Page 2 of The Amber Sunburst

Memories from the storm hit him like those old bullet trains his father used to describe. The strong winds yanking the boat back and forth. The screaming and grabbing and freezing cold water. The sight of people going under and not coming back up.

He stumbles over his feet and scans the terrain around him. He can’t be the only one who made it. He can’t.

But if he isn’t, then where is everyone else? Only a few wooden planks, and a log from the mast keep him company on the shoreline, and the sand is indented only from where he navigated it, empty of footprints from the rest of the crew.

Half of them refused to look him in the eye out of respect for his status as heir—as if he wasn’t out playing cards or in someone’s bed every other night—but the rest were personable and kind.

“Michael? Lucy? Augustine?” he yells out to the horizon in a doubtful hope that they’ll appear right down the coast.

“Mary?” His voice breaks on her name.

She wasn’t everything to him and he wasn’t everything to her, but they kept each other company on the ship. He knows her as well as a stranger can. Knows her sighs and her soft morning smiles. He doesn’t want her to be dead.

But as the weak echo of his voice reverberates up and down the miles of visible shore, he acknowledges what he already knows. She is dead. They all are.

Subjects of the sea and her mercurial whims until their bones are sand on the ocean floor. Unless the Post-Fall Catholicism he was raised on really is to be believed, and they’ve woken up in a world beyond their wildest dreams.

Alexander, for one, has always tried to believe. He just isn’t sure, standing here, that belief has ever once done him any good.

He wants to take revenge on the waters lapping gently in front of him. But he can’t. So he settles for glaring at the horizon.

The beach is strangely serene, unaffected by the violent, stormy ocean just beyond it, and it snags at him. It’s… unnatural.

Goosebumps run across his arms, and he drops down to the sand, eyes stinging. None of this is right, all of it is wrong, and all he can do now is wallow here, alone, staring into a sandy expanse of nothing.

He really, really hates being alone.

Tears cling to his lashes, but he forces his eyes shut to stop them.

This is a crossroads, his voice of reason explains. It has always sounded suspiciously similar to his brother, ever the rational to his uninhibited. You can sit here and waste your water on tears, or you can stand up and make do. So, what’s it gonna be?

“I don’t know,” he whispers. It’s loud compared to the silence on the beach. Goosebumps again.

“I don’t know,” he screams into the sea. It echoes.

Get up, Alexander.

He sighs. His brother was always smarter than him.

His dad, too. Alexander knows what he would say. He would whisper, You are stronger than you know, my brave little lion.

Alexander releases a big breath, stands, and turns to face inland. He should look for water first, probably, but⁠—

“What the hell,” he exhales. The beach is not as empty as he thought.

Ancient Greek columns stand sentinel about twenty feet from the shore, stretching in both directions for the entire visible coast.

And now he can’t help but wonder whether he is even still alive at all. Or awake, at least.

How on earth did you not notice that before? his brother’s voice scolds.

“Oh, well, I don’t know. Maybe I was too busy drowning,” Alexander replies aloud.

And, he’s off to a great start, isn’t he? Only a half-hour in and he’s already talking to the air. And seeing things, apparently, because the pillars have to be another manifestation of his madness.

They were probably built to be uniform, but now their heights are inconsistent, and their patterns are damaged by the sea air, victims of time—how much time, Alexander isn’t sure.

The sparse Greek ruins still standing before the Fall of Nations were completely destroyed during it; the nuclear bombs left nothing untouched. On the unlikely chance that there are some still remaining, they would be in Rumi, the country containing all of the livable land left in the Mediterranean. But Alexander’s been there, and he’s never seen anything like this.