Skye is dead.
How she perished is a mystery. All she knows is that she is trapped in After, a makeshift city of souls surrounded by infinite darkness and terrifying monsters that tear ghosts apart.
But while all other ghosts accept the eternity of...
I woke slowly. Before I opened my eyes, I imagined myself in bed, tucked under soft sheets with morning sunlight streaming through sheer white curtains. I nuzzled against Vale sleeping next to me, not yet ready to leave the comfort of her presence and face the day.
Then a blind monster screamed far away. I gasped awake amongst rubble. With a groan, I shoved a sheet of corrugated metal off of me and had to squint at the sudden brightness of the half-sun's light. I raised my trembling hands to my face-one of them pale, the other an unearthly shimmering white, and watched as they reformed from ashes. "I'm back..." I said to myself.
A crumpled body lay motionless beside me. I slumped across Vale, wrapping my arms around her. Of course, she didn't stir. Catatonic ghosts never did. A sigh escaped my lips as I traced the soft curve of her cheek with the back of my hand. "I'll be right back," I told her. I left Vale to rest and followed the pulse in the air.
It took several heaving armfuls of rubble, but I finally uncovered the severed half of the sun. "Hey there," I whispered to it. "Rise and shine." Then I lay my hand on the crystal.
Red light filled the city.
The pain ebbed as it did last time, but the blindness persisted. For a few terrifying moments, I believed that I'd inadvertently annihilated After's last hope and had plunged us all into darkness once more-just like Blackburne. Eventually, my eyes adjusted to the change in light with a twinge.
And my heart rose in my chest.
The black void above After had been wholly burnt away like paper eaten by flames, and I stood mesmerized at what it left in its wake.
Far above me, in the purple sky swam countless red stars. Perhaps those, too, were suns lighting other astral planes. It was as if we were amid a spiraling galaxy that After was the beating heart of.
"Hello, Albrecht," I told them all.
The largest and closest star of all rotated slowly directly above where I stood amongst smoking rubble. Now whole, After's thriving sun-inherited from its predecessor, Aḫ-ḫur-radiated warmth and expelled heaping flashes of white lightning as if it was celebrating. Red light poured from it, illuminating everything and casting long, stark shadows of the surrounding ruins.
The night had finally ended for After. Now we were all privy to a never-ending dawn.
A distant roar made all the skyscrapers shake. The ground quaked as something massive made its way to my location.
Fine.
Let Blackburne come.
I would be here, waiting for him. But first, I needed one last thing. Something hissed from a barely standing building not too far away from me. My spear-Crow's spear-lay ready and within arm's reach. But I ignored the weapon and made my way to the shadows watching me.
I needed my rage.
The hissing and chattering from the line of shadows increased as I approached their hide-out. Then it fell silent. The sea of monsters parted, allowing a single shadow to break from the ranks and step forward.
It was her again, the one shadow that had hunted me since my arrival in the afterlife. My shadow. My other half.
I walked as if stepping on broken glass toward the monster that braved the sunlight and slowly advanced on me.
We met in the middle of the field of rubble, and I took care to avoid meeting her eyes for the moment. She pulled back her lips at me and growled-her face, my own.
"Hi," I said to her. The other shadows had all gone deathly silent as they observed the two of us. My healed heart pounded against my ribs as if trying to escape my chest.
She hissed back.
"I'm sorry for stabbing you in the face and kicking you into an abyss," I continued. "Friends?"
She growled at me again, but she sat back on her haunches, waiting. Already, her skin began to burn in the sunlight, but she didn't bolt. A strange anticipation filled my body, as well. Finally, I looked her in the eyes, and let my body go stiff. The shadow lunged at me with all the voracity of a long-starved dog. Fangs sank into my chest. Her claws burrowed into my flesh. Pain I'd been a stranger filled every dark corner of the empty void that was my spectral body-white-hot and visceral. My god, it was even more agonizing than when I'd awoken both halves of the sun.
Just like the sun, two became one.
I saw white. Then red. Then black. Then everything became a kaleidoscope of colors and stars.
And then I felt nothing but fire.
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But I'm not dead yet So watch me burn Go on trying, lying, you're so sure I may be broken But I'm not done I'll go on fighting, while there's breath in my lungs 'Cause I'm not dead yet No, I'm not dead yet
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