Buried In The Sky Novels & Stories

She became part of the casualties, one less problem on their ledgers. She clawed her way out from under the rubble, nails bloody, left shoulder hanging wrong. Two fingers bent sideways—she nearly gagged at the sight. She didn’t cry. She dragged herself clear of the wreck, crawled through a hole in the burning wall, and collapsed in the icy mud behind the kitchens. Dawn crept over the sky in violet and gold. Pretty, if you like that sort of thing. She hated it. She hated that it never changed, that the beauty meant nothing whether she’d been the clan’s prize or disgrace. Hated the stars for not even pretending to care. Hated her own lungs for gasping, her heart for beating stubbornly on.

Hence, I would stealthily wipe my tears away and murmur with envy, "That's nice. I envy your mommy for always having someone by her side." Now, the irony of it all was suffocating. My best friend, who had stayed with me through my days in the hospital while I struggled with depression, was the same person who slept beside the man I loved at night.

It was a Sunday afternoon yet the sky was gloomy. The sun that’s supposed to dazzle is nowhere to be found and the cold breeze blew on my way. I’ve watched the news last night, they said it will be a clear day today but the sky shows otherwise. We’ve decided to celebrate our friend’s birthday in the garden but we will have a hard time now that the rain threatens to pour down. “Hey, can you help me decide which design suits the theme the most? I need to finish this before Unira arrives,” my friend uttered.

I could still hear the braying laughter of Zeke and his friends, more than anything I could hear interrupted snoring as men got a hell of a wake-up call through Cillian’s direct tannoy into their heads. I don’t know why but I took myself up the hill, to a clearing which gave me a view of the night sky. It was still raining but it didn’t matter, I can dry off in the truck. I knelt down and dug a hole at the top of the hill. Then, placing a small kiss on the velvet bag I buried it.

“Another damn note. What does it mean this time?” “It’s another warning,” Elliot muttered. He turned the paper over, finding something scrawled on the back in faint ink: “The truth is hidden where the light dies.” “The light dies?” Jonah asked, frowning. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Elliot pocketed the note, already thinking. “It’s pointing us to something. A place. Somewhere dark, maybe underground.” Jonah scoffed. “Like the crypt? We’ve already been there, and all we found was a dead butler and more questions.”

Into the dark. Toward the thing that fell from the sky.

The transition from the lightless depths of the Abyssal Chamber to the surface world was like stepping into a blast furnace, as we emerged from the Maw’s hidden peak, the sky wasn't the deep indigo of a mountain morning, it was a bruised, sickly orange, a sky choked with the ash of the Neutral Zone. Kaelen had begun the burning.

"Because you were about to lock it in. Marry her. Make it permanent. I waited. I gave you time to see it yourself. You used every second to build your clean little life on top of his body and I just kept watching you do it." "If he's really gone," Jose started, "then why dig all this up now, why make me—" "He's not gone." Rainer's voice cracked on the last word like something breaking under too much weight. He looked away. Looked back. "I dug the grave last week. It's empty, Jose. He's been hiding. He's scared. And he hates us both for letting it get that far. For letting her get that close to finishing it."

Even after everything. We were still here. Together. ... The skies grieved with us. Clouds hung low, thick with the threat of rain that never quite fell. We buried Stefan under an ashwood tree. He would've hated it. It was too poetic and too ceremonial. But he also never shut up about how beautiful the ashwood grove was. So there we were.

"Oh, my goodness! This woman died a horrible death!" "She was a pureblood werewolf attacked by a rogue. Her body was pumped full of liquid silver!" "How did her family not realize what was happening? Couldn't anyone sense she was dead?" The TV kept replaying the news of my death while the comments section blew up with arguments about how I'd died. People reacted with shock, grief, and even outrage. But not a single one of them knew who I really was. My body was found in an old storm drain at the boundary of our family land. The site had once served as a military water reserve, storing liquid silver bombs during the civil war, but it had long been abandoned.