All Chapters of RAVEN: THE DARKNESS THAT LOVED HER : Chapter 21 - Chapter 24

INSTALLMENT ONE: THE CITY THAT REMEMBERED HIMThe first person to step out of the city was a little girl carrying a dead raven in her hands.She looked no older than seven. Her black dress was torn at the hem, her bare feet were stained with grey dust, and a thin red ribbon circled her wrist. The bird in her arms had no eyes.Raven stood at the edge of the enormous black door beneath Hollowmere and watched her approach.Behind her, the city stretched beneath a sky that had never known the sun. Towers rose from the mist, their windows glowing with a faint silver light. Narrow bridges crossed deep chasms between buildings. Bells hung from rooftops, but none moved in the wind.And everywhere Raven looked, he saw his own face.A man stood beneath an archway with Raven’s dark hair and familiar eyes. A woman leaned from a balcony, her features identical to his. Children played in the street, each wearing some variation of the same face, as though the entire city had been created from a sing

INSTALLMENT ONE: THE WORLD THAT CAME BEFOREThe darkness did not catch them.It swallowed them.Raven fell with his hands locked around the girl’s wrist, while the child who had never been born tumbled somewhere below them. There was no wind against his face, no ground rushing to meet him, and no sense of how far he had fallen.Only voices.Thousands of them.Some called his name. Some called him by names he had never heard. Others spoke in languages that seemed to crawl directly into his thoughts.Then, beneath all the noise, a familiar voice whispered:“Don’t let go.”Raven tightened his grip on the girl’s hand.“I won’t.”“You said that before.”“I know.”“No,” she whispered. “You remember saying it. That isn’t the same as knowing what it cost.”Something struck Raven’s shoulder.He spun helplessly through the darkness and collided with a surface that felt like cold water. The world folded around him.For a moment, he saw every version of himself at once.A child running through a