Glaring Through Oblivion Novels & Stories

[Image: A woman with glowing white hair and void-black eyes looking through a mirror at a girl clutching her heart] ### The Dying of the Light Around us, the world I had just "freed" began to turn into a nightmare of technical errors. The grey grass, which had been soft and real, started to display "WATERMARK" symbols in a faint, translucent white. The sapphire wildflowers flickered like failing neon signs. Even the survivors in the distance—the shifters and the humans who had just begun to embrace—were freezing in place, their bodies becoming semi-transparent as if they were being "Un-Licensed."

And there’s some strange, almost rabid glare in their eyes. What the hell are these things?

Scanning the dense darkness, she turned slowly. peering through the dense shadows. The fog billowed, parting just enough for her to catch sight of them. Luminescent eyes. One set. Then another. Then… numerous. A deep growl echoed through the stillness, and Lyra's breath caught in her throat. Outcasts. A dozen emerged from the gloom, their shapes hardly discernible under the moon’s glow. Their fur was filthy, their claws menacing, and their yellowed fangs exposed in grotesque smirks.

​The transition into the Eye of the Void was like falling into a throat. The shimmering shroud of non-existence, usually a protective blur, began to fray at the edges, eaten away by a static so dense it felt like physical grit against the mountain’s hull. Outside, the graveyard of scrap that trailed behind us was being slowly eroded, the smaller ships dissolving into grey ash as the Silence reached out to claim its due.

A deliberate, electric contact. “Come. The journal awaits. The lily has given us a direction. Now we need a destination.” I followed him out of the solarium, the scent of flowers clinging to my skin. Gloria’s warning echoed in my mind. 'An obsession can be a shield, but it can also be a snare.' I had felt the walls of the snare from the beginning. But now, for the first time, I was beginning to see how I might weave my own threads into it. He thought he was the only one giving rewards.

I quickly shrank back and wrapped myself under the blanket. He chuckled and continued. "As for what happened at the restaurant, do you know what it means to pull a knife in front of me? You really should thank your own obliviousness for that. If it had been anyone else, they would have been dead long ago. So, Nora had wanted to hurt you from the very beginning. Do you understand now, silly girl?"

The once vibrant green hue of her iris had faded, leaving behind a ghostly pallor. Amani's heart shattered as she stared into the mirror, confronted by the cruel realization that she was now completely blind in that eye. Overwhelmed by a torrent of emotions, she crumpled to the ground, her body convulsing with grief. The dreadful reflection in the mirror taunted her, a cruel reminder of everything she had lost. She yearned for a glimpse of the person she once was, but all she saw was a fractured soul staring back at her.

"Where?" I scanned the cliffs, the shadows surging, forming armies, not harbingers, not tides, but reapers, solid, not chaos but doom, their forms towering, cloaked in shadow and light, not human, not pack, but us, my face, Lyra’s, the flame’s, the void’s, their eyes blazing, their hum a death knell, not warning but command: lock, spark, flame, void, the severing is here, or the world burns.

Yulia asked curiously. "How he was going to die," I replied as we walked to the open space of the well furnished night club. "You can do that? Show people their future?" "No, just how they die," I replied. It was one of my hidden Lycan abilities. The Death Glare. The club was packed up with people dancing and filled up with all sorts of illicit drugs in their bloodstreams. I held Yulia firmly as we passed through throngs of gyrating and swaying bodies under the influence of alcohol and pills.

​The white glare of the tactical spotlights was absolute, burning away the shadows of the vault and turning Clara’s retinas into fields of blinding static. ​"Hands where we can see them! Both of you, down on your knees!" The voice behind the light was amplified, clipped, and completely devoid of negotiation. The metallic shrick-shrick of shotguns chambering rounds echoed off the wet schist walls.