From Sand And Ash Novels & Stories

GRACE'S POV APRIL 12th, 2013 There was a sound. It came first as a distant ringing, sharp and persistent, like something fighting to pull me back from wherever I had fallen. It cut through the quiet darkness, growing louder, closer, more insistent. “Grace?” “Grace!”

“You know what? Fine, Stay mad But one day, you’ll realize I’m not the enemy here.” Hazel stepped back and began closing the door. “And one day, you’ll realize I don’t want you, Not now, Not ever ” SLAM. Randy stood there for a second, staring at the closed door, then slowly put his sunglasses back on and walked back to his car ,gritting his teeth but with something unreadable in his eyes. "I won't be here trying to relate with this goat if not for mom " he mumbled under his breath as he drove away.

Grey. The moment I stepped into my house, an anger I hadn’t known I was capable of surged through me like a wildfire. My hands curled into fists so tight my knuckles went white. The stench of smoke still hung faintly in the air, and a blackened, charred smell clung to the walls of Kaidan’s room. But what made me see red wasn’t the damage, it was the fact that no one had noticed until it was almost too late.

The mixture of truth and joke is a real thing, an Alaska must be able to distinguish a suitable time to spend between the two. "Asinan, my name is Assandra, not Asinan. You freak." "Em... Bil, what did you mean by what you said earlier?" Sandra tries to focus on If only, instead of listening to all of Laska's babbling. Sandra thought it was better. “Nothing, maybe I just didn't get enough rest. That's why I'm thinking nonsense." Without realizing it, the eye's gaze. If instead it was aimed at Andros and his friend, it was the same with Sandra who was also attracted to the object of the gaze.

Facing the camera, I spoke calmly, “No one loves me anymore, and I don’t have the courage to go on living. Fine. You can all just think of me as weak, but don’t worry. I’ll make sure to record everything. Even if I die, I won’t let them get away with it.” In the video, I crouched by the shore of Exile Island, holding a sharpened piece of bamboo. Again and again, I struck it against a rock. My hands soon became a bloody mess, but I felt nothing. It was as if I had gone completely numb. Someone in the audience cried out, “What is Jacob doing, sharpening bamboo like that? He’s not thinking of ending it, is he?” “After everything he’s been through, it wouldn’t be surprising…”

A sound came out of me that I did not recognize. "No!" My body moved before my mind did. I lunged for the urn. Too late. It hit the ground between us. The lid came off. The white ash that had been my father drifted out, light and weightless. It settled on the wet ground, mixing with the dirt. The world stopped. I sat where I had fallen. The white was the only thing I could see. That had been my father. That had been the man who tucked me in when I had a fever, the man who taught me to ride a bike on the road in front of our house, the man who looked at me and said I was the best thing in his life.

I hadn’t washed it yet. However, when I examined the collar, my fingers paused. The button was loose. The thread looked new, like it had been forcibly pulled. I crouched down and opened the shoe cabinet. My pair of hospital slippers sat neatly inside. The soles were clean. I remembered clearly that the last time I wore them, there had been a faint yellowish stain from disinfectant. Now, the soles were gray-white, as if someone had deliberately scrubbed them clean. My breathing tightened slightly, but my expression didn’t change.

A human, at least. I wring my palms, they felt sandy. I opened my palms, looking into them. They were covered in ash. My arms. My fucking body. “Oh no.” I tried rubbing it off, scrubbing them off with the back of my wrist. It was as though they were glued to my skin. I'm scrubbing them off more. More. I want to rip the top of my skin off. Tears welled from deep inside and coursed down my cheeks. Hot tears.

The sand that was caught by the spiritual Qi net suddenly decreased quickly. When it was almost done, the calm sand suddenly boiled and stirred violently. At first glance, it was like countless snakes swimming wildly in the sand, making people feel creepy. Seeing this scene from afar, Handsome widened its eyes in surprise. "I knew it." Caspian suddenly withdrew the net. Immediately, the remaining sand rolled down from the sky like a flood. In the rushing sand sea, it could be seen clearly that there were many gray-haired demonic beasts about a foot long, like mice, flying rapidly in the sand.

The air in the Ashlands tasted like dust and death. I coughed, my lungs—even my dhampir lungs—struggling with the thickness of it. The black sand beneath my feet shifted with each step, and the heat radiating up from the ground was intense enough to make sweat bead on my forehead. "What is this place?" I asked. My voice sounded small in the vast emptiness.