68-Kit
Like gathering mist, the dream forms around me, a storm about to break.
“I know you’re there,” I say quietly, too knackered for any games.
Endymion steps out from behind the tree, dressed in a sheer chiton, expression solemn. Moonlight catches along his edges, making him appear half-formed. A flicker of the man he once was, bare-footed and unburdened, ghosts across his profile. I know what this is.
“This is it, right?” A chill creeps up my arms, raising goosebumps. “The last time.”
He dips his head, a small, devastating confirmation.
“You wielded power that bent the laws of this reality.” He studies me with an expression I’ve never seen on him, pride, sorrow, and something like awe. “You are too powerful to remain my vessel, Christopher.”
The use of my real name knocks me like a strike. It drags up memories I’ve spent years burying; my father’s voice, Melody’s laughter, and the boy I used to be before rage and grief carved me hollow.
A strange heat blooms in my chest, equal parts fear and recognition.
“Is that why you brought us together?” I swallow, trying to sift through the impossible moment when instinct, terror, and will fused into something like control. “It makes no sense. People got hurt.”
“People would have died. They should have died. And yet they live. They dream even now. Everything you need to continue forward is within your grasp. The same is true for Zachary. I cannot assist either of you any further. It is now up to you to decide what each of you needs.”
I open my mouth, but the question dies before it ever reaches the air. Doesn’t matter. He already knows. Endymion’s form ripples like a reflection disturbed, and then Melody’s standing before me.
Not the wily, sharp-tongued girl who used to tuck her hair behind her ear when she was about to say something she knew would ruin me.
This version was built from my grief, the one I kept alive because I couldn’t bear the alternative.
It’s simply a shape that my mind carved from memory and guilt. Her real energy moved on ages ago.
But gods, it looks like her.
“Goodbye,” I whisper, though the word barely escapes.
Her button nose and pale eyes distort as my courage falters. I blink hard, but it doesn’t help. She’s already slipping. Melody smiles and takes my hand. Her fingers fit against mine exactly the way they used to.
I drink in every detail while I still can. The slope of her cheek and faint crease between her brows, the way her lips press together before she speaks. She considers me with that same stubborn tenderness she had in life, and something inside me cracks clean through.
The air ripples with a warmth I haven’t felt since she was alive, a final mercy before the dream strips her away. My knees nearly buckle under the weight of losing her twice.
She sheds, layers peeling like old skin. Her white-blonde strands dissolve into thin ribbons of silver. I have only seconds left.
“Mel—” I break apart in a blubber.
The mirage squeezes my fingers once, gentle but final, before letting go. Her form unravels in a slow spiral, drifting upward like smoke caught in a rising current. The light gathers and then bursts outward in a silent flourish.
Hand still half raised, I stand there, fingers curled around the remnants of a spirit set free. For the first time in over ten years, I let myself feel the truth.
She’s gone.
Left behind is cavernous silence, echoing through me like a room emptied of furniture—every shape outlined in dust, but nothing left to hold. The grove darkens at the edges, shadows lengthening as if the trees lean in to listen.
“I don’t know what to do next,” I confess as Endymion materialises with a soft rush of displaced air before me.
He shrugs, a strangely human gesture. “You will learn.”
I swallow, the sound loud in the stillness. “What will you do?”
“Now,” he says, chest puffing out with a deep, filling breath, “I find another who connects to my energy. Again, and again.”
His words land like pebbles dropped into a well; small but endlessly echoing. My pulse thuds in my ears, heavy and uneven. The breeze shifts, brushing cool fingers along the back of my neck.
“So, it was never just about me and Zach?”
“Humans are quite conceited.” Endymion laughs, and it’s like wind through leaves. “You think your individual lives are somehow worth more than the ants crushed under your boots. Every one of you plays a purpose.”
The god falls away, and for a heartbeat the weary witness beneath bleeds through; one who has watched mortals rise and break and rise again. Someone who has carried too many endings to count.
“And by reaching enlightenment, by discovering the power within yourselves, you enrich the lives around you, allowing others to do the same.” He steps closer, eyes kind as he places a hand on my tense shoulder.
“I have found that human connection—loss, grief, joy, and every complicated emotion that is born from love—is the best way to reach it. Life’s beauty lives in its tragic fragility. ”
I exhale shakily, a sob raking through me.
“You seem so sure,” I say, a small, hollowed chuckle escaping with my breath.
“I am sure, young vessel, because I have hope,” he declares as he fades, dissolving into the mist like a glimmering firework. “As should you.”
The sky cracks open, a black chasm splitting across the dream. Cold air rushes in, stinging my skin. Purple-black mist pours through the rift, swirling like ink in water. Beneath it rests the raw, unfiltered landscape of my own mind; grief, memory, identity, and power—laid bare.
It shudders, the ground trembling as if the dream itself is urging me forward.
A strange steadiness settles in my chest; not peace, not yet, but perhaps the first fragile thread of it. The path ahead won’t be easy, but Zach showed me how to believe in my own power.
I sprint toward the abyss, ready to stop running from myself.
Because for the first time in my life, I believe that Kit alone can be enough.