i:

Kanna kept her body still, listening for anything that would give her a warning as to what she had woken to but there was only silence.

A remarkable silence. There was no shuffle of feet, no sound of breath, and no low thrum of intention rattling against her bones.

Wherever she was, it shouldn’t exist.

The chill on her skin registered, colder where her back lay against rough stone. She opened her eyes, slowly at first, then snapped them open.

Above her was once a dome, the supporting metalwork criss-crossing against an ink black sky glutted with pin-pricks of light. Whatever roof had once been was mostly gone. Panels were missing, and the rest was cracked glass, the fractures running between the stars like an ill conceived constellation map. Kanna had often turned to the sky, spent entire nights watching and waiting for the sun to rise, but there was not a single beacon above that she could recognize.

Tearing her eyes away, she rose and attempted to get her bearings. The windows of the place were long gone, their arched frames open to the vast nothingness of the barren landscape. She took in the grey walls of the cavernous room, how they glinted in the star light as only Ilazkin stone could.

They reminded her of the temple she had sheltered in when she first woke. With her only thought on survival, she’d wandered, directionless, deeper into Ilazki. She had hunched against the tearing winds that drove the cold deep into her bones until she reached a place where the wind no longer howled. There, she had found the once sacred ruin.

It was that temple, but it wasn’t at the same time.

With a start, she realized she was dressed in white. She ran her hand along the sleeve of the long jacket, upwards to the shoulders, her fingers skimming over the intricate embroidery.

The weight of it was unbearable. She yanked at the cloying jacket, struggling to free herself. It tangled against her body, clinging to her like another skin. When she finally ripped herself from it she tripped, her knees scraping against the hard stone.

Kanna shut her eyes, curling her fingers against the rough ground as the echoes of her struggle subsided. She could feel the pain in her knees, the cold of the stones, but something was wrong.

She breathed deep, filling her lungs. The Ilazkin air was cold and crisp as she remembered it, but her breath fogged in the cold only because it should, because it once had. She pressed her hand to her chest and her lungs expanded, but she couldn’t feel the air.

Deeper inside of her still, there was a hollow where the darkness lived. The clawed thing inside of her was gone, leaving behind an empty chamber.

It wasn’t inside of her. It was everywhere.

Before she could figure out what that could mean, the lilting echo of a laugh reached her ears.

“Hello?” she called, tentative at first, as she rose to her feet.

The laugh rang out again, sharp and bitter and close.

Kanna turned, trying to trace the source of the sound. It was both familiar and foreign. Like the rest of this place, it was a part of something she remembered, but not the whole of it.

The skitter of rock outside set her feet in motion. She ran toward the sound, not wanting to be alone in this place again.

As she crossed the threshold of the temple she found herself in the middle of a vast frozen field and she slipped, spinning her arms to keep her balance. Beneath the thick sheet where she stood plumes of white were frozen under the clear surface, like gasps of air suspended in time. The wind picked up, blowing shards of ice against her skin.

She needed to retreat.

Kanna turned around, but the temple was gone.

ii:

When Haru woke, there was light. He could feel it against his body but it was different, distant and somewhat alive. The sound of birdsong reached his ears but it was muffled and discordant, like a recording of someone’s impression of birds. Blades of grass brushed between his fingers, his sleeping mat absent. With a surge he rolled to his feet and reached for the knives at his side.

He stood ready, but alone.

Haru relaxed his grip on his knives as he turned, taking in the smattering of trees within the grove and the smooth white path that wound between them. He recognized it, or something like it. It was a facsimile of the south gardens near the Tower, but blurred and off-kilter. The sound was wrong, for one. There were no birds so deep in the city, and the spindly grey tree that had fallen across the path before he’d ever arrived at the Tower was rooted, its blossoms blood red.

He was off the main path, down what should have been the cobbled offshoots of the garden. Further along it should become wild, the walkway disappearing as the garden twisted east.

He sheathed his knives. He was in the Neither. Which meant she was here. It was Kanna’s place, after all.

Just before he took a step onto the path to head east, the ghostlight that had followed him from the Tower zipped past his shoulder and ahead. It stopped before disappearing from his sight and hovered as if waiting for him.

When he took a step, it danced forward, but never out of his sight.

As he moved further along, the area became more familiar, shifting closer to its known counterpart. Time passed with every step and the path began showing the wear of neglect. Grass grew and died in the cracks that formed in the white walkway, and the light began to dim, the overcast grey of the sky sliding into a fogged haze.

A cold wind blew across his skin from somewhere else, calling him. He shut his eyes, breathing it in and hoping it would bring him closer to where he needed to be.

When he opened his eyes, the sky was dark. The ghostlight was still with him, now circling a statue in the center of the path. It wasn’t anything he had seen before. It was partially ruined, the arm broken off, the base fractured. The face of it was lit by the glimmering ghostlight, which illuminated the crack that ran from the temple, the fissures in the stone splintering down the body.

The face was Kanna’s. He moved closer, reaching out to it. As his fingers brushed the cold statue it crumbled beneath his touch.

The pieces fell in a cascade at his feet. He clenched his fist, his thumb running over the scar between his thumb and forefinger in an attempt to resist the urge to gather the pieces and try to force it back together. He could neither scream nor fight, not here, not like this. He could only move and witness.

There was nothing else anymore. Just an endless grey nothingness stretching out around him, illuminated only by the single glimmering light.

He shut his eyes again, taking a steadying breath to calm himself and focus. He needed to think of something that would resonate with her, a moment that would scar.

He let out his breath, trying not to let it shake, and stepped blind into the void.