Chapter 5 Ezekial
My brother hasn’t returned home.
We agreed, when the day had ended, we would all reconvene at the house and Kane would debrief us.
I was hopeful he might even allow us access to the memory of it, just a chance to see her.
.. but my brother is a wary man—private—even with us.
His most trusted, the only people he’s ever let in.
I know a verbal recount is the best we can hope for.
While we sit in silence around the dining table, I try again to dig deeper into my memories.
Every day since I touched Jasmine’s rune, I’ve been clawing at the same fragment that surfaced—her on the ground, Prospero taking her away.
But it always slips from me, like frayed, burnt film; I can only catch the same few seconds before I’m yanked back into consciousness.
When I open my eyes, I glare at my phone on the table, jaw tight. The memory still refuses to come, taunting me with the same useless scrap.
And now it’s midnight. Kane’s still blocking us. He still isn’t here.
“That’s it, I’m ringing Kace.” Sai reaches into his pocket, but Julien places a calm hand on his arm.
“He will come. Have patience,” Julien says. Sai pauses, then pulls his arm away. “We knew this would be challenging for him,” he adds. “Give him time.”
“A challenge? For him?” Sai snaps, scowling at Julien. “He’s spent the entire day with her. Poor Kane, what a fucking challenge. What a martyr!”
Julien glances at me, silently asking for back-up. I lean over the table, closer to Sai. “I know you’re worried, Sai. About both of them.”
His icy gaze latches onto me and the softening of his scowl reveals his truth. Of course he’s worried—about whatever’s happened today, what Jasmine might’ve said, what Kane might’ve done. But he’s also worried about Kane.
We all are.
What if he meant what he said? What if he told Jasmine his suggestion? What if he’s actually… gone?
“Right, well, it’s been long enough; we should go find him.” Sai clicks his neck, cracks his fingers, readying himself to flit. “Fucker’s either in the Council building, the Pit or the realm. Who’s gonna check where—”
He appears—stumbles—into the room.
And a deep, immediate terror rushes through me. “Brother, what is it? What’s wrong?”
Kane is the strong one, the immovable one, the one person I can always rely upon to be stable, and he’s just fucking stumbled into the room. Spat out from the shadows like they’ve disowned him.
Kane doesn’t respond, but he remains standing, panting from exertion. Julien stares at me, his worry clear and intense—and Julien being worried is also never a good sign.
It’s Sai who moves first, cautiously making his way towards Kane.
“Hey, mate. We were just talking about you.” Sai lowers himself in an attempt to catch Kane’s gaze.
Head dropped, Kane ignores him. His shoulders are hunched, his stance tense, as he stares hard at the ground.
“We were worried about you.” No response. Sai looks warily at us, then tries again. “Where were you, mate?”
“The realm,” Kane rasps, voice hoarse, thick with remnants of the dark.
Sai slowly nods, letting him know we heard. “Yeah? How long for?”
Kane doesn’t answer, he just stands there, breathing, facing the floor, and the three of us share a terrified glance.
“She wouldn’t look at me,” Kane suddenly blurts, voice ending in a whisper. Then he raises his head and looks at us.
We all step back from what we see.
His skin is veined with darkness, the inky tendrils spreading like a living infection. Thick, jagged lines twist and weave, forming a chaotic spiderweb that sprawls across every inch of visible skin, as if the shadows have taken root inside him.
“He must have been there all day and night.” Julien studies Kane’s face as he speaks internally to Sai and me.
“Brother, is it speaking to you now?” I move closer, watching the lines of moving black tracing over his cheeks.
He nods, black eyes wide. “I couldn’t leave. She told me to go. It made me. But then I couldn’t leave.”
His head drops again.
“Hey, you’re out now, man. You’re here, with us.” Sai crouches again, but Kane won’t look at him. He turns to me. “What the fuck is this, Zeek? I’ve never seen him like this.”
“I have. Once before,” I assure him, still staring at my brother because I can’t look away.
It was terrifying the first time it happened—albeit, I was only a boy then, barely an adolescent. It’s still terrifying now.
I step a little closer. “I’m going to silence it, brother. Just for now. But you’ll have to let me in.”
Kane nods, no hesitation, and that alone makes my chest tighten. He hates when I go into his mind, hates letting me in. I can count on one hand the times he’s allowed it, and never like this.
The fact he’s just agreed so easily, so quietly… that terrifies me.
“Let me help.” Julien is already behind Kane, but as soon as his fingers touch my brother’s shoulders, the darkness latches onto him.
Julien doesn’t retreat; he clenches his teeth and pushes through, guiding Kane to the nearest chair crafted from our powers to ground him further. Even when the darkness creeps from Kane’s skin and up, sinking into Julien, crawling along his throat, grasping the edge of his jaw, he doesn’t let go.
Julien, besides my brother, is the most adept for this. He knows how to survive the dark because he’s done it longer than any of us. Julien was the first to enter the dark.
And right now, I can’t trust myself to touch my brother. Neither could Sai. We’d succumb, change into our alters, seek out what it wants, what’s ours... and Julien knows it. He’s made the hard decision for us.
Jaw clenched, Julien doesn’t step away until he’s certain Kane is fully with us, in this realm, seated in a physical object that is only here.
Only then does he retract his fingers, hissing from the ripping pain we all knew too well.
“You good, mate?” Sai moves towards Julien with no thought for the darkness that could infect him.
Julien holds up a hand, keeping Sai at bay. “Absolutely... wonderful.”
Sai’s lips tilt into a smirk as the inky strands disperse over Julien’s dark skin. When they’re fully gone, Sai pats him on the shoulder.
“Ready, brother?” I take the seat beside Kane, searching his face still dashed with harsh lines.
His jaw is clenched so hard the muscles spasm, and his eyes are tightly shut. He’s currently in battle; fighting the darkness.
Then his wall drops.
Being inside Kane’s mind is like wading through thick tar—heavy, clinging, suffocating. There’s no clear path, only a maze of chaos and uncertainty. Walls rise at every turn, towering and impenetrable, confining me to the fragments he lets me see.
Which isn’t much.
Once inside, my presence—my light—forces the darkness to recoil, pulling inward, clearing just enough of the chaos to stabilise him.
When I’m certain Kane’s dark voice has quietened, retreating back into the deepest recesses of his mind, I withdraw.
I hate melding with my brother’s mind, with any of my unit’s minds, but some days it’s a grim necessity. The fear that they might one day be swallowed by the dark completely, knowing it’s almost impossible to come back from, haunts me.
My light doesn’t keep me safe either. My darkness is always looking for an opening. Whether it’s Kane or one of the others, someone’s always there to pull me back, just as I’ve done for them.
But lately, the dark in me feels… closer.
“So, it was that bad?” Sai settles into the seat beside Kane, a small smile in place.
Kane’s too exhausted to respond, providing a half-hearted splutter of sound.
Drinks appear before us, then Julien appears perched on the edge of the table next to Sai, taking a slow sip from his wine glass.
Kane reaches for the glass of whiskey. As he lifts it, I study the grey lines marring his hand and wrist—they lasted days last time.
“I couldn’t control it,” he says, then downs the contents.
No sooner has he set the empty glass on the table than it’s filled, and the bottle joins it. He picks it up—the bottle—and puts it to his lips.
“The dark was desperate to please her, screaming at me to do anything she said.” He tilts his head back, swallowing twice before putting it down. “I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t control it.”
Julien’s gaze meets mine. “He cannot see her again. Not like this.”
I nod once. “I’ll call Kacey, cancel tomorrow—”
“No, I have to—”
“Are you listening to yourself, Kane?” The volume of my voice and intensity of my stare silences him. “What if she says it again? Commands you to go? You’ve barely made it back to us.”
“You weren’t there.” Kane shakes his head, loose strands of inky hair falling over his eyes. “You didn’t see her.”
Kane’s words are accompanied by a brief image. An image of her—vivid, fractured, wrong—and a wave of unrelenting dread hits us.
Sai’s markings blaze, then pulse out of rhythm.
The shadows in the corners start to swell.
“That’s what we’ve done to her?” The words tear out of Sai.
Julien’s eyes are closed, scrunched shut, as he downs his drink.
I attempt to remain composed, but the darkness… it latches onto that singular image. The harsh lines of her beautiful face emphasised by shadows, the glow which lit her skin diminished, her light—gone.
The darkness flares to life.
Go to her. Go. Help her.
I can’t. I’m not in control. I can’t.
I clench my knuckles beneath the table, focus on the sensation, count my racing heartbeats.
“She’s sick,” Kane murmurs, transfixed by his thoughts, completely unaware of how much that brief memory has affected us. “I didn’t teach her how to control it. She doesn’t know she can. It’s infecting her. Killing her. I’m killing her.”
“Barrier, Zeek.” Sai doesn’t look up as he forces the words out. “Now.”
No! Go to her. Go. We can help her. You know we can. Go. Be with her.
I’m standing.
They all track my movements as the shadows sweep outwards, towards me. The second they touch me I’ll be gone and—