Epilogue The Fathoms
EPILOGUE
THE FATHOMS
Death is cold.
An icy river unspools from endless darkness, crystalline waters splashing onto a checkered shoreline.
Black-and-white marble, pristine and glistening, juts off in seven different directions—seven different paths—but I stand here not knowing where to turn.
Which to choose. I can’t even remember my name, although…
I remember something of warmth. Of life.
A golden glow. A silvered cord. I should find that again. I should stop shivering.
A sheer white dress does little to protect me from the cold, my feet bared to frigid puddles along the path. I need shelter. Fast. But I’m already dead—that much I can recall, the breaking of bone, of life fleeing, of someone roaring in pain—what can frostbite do to me now?
Thunder rumbles overhead, and I glance up with chattering teeth and frozen lashes. Heavy clouds hang low in starless skies, but they do not spill rain, and they do not streak lightning. Rather, they cry diamond tears, and they wail a ghastly song.
Iridescent gemstones pelt my skin in the sudden downpour, somehow bruising my flesh, leaving me no time to think.
No time to contemplate my past or my future.
I race to the left, tripping over myself as I head straight into winter-white woods.
In seconds, the atmosphere changes. As if I’m running not through the Fathoms at all, but through the pages of a storybook.
Snow tumbles thick over the ground now, disguising the remaining checkered floor, while fir trees crowd the new landscape. Gingerbread cottages line the horizon, dappling the world with browns and reds and greens. My toes scrunch in the snow, and I’m struck with an instantaneous thought.
It should be sand.
No sooner than I think it does the horizon change, shift, morph.
I blink, and the world grows hot. Too hot.
Sand burns the soles of my feet, and a dazzling sun drips sweat from my brow.
I lift a hand to shield my eyes, positively parched.
The horizon is blazing now. Pure white, reflective, and I can’t see a single fucking thing.
A scream of frustration builds in my throat.
Maybe I’ll throw myself down and never get up. Maybe I’ll die here. But no—
That’s not possible.
Dunes begin to roll underfoot at the thought, like the waves of a wicked sea, forcing me to move, to run—
The sea, I think suddenly, breathless. I am a mermaid. I should be in the ocean.
Another starless sky, but this time, I’m drowning in roiling waves, reaching up for salvation as salt water burns my lungs.
Someone usually saves me.
The ground becomes the sky now, and I tip up and over before falling with a graceless thud onto pitch blackness. Not the sky at all, but dirt. Moist, thick, and muddy. Disgusting. “What the fuck?” I lift my hands, wiping the muck on my white dress, before glancing up.
A castle impales the earth like a jagged obsidian knife. Bioluminescent coral and seashells adorn the outside. My stomach flips, uneasy, and I cling to the ground longer in case the world shifts again. An amber light flicks on in the highest tower’s window. “Hello?” I call. “Is—is anyone there?”
I can’t remember my name, but I remember this place.
I remember agony.
“If anyone sneaks up on me, I’ll kill them!
Again!” I shout, rising to my feet and defending myself with fists alone.
I turn around to avoid the castle, but—the landscape whirls as if I’m on a revolving platform.
The castle appears before me once more. I snarl.
Whirl. Pivot. Duck. It doesn’t matter how I move; the castle doesn’t leave my sight line.
It remains firmly in front of me. “Is this the gate to the afterlife? Because I have some suggestions for decor.”
My lungs seize as I walk toward it, and my chest aches. I leverage my fists, ready to fight, even though there isn’t a single sign of… of anyone. No voices, no silhouettes, no shadows.
I am dead, and I am alone.
Yet, I can’t shake the instinct that something is out here. Or in there.
“If you’re accepting requests, I’d love somewhere happier. Have you ever been to a confectionary? Taffy and candies and cakes?” I ask, talking more to comfort myself than anything else. Apparently, whoever I am loves to talk. A lot. “That would be lovely right now.”
The Fathoms answer with the opening of the castle’s door.
I glare up at the dark sky. “You are out of your mind. No fucking way am I going in there.”
The pathway ripples like a snake in response, coiling in on itself to carry me up and out and through. I roll onto my stomach. Claw with aquamarine nails at obsidian granite, struggling against the pathway’s brisk pace as it delivers me exactly where I don’t want to go. But it’s no use.
The path spits me inside the castle within seconds, and then vanishes altogether. Right as the doors slam shut.
This gnaws at me, festering with some kind of memory that I just can’t grasp.
I shut my eyes. Clench my fists. Try to focus on the echo of that sound—the slamming of castle doors—but it vanishes within a single breath.
And I am forced to open my eyes. Forced to look out into the entrance of the castle.
Whatever I expected, it wasn’t this.
A charcoal throne room. A whalebone throne.
And now—I am no longer alone.
There is a man on the throne. He watches me with vicious focus. He watches me as if he plans to consume me.
If I had any pulse left, it would be thundering right now. Instinct begs me to run. I know, more than I know anything else in this moment, that this man is bad. This man is my doom.
And—
I think I know him.
“Zephyra,” he murmurs.
He… he sounds exactly as I imagined. Exactly as I remembered. All those years. All those moments where I could only cling to the faint memory of him, could only dream of him even when he was steps away from me, pummel me in the chest. In the heart.
I collapse at his feet.
He stares down at me, cocking his head. His green eyes narrow. “I’ve been waiting for you, Zephyra.”
He stands then. Tall and strong and more muscular than he’d been the last time I really saw him.
He was a boy then. He is a man now. White hair gleams in a halo on his head, short and askew, as if he fell asleep with it messy.
As if it’s intentionally careless. But he has never been careless.
Not really. He smirks, one side of his lips hitching slightly higher than the other, and I stop breathing.
It can’t be real. He can’t be here.
“Welcome home,” he says.
And his name rises in me, rises on a wave of regret, on the sharp, brutal memory of my bloodstained hands holding his heart. I gaze at him. My knees buckle in fear. In guilt. In shame. And I would faint if he weren’t still watching me, assessing me, with hatred burning in his beautiful gaze.
One word passes my lips. One word that damns us both.
“Jacin.”