32-Kit
A hollow corpse splays at my feet.
It’s made of ash, crumbling at the edges like burnt paper. The thing pulses faintly, as if remembering the life that it once represented. Silver dust coats my palms, clinging to my skin the way guilt sticks to my chest.
Melody barks a crystalline titter that sings like wind chimes. The forest shimmers with impossible colour, leaves glowing in bioluminescent blues and greens. Petrichor and crushed violets fill the air with a longing memory. But I feel nothing.
This game will never end.
“Enough, Endymion.” I’m not even sure if the title belongs to the god named Somnium, but it sparked something in me the moment it fell from Zachary’s lips.
Melody’s form snaps like a flame blown sideways. In her place stands the man I first met centuries ago, or yesterday; time means nothing here.
The god stands before me, wavy hair pouring down his shoulders like liquid obsidian.
His tawny skin glows, lit from within like polished marble catching light.
His face is too perfectly symmetrical to be anything other than a mask.
Gripping me by the collar, he pulls me close, smiling with a predator’s patience.
“Endymion,” he repeats, swishing the name around his mouth as though it’s a fortified wine. The caramel-cedar scent of him fills my lungs. “And so, with a name it shall begin.”
He tosses me backward, but there’s no ground. I fall, weightless through an endless black, my scream swallowed by the void. Air rushes past me as my stomach lurches and limbs flail.
Icy water shocks my senses in a violent embrace, stealing my next breath.
Iron and salt fill my lungs as it drags me down, the pressure crushing my ribs.
I kick upward, desperate and instinctual.
A wavering beam shimmers above me. I swim toward it and as my fingers break the surface, a tidal wave of dread slams into me.
The cold drains away, replaced by heat that blooms too fast.
My lids fly open.
I kneel in a torch-lit room, shadows dancing across stone walls.
The balmy air hangs thick with resin and oil.
My skin prickles; I’m stark naked, stripped of everything but the Judas mask fused to my upper face.
I reach for it with trembling fingers, careful not to slice them on the jagged edges.
Hauling myself to my feet, I tug on the blasted thing, but it doesn’t budge.
A blonde-haired woman steps into the room, moving with regal authority, her voluptuous figure held high and firm beneath a thin white dress. Her outline flickers, wrong in ways my mind can’t reconcile. She approaches slowly, measuring me like an assessor examining a marred statue.
“I could not let you go, my youth.”
Reaching out with her thumb, she wipes a tear from my chin. Her touch is gentle, but keen.
“That choice was mine, not yours,” I croak, but it isn’t me speaking.
Endymion stands where I do as if we overlap; two unveilings on the same mount.
“Please,” he whispers, his voice scraping its way through me. “If you love me, let me go. I beg of you.”
She smiles, but it’s wrong. Twisted. One carved from hunger. “I brought you back because dead souls cannot sleep. And you are not for Hades to reap. You are mine, not his, and you never shall be, no matter how he tries to claim you.”
“Yes,” I declare, and she tugs us close.
The dream shatters as our lips meet, thrusting us into blackness. I gasp awake, and Endymion sits before me, not in sleep or a memory, but here, a mirage at the foot of my tiny bunk bed.
“I remember now; she has always been the portal to my purpose,” he says, his presence leaching through my bones.
“Every life cycle I am reborn, left with only so much time. Time already precarious. Cut short by disease or accidents. Mortality is a blood sport; a spectacle for bored gods, where every breath is a wager and choice a blade. It is a cosmic arena where we are the entertainment, stumbling through rounds we never agreed to fight. For until we are enlightened and ascend beyond the realm of Earth, we cannot truly be fulfilled. My gift is in understanding this truth.”
My stomach twists; this destiny is a cage, not a reward.
His image creeps closer, like water flowing downhill. “I observe the dreams of all people, past, present, and future. I have seen every version of you dream of them. No matter the vessel. No matter the continent. You always find each other.”
My skin prickles. He lifts his hand, tracing a line in the air that shimmers like scarlet stardust.
“I don’t want this.” The words scrape out of me as my sanity’s ripped to shreds. “We lose so much for fate to come to fruition. It’s cruel.”
“Life is cruel, my vessel, this is true.” Centimetres from me, Endymion’s gaze eases into one of cockeyed sympathy, as though his muscles had never arranged this way. “But it is also benevolent. Either way, life is, regardless.”