Page 81 of Stars in Aura

‘You will call for us soon.’

Ki’Remi tried to move and endeavored to breathe, struggling to do both.

The night thickened, pressing against his chest like a living entity.

The Witchmen loomed over him, their great forms moving like the essence of the cosmos, their eyes burning with the fire of a thousand untold battles.

One of them stepped forward, the eldest, the first.

K’Shivi the Savant Seer.

His name came to Ki’Remi’s awareness in a whisper like the roll of distant thunder, unhurried yet inevitable.

His face was a distorted, shifting mass of the even older sage souls who had gone before him.

‘Do not wait too long to embrace what you are, son.’

A second figure flickered beside him:Korai, the Shadow Sorcerer.

His presence was colder than deep space, and his appearance was of an ocean of smoke and icicles flowing over a cosmic plane.

‘Your power is not meant to be hidden. We are your past, your present, your future.’

The last,Kirego, the Sophist Soothsayer, a phantom netting of carved scarification over his diaphanous form that gleamed in the dim moonlight.

His lips never moved, but his voice was inside Ki’Remi’s skull, filling every inch of his mind.

‘You will call on us; when you do, we will answer.’

With no warning, they all snapped away.

Ki’Remi knifed up in his chair, eyes dilated, sweat pouring down his face.

He heaved, his ragged breaths the only sound on a terrace that was silent once more.

The stars above winked, but they gave him no answers.

His heart thundered in his chest, exhaling hard.

His fingers twitched. His body was his own again.

Still, he heard their utterances lingering, whispering from the edges of the unseen.

Ki’Remi exhaled, running a hand over his face.

Why fokkin’ them? Why now?

His jaw clenched as his pulse thrummed with the force of an intensity he was not confident he had control over.

He had spent years suppressing them.

Ignoring them.

It was clear now that time was at an end.

15

Odysseus’ Wandering

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