Chapter 6 Nebulous
NEBULOUS
Kiton Blackfall’s nightmare was always the same.
Screams and cries floated to them from the crackling radio on the ship. The ever-present moon flickered in the distance like the dying embers of a fire—
Before it imploded, scattering rock and moondust in the darkness of their galaxy.
From their seat among the Stars in their spaceship, Kiton watched his home planet explode. Vesperin stood by his side—always.
The bluish-purple surface of the planet was dotted with darkness. Its time had come to an end.
Like all things, even a planet must die.
Clouds of nebulous gas rippled as the planet shook, then shattered, exploding outward with chunks of debris, hurtling through space, along with a million lost lives and dreams.
Their ship was far enough away that it didn’t hit them immediately.
"Kiton." Rin’s voice was tinged with fear and such deep sadness, his heart broke.
He had saved her from so much in this life—found her when she was a slave, forced to mine minerals in the deep caves of their home planet, Veltryss.
As the son of a baron, Kit was not lacking in jewels and coin; he had stolen enough from his father to buy Rin and her parents’ freedom.
Given her parents a safe place to stay, while he and Rin had been forced to hide from his father’s wrath.
Leading them to their lonesome life in the Stars as lowly transport merchants.
But Kit did not think he could save her from this.
This was it. Death.
At least he knew it would not be the end.
Please, he prayed, let it be quick for her. Let it be like a flash. Let her be gone before she can feel it. Don’t let her suffer this end.
Not like she had in their last life. Two lives they had spent together. And it seemed both would come to a swift end.
The large, domed window looking out into the expanse of their galaxy vibrated with the force of the distant, exploding planet. Colors shifted over the side of Rin’s face and turned her brown hair into a mass of deep purples and blues and greens. Her lower lip trembled.
Kit grabbed her, holding her fiercely to his body and pressing her face into his chest. The tight black suits they both wore kept their skin covered.
He wanted to touch her—more than anything in these last moments.
Wanted to feel her skin against his. The softness of it.
Trace the shape of her one last time. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to. Their time was slipping away.
He settled for holding her. Her small body quaked with sobs against him.
"Kit," Rin cried, "I don’t want to go to the Stars yet. My parents—" She tried to turn and look behind her at the window, but he only held her tighter.
"Don’t look," Kit said. "Don’t look."
He would look for both of them. She didn’t need to see. Didn’t need her last memories to be clouded with fear.
Debris hurtled through the galaxy, the mushroom-like blast of black, red, and lifeless grey spreading outward—toward them.
Lights flashed over his face, reflected in his eyes as he thought of their last life together.
Another tragedy, another life where she had been taken far too soon.
He blinked, just once, as a tear escaped, falling from his lash line and trickling down his cheek.
Unshed tears clung to his lashes, and he didn’t want them to fall, didn’t want to feel such anguish when his time was coming to an end in this life.
But it was so hard, now that he was faced with death.
"Kit, Kit, I love you. Please—" Rin sobbed against him, each piercing, anguished cry like a sick punch to his gut.
"It’ll be okay," Kit lied, holding her head to his chest with a firm, unyielding hand. "We’ll be okay," he lied, again and again, to her.
The Stars beckoned, winking at him as they wrapped around their ship like a mother embracing a lost child. His limbs started to shake. Oh god. He was going to die. He couldn’t stop it. Nothing could stop it.
A pit opened up in his stomach, an endless, yawning mass of regret and sadness, and a fear so terrifying it was hard to put into words.
They were going to die.
Their ship started to rattle. The emergency lights flared red with warning, but then, they flicked off, casting them into a deep darkness.
Kit’s skin boiled beneath his suit as sweat broke across his body. His chest ached; he couldn’t get a deep breath.
The oxygen valves must’ve been hit.
The shaking of the ship was so violent that his teeth rattled in his skull, the air vibrated around him, and his lungs seized, sweat dripping down his spine.
Rin whimpered, and Kit pressed his face into her hair, blocking out everything but her as it all—
Ended.
Throughout it all, Kit held Rin and never let her go. Even when their ship exploded into hunks of metal and their bodies were ripped outward into the cold, dark sphere of space.
Floating, frozen, lifeless.
Kiton clawed his way free from his nightmare, a strangled sob lingering on his lips in the darkness of the living room. The ceiling fan whirred slightly, sending cool breezes down on him, where he rested awkwardly on the large couch, his head at a painful angle, his arm tingling with numbness.
His fingers flexed, brushing over something cool and soft.
Rin’s hair twined around his fingers, her head resting against his chest.
The anxious fear left him in a heavy breath. He was okay. He was alright.
Breathing, living.
With her.
He released a low, shuddering exhale as he repeated his mental affirmations in a robotic loop, a false sense of peace against the existential, consuming...
Dread.
Eating him up from the inside out.
Two lives together, not including this one, and it was always that nightmare that haunted Kit. The second life. The second end.
A time when he had been able to know her for years as they hid from his father on their merchant ship in the Stars. It had been wonderful until the slow radiation consuming their planet had grown to be too much.
Everything died. Everything.
Forced to watch as their home, Veltryss, exploded, taking them with it.
In this life, when Kit and Rin had been younger, too young to fully understand the weight of their past lives—the trauma of it—she would often console him when he woke up from one of his nightmares.
They used to build pillow forts in the same living room that he was now holding her in.
Sleepovers under the watchful eyes of his parents, who Kit thought were merely playing their dutiful role to make sure the young pair of Soulbonds behaved.
But it wasn’t until he was about fourteen, and she eleven, that he had understood what his parents had been doing to her.
When he would wake up with a dry mouth and pounding head, he would find her sleeping bag cold and empty.
Later, he’d find her in the kitchen, eyes lifeless as she sat in kitten pajamas.
As if someone had dropped her there, left her there. And they had.
His parents had been drugging them, slipping pills into their dinner. All because his Soulbond, a girl he had been so blessed to find at such an early age, was an Aetherborn.
Kit hated them. More than he had ever hated anything before.
His fingers curled tighter around her as she slept, nestled on his chest.
The news was on the television, the volume muted.
He read the words on the screen. A female newscaster spoke into a mic, the green screen behind her projecting images of Lunar City: darkness, towering high-rises, unregulated Nova Zones, and no Hunter’s Guild.
The police in Lunar City were shitty. They couldn’t keep up with normal crime, let alone Rogue attacks.
The flashing headline at the bottom of the screen read: Illegal arms trade in Lunar City headed by Noctis leader Rhyden Valkar. Infusing Nova into weapons—smart or dangerous?
Kit scoffed lowly, half-lidded eyes focusing on the hypnotizing, spinning ceiling fan above.
His nightmare still clung to him, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. But he didn’t want to wake Rin up.
After they had left the hospital, he had forced her onto the couch, telling her not to move as he brought her blankets, pillows, food, and some fantasy book she had been reading about a stolen princess, with the pages dog-eared like she loved to do.
Her lips were slightly parted, each soft breath rustling her white hair. She always looked so sweet in sleep, like the girl she had been before—before her parents had died and his parents had wiped her memories. But even before all of that, she had been haunted.
She couldn’t console him now; she didn’t remember.
Rin sighed in sleep, snuggling closer to him. The blanket had slipped off her hip, pooling to the floor, and the pale flesh on her legs was pebbled with chill.
Slowly, Kit sat up, careful not to jostle her. He gathered her into his arms, lips tugging downward at how light she was. The blanket was bundled around her as he carried her, her cheek pillowed on his chest—as if even in sleep, she searched for him. It was comforting.
For all Lucien told Kit that she still knew, on some intrinsic level, who they were to her, it was still nice to see her respond to him—to realize she hadn’t forgotten. Her mind may have, but her body had not.
He walked her to her room, the socks on his feet padding his steps up the stairs.
He left the television on. The red eyes of the Noctis leader from the blurry photo on the screen burned a hole in the back of Kit’s head.
In Rin’s room, the white canopy fluttered above her bed, and many plush rugs were scattered over the floor. She hated the cold—always had, even in their other lives. Kit smiled.
As he placed her on her bed, he spied a gilded photo frame on her bedside table, right by a lamp with a soft, lacy shade, and a tube of cherry lip balm.