Page 3 of Ecliptic

I wished I could give more than comforting words and scratches beneath their beaks, but it was all I had to offer.

Suddenly, the creatures unfurled their feathers and squawked in unison as if something had startled them. Their eyes glistened with fear as their wings snapped in a flurry, blowing my hair and nightgown around my body.

Had the dark figure followed me?

Whatever it was, I felt it now, too, rushing at me like an avalanche. I spun to see what came at me with a vengeance, but my eyes were blinded by a light that engulfed me like the birth of the sun. The luminosity pierced my skin and seeped into my every pore with a frigid intensity that was so cold, it burned.

And I screamed as the Light consumed me whole.

My screams echoed through a tunnel of time as I staggered back to the present and swayed on my feet.

“Ah, there she is,” came the voice of a man whose crimson eyes were twin harbingers of death. “Thought I lost you there for a moment. I was holding your body but nothing more. Where did you go?”

“I remember you,” I said, reeling as my childhood nightmare faded.

Had I astral traveled to my past? It was the only explanation for why I remembered. And I rememberedeverything. They weren’t delusions at all, not even nightmares. They were memories of my earliest astral projecting.

I walked between worlds before I ever possessed the power of the Alcreon Light. It was during one of my projections when the Light found me. Had it known I wasother?Known I wasn’t from Luneth and that it would be safe in a world far from Erovos’ reach?

My mind tumbled as I tried to remember how I ended up by the Dark Spirit’s side.

I’d been stolen away.

No.

I’d come here willingly.

“My little light,” he said as his thumb stroked the back of my hand. “I told you it wouldn’t be long until you were mine.”

2

Erovos' hand was frigid and smooth, like glass fired from the first strokes of lightning upon the sands of time. My fingers slid further into his grasp as he yanked me closer.

“Where did you go?” he asked again, each drag of his gaze leaching the warmth from my skin.

“The past,” I whispered, withdrawing my hand as if I’d been burned.

“Ah,” he smiled, revealing his sharp teeth. “So your talents aren’t to be exaggerated.”

I tore my eyes away from his threatening stare, and when my surroundings came into view, horror punched up my throat. I hadn’t gone anywhere. Only a second had passed, yet it had been over fifteen years.

I was standing in the same barren landscape as my childhood memory, only now, the once strong and magnificent tree stood twisted in tragedy. Its deformed branches were coal black, bare, and sharp, sagging with an indiscernible weight. It would have been unrecognizable if it weren’t for the distinct hollow through its trunk.

“What did you do?” I seethed, mourning the forest that wasnow steeped in death and despair. The bird had tried to warn me all those years ago, but was it too late? WasItoo late? “The creatures that lived here. What happened to them?”

He ignored my question, curiosity engulfing his face. “Where in the past did you go?”

“I answered one of your questions. Now answer one of mine,” I demanded.

“Oh, the starwings?” he asked with a sinister smile. “I haven’t seen one in quite some time. Extinct, I suspect.”

A choked sob caught in my throat as thorns pierced my heart.

“Where in the past did you go?” he asked again, this time with less patience.

“Here,” I ground out, despite the devastation wracking me from the inside out.

“Of course,” Erovos said, his ever-shifting cloak of darkness obscuring his pale face and body. “This tree has called to you many times.”

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