The Awakening

It almost felt like the room was choking. Each breath now had consequence, was weight. Previously dependable walls creaked and rattled, while some unseen power roared beneath them. Once again, the quake rocked their world and one after another, they felt the quaking shoot up through their bodies. Lucian’s body had stiffened, his muscles bracing as he struggled to concentrate. 

His heart raced in his chest as he glared into the dark figure. The figure of the one they all thought dead — passed with time and memories — was suddenly and fully alive. It was a face that haunted Lucian’s brain, a face that should have been nothing more than a nightmare, a distant memory. But there it had been, grinning back at them, an improbable grin across its tormented face.

Lucian’s breath caught in his chest and his throat tightened. He wanted to speak, wanted to demand answers, but the words stalled, in his mouth. The weight of the moment just felt so heavy, so big. What lay dead ahead was harsh enough to threaten to overwhelm them. His instincts shouted for him to run, but his feet would not obey. His brain screamed at him to do something, anything, but his body had turned to stone, frozen as fear and disbelief whipped around him in equal measure.

THE FIGURE ADVANCED WITH THE SHADOW BEHIND IT GAINING EARS AND NOSE IN THE DUSKY LIGHT. As though he could command the shadows that slithered and curled around him. He smiled wider, a smirk that froze Lucian’s blood.

“No,” Lucian whispered, the word’s breath snuffed out behind dark. His voice broke, revealing the fear he had been working so hard to contain.

The figure did not immediately respond. Instead, he angled his head to one side, studying them as if a predator assessing its prey. When he spoke again, he spoke in honey syrup sour. A voice aglow with meanness, oily low tones that soaked into their bones.

“You thought that was it, it turns out it wasn’t, did it?” he added, laden with sarcasm. You think you can simply undo the prophecy, murder the Elders, and be free.” But no … that was never going to happen.”

Standing down beside him, fists at her sides, Serena had said nothing while beside Lucian. It rattled her, but it didn’t rattle her resolve. She said with a voice full of guttural rage. “You should be dead,” she said, and there was fury and disbelief in the line. “I watched you die. We all saw it.”

The figure’s smile warped into a chillier mold, his eyes glinting with a near-predatory pleasure. “Dead? No. Not dead. Just… hidden.And now… the moment has come."

Elias had been lounging behind them, but drew closer to grimace, squinting. “Who are you?” Clearly he’d heard me; his voice dripped with suspicion and rage. “What do you want from us?”

It was as if the figure pondered the question the way one would find an inquiry humorous. “Who am I?” He repeated, as though it hardly mattered what the answer was. And that soon will be a moot question.” But maybe the more crucial question is, who are you? You don’t even have the right to dream that you can change the fate of destiny,”

Lucian’s fingers curled tightly around the hilt of his weapon. His gut told him to get up, to draw a weapon, to be the one firing the first shot before the figure had the chance to swing. But something held him back. This wasn’t a normal threat. This had been something far more dangerous, far more powerful.

“You know I don’t like this,” Elias said, his voice tight with worry. “None of us like this.”

“Your hatred is of no concern to me,” the figure said, the grin splitting his face as he took another step toward him. “You don’t even know what’s about to hit you. Do you really think the Elders were truly your enemy? That was just a distraction. A game. The real darkness… is now here. And there is nothing you can do to stop it.”

Serena tensed her face, determination now welling in her eyes. “Then tell us,” she said, and her voice was strong, even when the panic rose to her chest. “What’s coming?”

The figure’s smile leered wider, but no longer out of pleasure. It was something darker, more knowing.” “You will know soon enough,” he said ominously, his voice a drenching warmth of threat. “But I don’t need to explain that to you. You will see for yourselves.”

And with that it was fading, the shape less solid, cleaving and suinting into the surrounding dark, dissolving like smoke into the air. There was even one phase where, suddenly, he’d seem like he’d just disappear, before appearing out of thin air, standing exactly in the center of the room out of nowhere, like he’d never left. His eyes had a kind of otherworldly ancientness.

“The real war didn’t start yet,” he said quietly, the last part of his words disquieting in their finality. “And when it does… it’ll be unlike anything you’ve ever faced.”

His voice was so booming, the walls felt like it was shaking. Even the air was thick, laden with grimness, of a cyclone just up the coast. Lucian’s head spun, or tried to, scrambling to comprehend what he had just heard and drew a blank. Only more questions. To which he had no answers.

Then Elias spoke, his tone slicing through with exasperation. “What the fucking hell does that mean, man? he said in disbelief and anger.

Lucian didn’t have an answer. He didn’t really understand any of it.” What he did know was they were not only fighting the Elders anymore. “This was on a much larger scale. Something older. But it was approaching them, all of them.

Serena squinted, frowning at the place it had disintegrated from existence. “Well, we gonna fight for it, no matter what,” she said, her voice steady. Her words carried such power, as if Lucian had not expected them, some cool tranquillity settling the anxiety knotting in his chest. “Together. "We have overcome bigger challenges and we will overcome it as well.”

Lucian had always found her words soothing but that doubt scratched away at him. This wasn’t just a fight. This was a war. The kind of war they could never win, unless they learned the true nature of the enemy they were fighting.”

Then suddenly the ground beneath them moved again — but this time, enough to rattle the whole room. They felt walls bending and air thumping in their ears. A crack appeared in the floor, erupting into a giant plume of dust and debris. The darkness surrounding them seemed to pulse, it was alive, it was gutting upon their terror.

Serena staggered back, paralyzed in shock. “What is happening?” 

Lucian didn’t answer. He couldn’t. It was the wide pit at the center of the room that kept distracting him, the floor splitting open like a mouth that had suddenly yawned to swallow them all whole.

And then, an echo, from the shadows, a voice — low and raspy.

“It’s here.”

Lucian’s blood ran cold. The darkness had a voice now. It was not simply a force of nature. It was sentient. And whatever it was, it was coming for them.”

“No,” gasped Serena, standing stiff as a board. “No, no, no…”

Lucian’s heart thudded as the shadows ripped them asunder, the walls all crooked and warped, clawing at impossible angles into the void. His mind screamed at him to run, to get away, but his body wouldn’t budge.

Then from the shadowed, a silvery shadow emerged.

It was that same misshapen figure, the one they had thought was dead, the one they had spied on earlier. But he was not alone in the shadows thickening sharp before him.

But something was stirring behind him. Something much, much worse.

Serena shrank back, her eyes round with fear. "What is that?" she whispered.

Lucian’s heart stuttered in his chest as the figure smiled; his voice was low, a toll of death echoing through the room.

“You were never supposed to survive this,” the figure said. “And now, it begins.”

The ground trembled again. The walls cracked.

And the blackness, gluttonous and bottomless, was beginning to engulf them whole.