Chapter68: When the Darkness Comes

*Akin* There is no time here. Not really. It stretches and twists and folds in on itself like smoke curling in the wind, and I’ve long stopped trying to measure it. I don’t know how long I’ve been here, only that my muscles have forgotten movement and my mind has frayed at the edges more times than I can count. Sometimes I hear my own heartbeat. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I remember the feeling of a sword in my hand, the warmth of Maerilee’s breath against my neck, the solid weight of River’s shoulder brushing mine in battle. Sometimes I think they are figments of my imagination, people who never truly lived. Here in this place, the in-between where shadow bleeds into shadow and the air pulses with silent, screaming magic, I barely exist. The darkness doesn’t just cover me. It holds me. It lives in me. It wraps around my limbs like cold iron, slipping between my ribs, threading through the places I thought were mine and making them something else. My thoughts no longer come in order.