The Dark Between Dreams | ✔️

Chapter 3 🔻 Into the Light

Getting out of the city had been way easier than I thought it would be. The hollow guards rolled their eyes at me and lifted the gate just high enough for me to creep under. To them, I was just another crazy scavenger off to scrounge the Dark and its monsters—off to face death.

And death surrounded me in the form of humming blackness as the enormous gate slammed shut behind me with a morbid finality. I was keen on leaving this miserable place. I wanted to go back home—my home—where things would hopefully make more sense. I shuffled through sand, my flashlight illuminating my path. Every few steps I took, something would hiss or squeal from the darkness beyond the reach of my light. I'd aim my flashlight in time to see a shadowy figure slither away.

I quickened my pace.

Some innate compulsion drove me deeper into the Dark. I glanced back at the receding silhouette of After and said my silent goodbyes to Webb and Vale and the other red blade-wielding weirdos of After. It'd been...interesting, but I hoped I'd never see them all again.

Something flapped through the air above me, and I jumped at the sudden cawing of a crow. I froze in place until the unseen bird and its cries faded from earshot.

My heartbeat pounded in my ears, drowning out the wind. I shut my eyes and tried to manifest that feeling in my chest again when I'd last called for the Light.

Something shrieked a few feet away from me. This time, it wasn't a crow.

Eyeshine flashed in the dark. When I aimed my flashlight, I glimpsed a grinning human face with too many eyes.

I ran then. I stifled the memory of claws raking flesh and coldness seeping from my body instead of blood.

My pulse pounded in my ears.

Faster. Faster.

Scurrying footsteps chased me. I willed my legs faster and kept sifting through the void inside me, searching for a spark of Light. It had to be in there somewhere...

I cried out when something brushed against me.

Faster. Faster. Faster!

The sound of hissing was everywhere. I searched my soul like I was a drowning person desperately clawing for the water's surface. In my head, I screamed for the Light, commanding it to appear before me.

That heat filled my chest. Then it filled my vision—beautiful, blinding white Light.

The shadow squealed again. A fingered limb reached from behind me over my shoulder. Its broken fingernails scraped against my face, almost caressing it.

With a scream, I hurled myself into the portal I'd summoned.

I stumbled into a hallway.

I stood there while my eyes adjusted, and my pulse slowed to a stop altogether. Except for the portal I'd come through, it was dark. Not as dark as...the Dark, just a comforting dimness. I clicked my flashlight off to save the lux crystal charging it. With suspended breath, I tiptoed across the floorboards, my booted feet making no sound.

I passed a mirror on the wall and gasped. No one stared back at me from inside it. I had no reflection. I grimaced and turned away from the mirror. I was in someone's apartment, a living room. None of the furniture matched, all having been reclaimed from garage sales or street curbs. Wilting floral arrangements and cards expressing condolences were strewn about and photos of happy Korean family members watched me from shelves amongst a collection of little porcelain frogs that I couldn't help smiling at. All the minute details...all so familiar in a way that made my lifeless heart ache.