Page 20 of Above
I wouldn’t cry. I couldn’t cry.
Slowly, I entered the icy cold well of essence, descending the ramp with as much dignity as I could muster. Though I knew what the essence would do, I was not positive what fears I would experience and how exactly I would need to face them. Every step forward brought me deeper. Closer to the dread below.
When my shoulders were covered, I took one final breath in and leapt forward, the thick liquid practically sucking me under. Squeezing my eyes shut, I welcomed the stars and their trials. I was walking away with shadow magic either way.
“Hello, Nova Tershetta.”
The voice was unsettling. Or was it many voices? A collective hiss that rattled my bones and made my skin itch.
“We are many, but we are one. Everything special about you comes from us, dear one. You are made by our will and you will be unmade just the same.”
At that point, I was completely unaware of my body or my surroundings. I felt like I was a floating soul, my consciousness exploring the universe amongst the stars as they spoke to me. Fear evaded me, though I was surely disconcerted. It was not darkness that surrounded me now, but pure light.
“Tell us, Nova Tershetta, where does your darkness lie?”
“Nova?” The sound of Celeste’s voice had my soul crashing back down into my body. All at once I was in my childhood home, daylight streaming through the windows of the kitchen. And there was my sister. On the floor. Bleeding. Dying. Crying. Screaming. “Nova!”
I tried to run to her, but I never got closer, no matter how badly my chest burned and how heavy my breaths came.
“Nova, please, stop! Stop killing me!” Celeste’s screams became gurgles just as black liquid—haya—poured out of her mouth. Her eyes. Her ears. Her nose. It drowned her.
“Do you know how much she despises you? How deeply her distaste for your kind runs? Your sister has no love for us. But for you she has hatred.”
Just then, Celeste stilled. Suddenly, she was upright, her beautiful, stormy eyes on me.
“You have done nothing but ruin our lives for twenty-five years. Every single one of our hardships are your fault. If we could kill you ourselves we would. You are a monster!” Her screams echoed off the kitchen ceiling, signaling a kind of emptiness that did not exist in the real world. The knowledge that this was all fake, a hoax, didn’t stop me from falling to my knees and screaming into the void that abruptly wrapped around me.
“We see who you are.”
A line began to form, each man and woman I had once robbed or attacked or used staring at me with dead eyes. A lineup of my every sin.
“You’re a monster, aren’t you?”
“Please,” Dad’s voice was broken as he begged. He was on the ground, his chair nowhere to be seen, his hands cupping Mama’s bruised, bloody, and lifeless face. “Why did you take her from me, Nova?”
“Or are you worse? Perhaps you are weak.”
All three of my family members appeared right in front of me, their skin sagging and spotted, wrinkled with age. Their bones frail and their mouths trembling.
“Goodbye, Nova.” Their voices mingled, each of them collapsing. I screamed and shrieked. I begged and pleaded. I watched my family die. Again and again, the stars showed me their passing. Faster each time.
“No, we see you for what you are above all else.”
“And what is that?” I asked them, my knees giving out. I did not hit hard ground though, instead, I floated. Weightless as I seemed to twist and turn.
“You, Nova Tershetta, are a catalyst.”
My head broke the surface, my feet suddenly finding solid rock beneath. I gasped, my lungs feeling as if they might burst. Before me crouched Iblis Altair, his head cocked to the side and his nose scrunched.
“Four minutes and two seconds,” he stated plainly.
My eyes widened, realization hitting me.
I completed the shadow ritual.
Far quicker than I had entered, I began to exit the well, propelling myself forward with adrenaline as the horrifying images appeared beneath my lids with each blink.
Across my skin, the essence of the stars beaded and dripped, cascading down my body. But, just like the text had warned, a burning commenced. Daring to peek down, I watched as some of the liquid began to smoke and sizzle on my arm, not moving, but instead seeping into me as it boiled. It went from glowing silver to pitch black, painting my skin in swirls and wisps that mirrored the shadows of smoke in the sky.
