isolation in its purest, most concentrated form. His mind began to melt as every second in this place felt like a year of solitary. He screamed and, still covering his ears, hit his head against the tree. Was this what it meant to go insane? Was the grief finally too much for him? Each painful strike did nothing to distract him from the tide of madness.
Noah just wanted to be free. He wanted the pain to stop.
This place did not appreciate his voice. To break the silence of this dwelling was a sin. As Noah's screams echoed through the lifeless void, they seemed to bounce off invisible barriers, distorting and warping until they became a cacophony of disjointed whispers that reverberated in his skull. The snowflakes, once serene in their descending dance on the wind, now swirled chaotically around him.
Noah just wanted to be free. He wanted the pain to stop.
He shouted into the lifeless void. “Just let me die.”
But his words were swallowed by the emptiness, lost in the vast expanse of the liminal horror that surrounded him, a place where madness reigned supreme and the boundaries between reality and nightmare blurred into nothingness.
As the cold embrace of madness tightened on him, as Noah's consciousness flickered on the precipice of surrender, a voice, sultry and warm, slithered into his mind like a serpent weaving through grass. A faint red glow against his eyelids roused him for a moment. Something had joined him in this snowy tomb.
"Ah, Noah," the girl’s voice purred, a melodious cadence that seemed to echo through the hollows of his mind. "What a pitiful sight you make, ready to embrace the cold clasp of death at such a tender age. The world has been cruel to you, hasn't it? Abandoned and forgotten, like a lone leaf in the wind."
The pain, the horror left him at the grace of her voice. The snow stopped assaulting him, and Noah's weary eyes opened as he felt the presence of the unseen entity. He turned and, standing between where his aunt's and parent’s graves would be under the snow, sat a young woman.
As Noah's gaze swept over her, he found himself entranced by the ethereal figure before him. The young woman possessed an otherworldly beauty that defied description. Her skin, smooth and flawless, seemed to emit a soft, radiant glow as if she were bathed in moonlight.
Long, ebony locks cascaded down her back like a river of darkness, each strand glistening with a glossy sheen. Partway down her back, the long hair parted around the base of her large, black wings, wings like a reven’s. Perched atop her head was a golden brooch, its surface gleaming in the dim light. It was a small detail, yet it added an air of regal elegance to her ensemble. Draped in an angelic gown the color of freshly spilled blood, she cut a striking figure against the wintry backdrop. The fabric clung to her ample curves, accentuating her feminine form with a tantalizing hint of what lay underneath.
But it was her eyes that held Noah captive. Like twin rubies ablaze with a fire, they shone with a ferocity that seemed to consume everything in their path. Each glance stirred something deep within him that he couldn't quite name, attracted him in a way he couldn’t describe.
In that moment, Noah felt a strange mixture of longing and apprehension come over him. There was something about this woman, something he couldn't quite put into words, that drew him in with an irresistible force.
“A son buries his mother and father, and the aunt that loved him as her own child.” The woman sat on her knees, touching the snow with her fingertips. Her voice was a panacea, taking from Noah his pain and his sorrows. He took hesitant steps toward her as she continued, voice wrapping around Noah's consciousness like a silk ribbon. "Life has been cruel to you. Noah, hasn’t it?"
Her perfect lips barely parted as she spoke. He craved more of the serenity it gave him.
“Are you an angel?” Noah said, standing before her.
She giggled, rising to her feet with the elegance of an empress. She spoke aloud to him in the same flawless tone. “In a sense, perhaps. You may call me that if you like. Tell me, why did you say you wanted to die?”
Her voice, honeyed poison, lingered in the silence that followed, awaiting Noah's response. The woman smiled and answered for him. “You are broken. Such sadness would break anyone, let alone a child. I can make you whole again, give you a purpose.” She took his hand in hers. Her skin was warm, burning even, and she put her other hand on his cheek. Noah’s body relaxed at her touch and his lips quivered as he replied.
“What do you mean?”
The woman tilted his head to view the world around them. "In the realm of mortals, you perceive an illusion of beauty, a fleeting mirage that veils this stark truth beneath. Here lies the essence of your kind, where the heart of humanity beats with a chilling indifference. Man turns a blind eye to the plight of his brothers and sisters, all left to wither in the desolate expanse of this forsaken place. They fade into oblivion, forgotten and forsaken.”
As she released her grip on Noah, the surge of vibrating insanity flooded back, engulfing him in a suffocating tide of panic. His mind became a battleground of chaos, this hellscape gnawing at his sanity once more. Desperate to anchor himself amidst the swirling tempest, Noah seized her hand again, craving the solace she gave. She squeezed his hand and embraced him, her wings of darkness enveloping them.
“I watched it all, Noah. I can give you the power to right the wrongs done to you and your family. I can make those fantasies you had, watching those soldiers stand by and let your loved ones die, a reality. Most of all, I can give you Colonel Victoria.”
The cold wastes, once devoid and dead, now seemed to pulse with the possibilities. The voice’s promises weaved their threads through his desperation, tempting him with something he didn’t know he wanted.
Revenge.
He looked up at her and clenched the fabric of her gown between his fingers.
“How can you do that?”
“I can take away your pain. You’ll never be beaten or held down by men like those. I can mend your body so you never falter. I can let you crush and burn away anything and anyone who acts against you. All I ask is something in return.”
A voice deep in Noah’s consciousness screamed for him to run from this woman. The woman frowned and pushed him away, out of the warm embrace of her feathered wings and tender touch.
The madness encroached again as they parted.
"But if you prefer, I can leave you be. Alone in the cold, abandoned, and scared. Let the world swallow you whole, let it forget you like it has your family. It's your choice, my dear. To embrace the silence, accept that your family was nothing, or to be with me and forget your pain, your hunger, your strife. I can grant you purpose. I can grant you revenge."
Noah’s heart raced in a frenzy. His body felt warm, an almost forgotten feeling, and for the first time in the months since his abandonment, he felt strength. Noah did not understand what this entity wanted from him, but the hate he felt for those soldiers and, most of all, the Colonel roared to life in his veins.
“What’s your name?” he asked. He reached for her, but she stepped back with a diabolical grin, content to let him be overcome by the weight of this plane.
“An answer first, Noah. I do not give my name without a commitment.”
Despite the weight of feebleness, he managed a small nod. The woman chuckled and, before his eyes, turned to a cloud of red light. The humanoid shape lingered in the air for a moment before it touched his outstretched hand. The warmth that seeped into his body amplified into a burn, and he cried out in pain. He collapsed, rolling on the ground and scratching his body trying to quell the invisible flames. He was burning, and no matter how many clothes he ripped off and how much he thrashed, they continued to consume him. Blood streaked the pristine snow as he tore his skin with his nails, rolling and spasmed on the ground, shouting and crying.
Seconds passed, but to Noah, they felt like hours in agony. Soon, though, the pain faded. The scratches were gone, and the liminal horror all around no longer held his body in a vice. His mind was still, the overwhelming influence of this place no longer interested in him.
“Interesting,” the woman muttered in his mind, “you’re so young, and you have so much to learn. But do not worry for now. As you grow, you will come to understand our agreement.”
“What’s your name?” Noah asked again as he looked over his body. He struck himself and cut himself with his fingernails, but the wounds closed almost as soon as they appeared, and he felt nothing.
“My name is Eris.”