Page 80 of House of Crimson Kisses
I wave my hand through the fog. No one else is here. The dim-lit atrium, the stone beds and everyone in it have all vanished.
The white mist flows through my fingers like sand and silk, but eventually it clears enough I spot a ghostly figure standing in the distance.
“Who are you?” I call out, but the figure just stands there, immobile.
“I guess you’re my trial guide? Or maybe my trial executioner. One or the other.”
I make my way through the fog towards him, but the closer I get, the further away he seems. The air around me twists and undulates with a vibration that crawls over my skin.
I stop and glance back, wondering how far I’ve come, but behind me now lays a field of pasture. Daisies and poppies fill the landscape as the sky clears and the sun beams down.
I gasp. I’ve never seen the sun in the sky. Never seen so many flowers with open blooms, not unless they’re moon flowers born of night. And there are many fewer night-born plants than day ones.
I immediately scream, patting my arms and searching for shelter, but my skin isn’t burning. In fact, nothing hurts, nothing even stings. I am standing in the light, gawping toward the sun, and I am still alive.
Or trying to, but it hurts my eyes to stare too directly at it.
I turn back to find the ghostly figure and my blood freezes. He is right in front of me. There is a shrouded space where his face should be. A dark hood with a hollow void that is utterly endless.
I can’t look away. The vastness of it holds me in place. I writhe on the spot, desperate to escape.
A hand reaches up to my chest.
“No,” I say.
His fingers slowly dig into my cloak, piercing the fabric, and then press against my skin.
I try to grab at his hand, but my body is motionless. His nails slice my flesh.
I scream as the heat of his touch sears through my body. It’s like he’s pouring molten steel into my body as his hand sinks into my chest.
This is how I die. A thousand years and this, finally, is how it ends, and my only thought is of not having given Red a last kiss. Not pleading with her one more time to forgive me.
Not telling her I love her over and over until my lips chap and my throat runs hoarse.
Somewhere swirling around the mist, a voice screams. I think it’s mine, but I’m no longer certain. He buries his hand in my chest cavity.
I’m certain he’s going to rip my heart out, but he yanks me forward and finally the pain ceases and everything goes black.
* * *
When I rouse, I am laid on stone cobbles in a strange place. The floor is dank and smells like iron and manure. The light casts a muted, dreary grey over the adjoining alleys. Like the sun ran out and spat the dregs of light out from the bottom of its fuel tank.
“Hello?” I call, but there’s no answer.
I stand. The sky is burnt grey. Rain spatters against the cobbles. I glance around me and freeze.
“This is... This is impossible,” I breathe.
I’m in Sangui City, but it doesn’t appear like Sangui City. I stumble out of the alleyway I’m in and find myself in the main square near the Midnight Market.
In the distance, I can just make out the remnants of the market. I speed across the square and towards the stalls. The sellers are skeletal. Their skin stretches taut over their skeletal bodies.
Their eyes are gaunt and hollow.
The first stall I reach has a scant selection of items. Barely enough, if he sold them all, to feed a family for a week.
“What happened here?” I whisper.
