Page 92 of Morning's Light

Karsia didn’t feel her body crumple to the ground.

It seemed an eternity that she floated in nothingness. Or it might have been the blink of an eye. The goodness she’d embraced her whole life seemed another side of a coin. What was the point? There was nothing anyone could do to escape the chaos of the abyss. It came for everyone, and when death came, bodies returned to the discord. Why had she been fighting so hard to stop it? It was natural. As natural as breathing.

Distance grew between her and her human goodness. It fell out of reach. Part of her cried out at the loss while the blackness tainted her, claimed her. Then she rejoiced.

She was nearly consumed, nearly lost. Yet something stopped her. A single glowing point in an endless sea. It encapsulated her and staved off the onslaught.

She thought she sighed, or maybe not. Air flushed into her lungs and she sat up, eyes snapping open. The others gathered around her sobbing, hysterical. The walls of the cavern blurred together and her gaze fell on a stone spearing up to the heavens.

The Telos Amyet.

Half white, half black, it absorbed the light of the moon and swallowed it.

Karsia turned to her sisters, expecting a surge of relief at the sheer fact that she was still alive. Instead, she felt nothing when she saw their expressions drop. Nothing when she raised a hand to her chest and felt cold stone instead of a warm beating heart. Nothing when her sisters gasped.

Her vision blurred with fatigue and she forced her leaden limbs to move. The effort left her quivering when she finally hauled herself up to a standing position at the mouth of the cave.

“There are worse things than death,” Astix muttered, looping her arm around Karsia’s shoulders.

Karsia shrugged her away. She felt fine. Wonderful. Fan-fucking-tastic. She cricked her neck and listened to the snap of vertebrae echo off the cave walls.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Aisanna asked. “We were worried. You…you passed out and almost cracked your head open.”

“I’m fine,” Karsia insisted, her voice sharp. “Will you drop it? Now, let’s get out of this hellhole.”

She shivered, running her hands along her arms. The truth was she didn’t feel the cold. Her body seemed charged, like electric current coursed through her limbs. A murky fog crept over her mind and sank into her cells.

Aisanna and Astix shared a look between them. Karsia knew what their look meant. Something was wrong and they could feel it.

She gestured rudely. “Ladies?”

“You’re really—”

Karsia whipped around, the look on her face so malicious it stopped the others in their tracks. “You need to back off.” She dropped her tone threateningly, shoulders arching forward. “I mean it. Back off.”

Astix shoved Aisanna in the side. “Will you please be quiet?”

Karsia heard Aisanna whisper, “But her eyes are black. Don’t you care?”

She heard everything. Her body tuned itself in to the world around her. She sensed the water dripping down the limestone and slowly calcifying rock. Night creatures moved, bats rustling from their perches ready to fill themselves with a midnight meal. Somewhere in the distance rabbits stilled in their dens as they heard the swoosh of predatory wings.

And she knew, in the small town just over there, a married man lied once again to his wife when he told her she was the only one. A teenager, awake past curfew, chopped the tail off a lizard and laughed to himself at the rush he felt. A woman brought to the edge of despair stabbed a knife down on an unwitting stranger and felt justified as lifeblood left the victim’s body.

It was exhilaration. It was the natural order. All of this and more Karsia sensed, and she relished the sensations.

No, wait, that wasn’t her. Was it?

Behind her, her sisters quietly discussed the predicament in tones so low they assumed she would not hear. But she did. Something about her had changed on a fundamental level.

She’d realized deep down what would happen to her if she dove in front of the bolt meant for Aisanna. But she hadn’t realized the consequences until now.

Darkness, at last, had managed to find a replacement.

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