Chapter 44
Chapter
Forty-Four
The Darkest Night
Miya
When Miya opened her eyes, there was only darkness. Her physical form was absent, yet she knew she was there—a distinct, unified core, invisible but present. She wondered if this was what the afterlife was like and if there was any god that ruled the plane where spirits resided.
“If there is a god, he is cruel. He has condemned us to a fate we cannot escape. We are born to die, then reborn again—doomed to repeat the same mistakes, to suffer the same loss. We are no different than the machines we ourselves have made. Like clocks, we spin around the same axis without alternative, infinitely, as though to turn in circles is the very purpose for which we were made. And all the while the world passes us by. We erode, and yet we continue to tick and tick and tick until the axis itself grows weary of our burdens, unhinges, and finally, we break.”
The voice was impossible to locate; it was directionless, everywhere and yet nowhere all at once. She wondered if the entity could read her mind—if thinking and speaking were the same in this realm.
“Are you the thing that calls itself Abaddon?” her words echoed through the dark vacuum. He sounded weak, worn down.
“Abaddon.” He repeated the name as though it was vaguely familiar. “ Yes...and no.”
“Are you a piece of him?”
“Yes...” The voice sounded closer. “Mirek…I was...Mirek.”
He sounded breathless, wounded. “Mirek. And before that?”
“And before that…something else. That is why we are Abaddon.”
There was a brush of dry, icy air like he’d moved beside her. He too had no physical form, but she was aware of being in his territory. He was surprisingly mellow, unlike the spirit she’d encountered earlier. Perhaps he was willing to talk. Even a monster would seize the opportunity to be understood.
“Who were the others?”
“The First was before…the beginning…the last…Mirek.”
“Will you tell me about the First?”
“You will meet him if you can find your way. But I am not here to tell his story.”
“Then whose story are you here to tell?”
“The story of...Mirek.”
The name burned like a hot coal on flesh. Miya felt herself inside his mind—searching, digging, grasping for something to hold on to. A moment, a memory—anything.
“Mirek.”
This spirit—Kai’s tormenter—she was compelled to become one with him, to understand him. The boundaries of flesh and spirit, dark and light, blurred, until Miya and Mirek were no longer separate. Whether it was his voice or her own—she couldn’t tell.