Page 31 of Bought By the Void Walker
I run.
The path I memorized is useless now. Hallways exist in segments, forcing me to jump across sections of nothing. A door opens onto the same room I just left. Another leads to a memory, my sister painting, her hands covered in oils that will never dry. I slam it shut before the grief drowns me.
The bond guides me more than architecture. I follow that failing pulse through passages that shouldn't connect, up stairs that go down, through a garden where the flowers scream in colors that make my teeth ache.
I'm halfway through what used to be the dining hall when gravity reverses.
I fall upward, catching a chandelier that's somehow still attached to what's now the floor above me. My shoulders scream as my weight yanks them. Below, or maybe above, a hole opens onto void. Not darkness. Void. The absence of existence itself.
I swing, release, grab a floating table. It holds long enough for me to push off toward a doorway that's sideways but leads somewhere real. I land hard, roll, keep running.
The bond flickers again. Weaker. If it fails completely, I'll never find him in this collapsing maze.
Three more reality tears. Two gravity shifts. One moment where I exist in four places simultaneously before snapping back together. Then I'm at his chambers, or what's left of them.
The door is gone. The wall is gone. Half the room crystallized when the Collector touched it, frozen in impossible patterns that hurt to perceive. The other half is shadow and stone and dried blood.
Mikaere slumps against the far wall, three arms trying to hold his severed fourth. The crystalline spear still juts from his shoulder, its edges refracting light that doesn't exist. Golden liquid, not blood but something more fundamental, pools beneath him.
Päivi is everywhere and nowhere. Pages scattered across the floor, some burning with cold fire, others frozen mid-flight. I see fragments of her form trying to coalesce: an arm made of index cards, eyes formed from marginalia, a mouth of curved text speaking in dead languages.
And Nezavek.
He's not even a he anymore. Just shadow pooled on stone, occasionally trying to rise into shape before collapsing back into darkness. Like smoke trying to remember how to be solid.
"No." I drop to my knees beside the shadow pool, plunge my hands into it. They pass through, finding nothing. "No, you don't get to do this."
The shadow doesn't respond. Can't respond. There's barely enough consciousness left to maintain this much form.
I try again, scooping at darkness that won't be held. My hands come away empty, cold, useless.
Think. Think, soldier.
The bond. The marks.
I tear off my shirt, not caring that Mikaere can see, that Päivi's scattered pages might be watching. The silver-black marks from our encounter trace patterns across my skin: beautiful, delicate, claiming. They pulse faintly, responding to his proximity even as he dissolves.
I press my marked skin against the shadow pool.
The cold burns worse than fire, worse than acid, worse than the time I caught a plasma blade with my bare hand. But the shadows respond. They cling to the marks, finding purchase on my skin.
I spread myself flat against the darkness, every inch of marked skin a lifeline. "You don't get to leave me. Not after everything. I haven't given you permission to die."
The shadows shiver. A flutter of consciousness, confused, fading, but aware.
I push harder, not with my body but with everything else. My will. My rage. My need. The marks heat up, burning silver trails across my skin as I pour myself into them.
"I know you can hear me," I tell the darkness. "I know you're in there. Stop being dramatic and pull yourself together."
A tendril of shadow wraps weakly around my wrist. Progress.
I drag more of the darkness against me, willing it solid. It resists, tries to disperse, but the marks won't let it. They hold the shadows like anchors hold ships, keeping them from drifting into nothing.
He's trying to form. I can feel it, the monumental effort of consciousness trying to remember shape. But there's not enough energy. He spent everything sending me away, protecting me from a fight I should have shared.
I make a decision that might kill us both.
The bond has been one-sided, him feeling me but not the reverse. A door I've kept locked because opening it means admitting things I'm not ready to face. But he's dying, and my pride isn't worth his existence.
