Absolute darkness.
Helaina turned back the way she came, but the door she had entered through was gone. There was nothing she could see, nothing she could touch. Yet this place had a familiar feel.
She brought her hands toward the smoothness of a wall and began feeling her way to the side. She collided with another wall and then another. Four corners—she was in a room. She felt for a doorknob, a latch, a window. Her fingertips perceived nothing but flat cold.
This place, she had been here time and time again. The dark room she had subconsciously retreated to in her dreams.
This room used to haunt her—the solitude a frightening nightmare. Her grief had warped it into a welcome place where she could run and hide, where she didn’t have to move forward. This was no trial of the gods. This was a gift from Ures; he was letting her rest. She was no chosen warrior; she could stay here and never be a danger to anyone.
Before her eyes, one of the walls began to lighten. She saw her reflection there. The wall had changed into a mirror.
What stared back was Helaina... but there was something wrong. The mirror image wasn’t her current body. It was the starved, weak version she had folded into after losing her siblings. Her likeness wore a sinister grin as it stared back at her. Helaina waved her hand above her head to ensure it truly was a reflection. The image copied her, then opened its mouth to speak.
“Alone. Burden. Selfish. Foolish. Murderer. That is what we are.” It hissed the words.
We killed her. We let him die.
“That’s not true.” She fought the anger brewing at the accusations, trying hard to believe none of this was her fault.
The mirror version snickered in answer. “It’s always been true.” Then her own abused and frail body stepped through the glass and met her face-to-face. Shadow danced at its back as it spoke again. “Stay here, stay with me. We can’t hurt anyone if we stay.”
Helaina looked at the familiar version of herself staring back at her. She had punished herself so thoroughly for the crimes she committed, but they were never her crimes to atone for.
“No,” Helaina replied.
Her likeness contorted its face into menacing rage. “Then you will die here!” It flung its flurry of shadow onto her, pushing her against the opposite wall.
She felt the vise around her neck as it lifted her into the air.
“You are weak. You are nothing.” The words rasped in her ear as she struggled to fight the hold on her throat.
Life or death. Rise up now, or it ended here.
“it should have been you!not krysta!not adriel!you!”
The shadows squeezed tighter.
All the things she used to believe, all the thoughts of suffering that infected her mind.
She couldn’t change the past. Shecouldgo back and change what was coming.
Helaina closed her eyes as her breaths grew shallow. She reached deep into the pit of her soul, drawing on that burning in her chest. She let the memories flash behind her eyes. Her time with her siblings as children, their fights, their embraces. Siblings were supposed to grow old together. Dolion, Drayella, even Valhoor, they’d stolen from her, and they would steal from other innocents if she didn’t survive this.
She pressed her shaking hands to the icy wall behind her.
Her own shadows materialized, pushing back against the others, peeling the constricting strand from her throat.
Her likeness balked but recovered, throwing its hands in the air, forcing its magic to attack again.
Helaina met it with a ferocious boom of power, sending her horrid likeness back toward the mirror.
It hissed and fought, trying to claw its way back to Helaina. “murderer!weak!coward!”
These shadows represented the worst parts of her. They were every bit of murk and self-loathing, every ounce of pain and regret she had tried to bury. They were every agonizing memory she had begged to erase.
This darkness could not swallow her. Instead, she would invite it in. She would run from them no more—she would embrace them.
“You’re right,” she admitted to the malicious image. “I’ve been all those things...”
