Day 97

I couldn’t grasp why I was still clinging to life. The moment I heaved the last chunk of rock on top of the mound that rose above the gray, lifeless ground like an ancient cairn, I couldn’t stop tears from watering my eyes. The place I started to call home now hid the bodies of men and women who, to my excited eyes, wielded powers of gods themselves, towering over my mortal shell like the Ascended of old. They were supposed to fight death, not succumb to its ghostly whispers. Instead, their remains were piled together in a mass grave, mere food for hungry maggots. I wish I could do more to honor them, but I was too inapt for the task.

Truth be told, I’d been with the Sentinels of Light only for a few months but, the Mist be damned, that friendship was real. And then, in a matter of days, it’d turned into a bitter memory. I threw the shovel away, my legs and arms shaking. There was nothing else I could do for them. I was useless the minute I’d stepped onto the sandy beach of this forsaken island.

Lucian crept toward a cluster of rocks that marked the end of the shoreline on the south-western part of the island. There was nothing beyond that point but a sharp drop of more than a hundred yards toward the raging sea. I’d never visited this place since it had no redeeming qualities that’d warrant risking my life. No caves, no bird nests, and no deserted buildings to rifle through. And I, with my unending thirst for an adventure, would be the first to abandon all caution and explore the most dangerous sites in hopes of unearthing some hidden treasure.

Yet here we were, crouching like thieves in the night, silently cursing our sensitive ears that’d detected an unmistakable sign of wraiths tainting the area – wailing. Now, being so close to the source of that wailing, it dominated all other sounds, thundering over the wind and the crashing of waves. But there was something else, something that kept driving me forward despite my boots slipping on the wet surface of smooth rocks, threatening to end my existence in the most pathetic way. That something was a barely audible voice. Not of wraiths, for they couldn’t talk, but a gentler one, that of a human. And that was worth investigating.

A flash of light, and I could no longer feel the ground. I instinctively reached for something to hold onto, but there was nothing solid around me; just gray smoke. There was neither gravity pulling on my legs, nor any movement of air; I was stranded in the middle of a void, unable to distinguish between up and down, left or right. But that feeling lasted only for a few seconds, and soon the floor re-appeared. The sudden barrier preventing me from free-falling made me stumble, and I rolled forward to prevent my face from slapping on limestone. The smoke around me dissipated, replaced by total darkness.

I heard footsteps behind me, and the bluish glow of Gwen’s scissors allowed me to orient myself. We were in a circular room, no more than five yards in diameter. I pressed my palms against the floor and stood up. The dust flurried like snowflakes under a gust of wind, and I coughed, unable to fully recover from a sudden change of scenery.