The Echoed Realm

by A. J. Vrana

  The last thing he heard from the world outside was Rusalka’s fading whimper—a hopeless plea lost to the wind.

  20

  The cabin was bare, swimming in darkness save for a dash of silver moonlight spilling over the bathroom door. Kai’s animal senses were hampered by the dreamscape’s midnight haze. Seconds yawned by, yet his eyes didn’t adjust. Pulled to the only thing he could see, Kai reached for the rusted knob. His fingers numbed by the time he turned his wrist. Again, Kai stepped into blackness, and the door slammed shut behind him.

  Cold breath washed over Kai’s ear—ragged as it fought to form a single word—an accusation.

  “Monster,” it said.

  Kai swallowed down the bile. He knew exactly who it was. “Brother.”

  “What’s the matter?” he sneered. “Forgotten my name?”

  “It’s a boring name,” said Kai. “So…biblical.”

  Quiet chuckles chimed against the ceramics. “A fitting name. You’d know that if you could remember.”

  “Remember what?”

  “There’s no sense in telling a man who he is if he doesn’t already know.”

  The space was claustrophobic, reminding Kai of the years he’d been trapped with Abaddon. It’d felt just like this—a barren cell with mouldy walls and a cracked, distorted mirror. Of course his nemesis had chosen it for their reunion.

  Kai took a step forward and growled. “You know I hate riddles.”

  The reply droned from all around. “I am the First.”

  “You got a name, or you just like winning races?” Kai mocked, sickened by the smell of fumes.

  Another piercing silence followed. The First’s voice, suddenly crisp, rumbled directly in front of Kai. “My name,” a face in the bathroom mirror cleaved through the murky shroud, “is Velizar.”

  Kai’s hand struck the old porcelain sink as he stumbled back. The man in the mirror was Kai’s own spitting image, but where Kai’s gaze was scarlet fire, this man’s eyes were a cold metallic gold. His face was gaunt like he’d been starved of the malice that sustained him, and his jet-black hair had grown into a wild mane that barely passed his shoulders.

  “Velizar,” Kai began, the name bitter on his tongue.

  The man tilted his head, his gleaming eyes hollowed out, his skin waxy and pale. His mouth cracked open in a dazed smile. “Poor baby brother—I forget names mean nothing to you.” He braced his arms against the walls, something oily-slick splattering around his fingertips. Pulling forward, he emerged from the mirror whole.

  The shroud lifted, the sink and the mirror disappeared, and the brothers found themselves standing in the cabin’s main room. The walls were spattered with human silhouettes made of ash, and Kai’s furniture was ripped to pieces; his wool blanket was in tatters, and his mattress had been gutted, the inner sponge littering the floor like confetti.

  “Why are you here?” asked Kai, his eyes trailing the charred remains of all the people who’d perished that night. “You hate me. Why stay here?”

  “Hate you?” Velizar wrapped an emaciated arm around his bulging ribs and laughed, the sound identical to Abaddon’s maniacal cackle. The mirror image grinned and repeated Abaddon’s words. “What would I do without you?”

  Memories of trauma kneaded into Kai’s skull. “Fucking with me was the core of your existence. That doesn’t make it anything less than hate.”

  “Oh, little brother,” Velizar sighed. “You know as well as I that the line between love and hate is paper-thin. And paper is so easy to tear, and even easier to burn. It’s more fragile than life itself.”

  “Cut the shit. Say what you mean.”

  A chilly hand reached for Kai, clasping his shoulder. “I will always hate…and love you. That is why I need you. And I suspect,” he smiled like a threat on the edge of a blade, “that you’re here because you need me too.”

  Kai’s muscles tensed, his face aching from the scowl he’d been wearing. How he loathed himself for what he was about to do; he would’ve rather cut out a piece of his own heart. But if Rusalka was a cancer and Velizar the nauseating cure, he’d have to endure the oncoming sickness.

  “I have…a problem.”

  Velizar closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, swooning as he hummed. “Ah, yes. I can smell her now. But I don’t see how she’s a problem I’m obligated to help with.”

  “You’re not. But I know you want back in.” Kai mustered the courage to close in and grab the phantom by the back of the neck. “I also know you won’t share me with her. If I invite you in, she’ll fuck off.”

  The corners of Velizar’s lips tugged up. “You want me to force her out. What’s to stop you from exorcising me afterwards, little brother? As I recall, you have a fledgling Dreamwalker in your pocket.”

  Something sticky and sour filled Kai’s mouth, but he gulped it back down. He’d always been self-reliant, even when Alice took care of him. Somehow, she never got angry about all the trouble he caused. Maybe she knew he’d already had enough anger in his life. On his sixteenth birthday, he’d come home late after a week of fistfights and his second suspension, but that didn’t stop her from sticking a candle into a rack of pork ribs she’d made—and she hated cooking. She ignored the bruises, pretended there’d been no phone call from the principal, and then handed him the lilac birthday card.

  He never asked for help, but he also never took responsibility. Finding Miya had only disguised that. He’d taken for granted the solace they found in each other; Miya tempered the worst of his impulses while he emboldened her to push through obstacles without trepidation. Yet their victories gave way to new trials, and those trials blew back the cover on Kai’s shortcomings. Now, the only way out was through the very hell he’d fought to be rid of, and it disgusted him down to the marrow of his bones. He was about to uproot everything he’d built, everything he’d become.

  His gaze hardened as he held fast to his resolve. “What if it’s something more permanent?”

  Velizar’s brows shot up, and he scoffed. “Are you proposing an integration? Two become one?”

  “Why not? I won’t be Miya’s burden anymore.” His grip tightened on the back of Velizar’s neck, bruising the cool, pale flesh. “You’re my problem now.”

  Kai felt goosebumps against his fingertips. Velizar was grinning like a madman, his eyes teeming with sheer ecstasy.

  “Show me this demon that haunts you,” he hissed before his tone softened, “and let me protect you from the monsters outside.”

  Kai’s hand dropped to his side. Every fibre screamed that this was wrong—that there was no returning from this Faustian bullshit. Gavran would be vindicated. Ama would sneer, reminding him that she always thought he was garbage. Miya would never forgive him. She’d leave him, and he’d be alone.

  Kai started towards the door. He never imagined he’d have to betray Miya to protect her from Rusalka.

  “Don’t worry about your precious Miya,” Velizar broke in. “I can give you everything she kept from your grasp.”

  “You mean eternal torture?” Kai snorted, welcoming the distraction from his suffocating shame—the menace’s mind-reading be damned.

  “That,” Velizar chuckled, “and the tools you thought only she had.” His fingers brushed the hilt of the hunting knife strapped to Kai’s belt. “There will be no border you cannot cross, no enemy you cannot slay. Not when you’re with me, brother.”

  A flutter rose in Kai’s chest—the prospect of freedom—but he knew better than to believe pretty words. He would test those promises very soon.

  “Poor thing,” Velizar crooned. “You don’t even know why the chains buckled around you.”

  Kai’s throat worked. The dreaded question—why—burned in his mouth, begging to be spat out, but he wouldn’t let it slip.

  The cabin pealed with Velizar’s sickening laughter. “No need to hide your curiosity. If I’d been shackled, I’d surely want to know why.”

  “I don’t care why,” Kai deflected, but it was
a lie, and Velizar knew it.

  “When your precious Dreamwalker broke the cycle, she unbound us. She is chaos, after all, and in sowing it, she became something more while unravelling us both. She reduced us to our simplest forms: the will of the First,” his gaunt cheeks stretched as he smiled like a sickle, “and a wolf under a willow tree, waiting for a girl he’d become dependent on.”

  Fire raked up Kai’s esophagus. He didn’t know who he was angry at anymore. It’s not her fault, he reasoned. She had no way of knowing.

  “She tethered you to her,” Velizar swooned close, his voice hoarse. “It is her fault. You were free before her; you were free with me. She always rips you from me and leashes you like a dog. When she awoke on that fated night, you become a casualty.”

  Something ancient and terrible stirred in Kai—a gutting familiarity with the emaciated creature next to him. Velizar was telling the truth.

  It doesn’t matter, Kai insisted, guilt corroding his anger. Velizar and Rusalka were a bane; he would rather spend an eternity with the Dreamwalker, hitched by iron links.

  “She’s not here,” Velizar reminded him. “Now, only I can give you power…and freedom.”

  Kai kicked the door open, the snap of wood cathartic as he stepped into the foggy glade. Rusalka hadn’t moved. She clung to a birch tree like a leech hanging from salted skin, a puddle of melted flesh and grey pus pooling around her feet as she wheezed. She was weak here. Her eyes widened as she stared past Kai, her slit-green irises dilated into perfect spheres of terror.

  “What have you done!” she shrieked, trying to mask her fear with rage. But Kai knew the smell of fear better than anything; it was an elixir to the predator in him.

  Roused by the intoxicating scent, he unsheathed his hunting knife and twirled it smoothly around his fingers. Striding forward, he seized Rusalka by her slimy hair and drove the blade into her heart. “I hope you bleed,” he growled through clenched teeth, twisting the hilt for good measure.

  Rusalka jerked forward, retching as the steel pierced her chest. Coughing up a tarry liquid that smelled like asphalt, she grabbed Kai’s wrist with a trembling hand and squeezed.

  He was on the verge of breaking out into a triumphant grin when she suddenly tugged his arm and plunged the knife deeper between her ribs. With an iron hold, she pulled him close and locked her fingers in his dishevelled hair.

  “Men like you are the reason I’m here. Men harbouring their fear like a fugitive until they find the right woman to blame, the right one to kill.” A puppeteer pulling strings, Rusalka forced him to twist the knife a second time. She held him steady and pressed her lips to his, then cooed sweetly as inky life spilled from her wound. “Go on then. Carve up my heart, little wolf. Carve it up until yours is finally still.”

  As blood soaked over skin and clothing alike, Kai’s teeth began to chatter. His hand trembled until he couldn’t tell if he was clutching the knife or trying desperately to let go. Reeling from the loss of control, something inside him cracked. His mouth opened, and he released a grief-stricken roar. Tears that’d been waiting for decades flooded his vision as he ripped Rusalka’s hand from his hair and pushed her back, his fist still closed around the haft. The once silver blade came out black as sin.

  Kai dropped the weapon. He fell to his knees and gashed at the soil and stone with his bare hands. Knuckles shattered and fingernails came free, but he welcomed the pain—anything to get her off him.

  For the first time in years, he wanted nothing more than the metamorphosis that came without his say-so and broke his every bone in a torrent of unyielding change. How much simpler that’d been—how much easier to endure than this wretched thing that burrowed in his mind and gnawed at his heart. Guilt. Shame. Self-loathing. This was the language of the tormented, not wolves among men.

  He wanted the pain back. He wanted himself back.

  “And you will have it,” snarled Velizar, his icy hands closing over the sides of Kai’s skull. “You will have it all and more.”

  Cold seeped into him. Velizar’s voice—once outside of him—rang from the empty cavern behind his ribcage. Darkness tore through Kai like starving teeth tore through flesh, and the breaths he once called his own stilled as his heart now beat for two souls.

  The earth shifted on its axis as something wicked rippled through the dreamscape. Kai’s bloodied hand withdrew from the soil as he retrieved his knife and rose to his feet. Inhaling deeply, he lifted his gaze—hungry red eyes turning Rusalka to stone. The storm had passed, but the beast had awoken.

  21

  MIYA

  A pungent, death-like odour filled Miya’s nostrils. Her stomach churned like spoiled butter, and she lurched forward off the bench.

  Ama was next to her before her knees hit the grass. “What’s wrong?”

  “Something’s off.” Lightning pain shot down Miya’s arms and erupted through her fingers.

  She bit back a cry, but she had bigger concerns. Closing off her senses, she scanned every crevice of the dreamscape—at least those she could reach with her mind. Yet no matter how forcefully she pushed past the border between worlds, she felt only the tide of panic rising rapidly through her chest.

  Miya’s muddy green eyes swirled with naked dread. “Something’s happened to Kai.”

  Ama’s lips parted. Though her expression was mild, Miya could see past her calm façade. Hawk-eyed, her shoulder twitched in anticipation. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Miya. “He’s there, I can feel him. He’s just…different.” No matter how far apart they were, she could always feel Kai. He was an open window of clear, brash intention. Now, it felt like peeping through a hole in the wall, cold and shadow drifting in from the other side.

  “I don’t like it,” Ama growled.

  “Ow!” Miya jolted back, startling them both. Heat oscillated against her chest where the dream stone rested in the copper raven’s talons.

  Pulling the pendant out, Miya found the rock glowing with mordant energy. Purple, green, and gold shimmers snaked around inside their casing as though trying to burst free. She rested it on her palm and felt it pulsing faster and faster, like a heartbeat in distress.

  “No, no, no. Not you too!” Miya feared for her talisman. It was her totem—her compass in the dreamscape. Without it, she was as lost as any other dreamer.

  Ama’s eyes were like blazing sunstones. “Get up,” she ordered, pulling Miya to her feet. “We need to go.”

  Miya stumbled as she was yanked forward. “Go where?”

  “To save an idiot,” Ama barked.

  “Which one?”

  The white wolf turned. “The one with the other half of the dream stone.”

  Miya gawped, taken aback by the disclosure. “You know where it is?”

  Ama sped down the cemetery hill, Miya at her heels. “He wasn’t ready to part with it, so we broke it in two.”

  “Who’s he?”

  Ama faltered as they hit the main road. “Mason Evans.”

  “What?” Miya halted. “Why?”

  A car whizzed by, children laughing as they stuck their hands out the back windows. Ama slowed at the mouth of The Spade’s alleyway, her anxious retreat to the tavern foiled by Miya’s heels planted firmly on the ground. Finally, she answered, “Gavran placed it in the doctor’s care knowing he’d eventually find his way to you. His grief and obsession with answers made him the perfect vehicle to deliver the dream stone to its rightful owner.” She arrested Miya with her gaze. “Gavran sprinkled breadcrumbs to feed Mason’s fixation, to show him a path to something beyond himself. It was all good fun for a mischievous raven—tricks to stave off boredom. He hadn’t anticipated the doctor would cling to you so intensely—that he wouldn’t give up the stone.”

  Miya’s throat nearly closed as the woven tapestry of Gavran’s and Ama’s schemes revealed itself. “You manipulated a grieving man to get to me?”

  “We didn’t trust Kai. He’s always been volatile. There was no telling
if he’d overcome his demons or succumb to them. But the stone—it would’ve at least opened a door for you to escape Black Hollow.”

  “Then why not just give it to me?” Miya strode forward and grabbed Ama’s hand. “Why put Mason through hell?”

  “Because he sought hell out. He asked to be called.” Amber eyes glowed against the twilight. “Grief reverberates, shaking things from their slumber.”

  “You thought you were helping him?” Miya asked, incredulous.

  “We are not benevolent gods, Miya. We answer those who seek us on our own terms. He wanted to be the hero of someone’s story, so we let him try.”

  “He was your pawn!”

  “And he is better for it.”

  Miya swallowed down her anger. She didn’t have time for this. Whatever was happening to Mason was severe enough to give her half of the dream stone a sweltering fever. If she didn’t hurry, it would implode. “We can argue later.” She pushed past Ama and thundered into the alleyway where she felt the stone’s thrum grow louder.

  “You weren’t ready,” Ama called after her, her voice breaking.

  Miya whirled on her. “What?”

  “You asked why we didn’t give you the stone.” Ama sighed. “The truth is, you weren’t ready. You had battles to win first. Fears to conquer.”

  “How would you know that?”

  A thin smile tugged at Ama’s lips, melancholy settling into the lines of her face. “You wouldn’t have wanted the stone, Miya. All you wanted was to find your own way. If we’d given you the dream stone, you never would’ve known if it was your strength or ours that saved you. And that would’ve eaten you alive.” Her expression warmed, her eyes distant and wistful. “I wanted you to know you’re strong enough on your own. I wanted you to believe in yourself before you believed in magical rocks or hidden worlds.”

  A hush loomed over them. Tears stung Miya’s eyes, threatening to overflow. All the bitter things that clung to her heart began to dislodge, falling away and striking her where it bruised deepest. How naïve she’d been to think fate was an impartial arbitrator—a random hand that determined everyone’s beginning like a child grabbing a toy from a dark chest.