Page 23 of Academy of the Wicked, Year One
The darkness stretches endlessly in all directions, yet somehow I'm not lost. Perhaps because I'm holding onto the only real thing in this void – a crystal that can't seem to decide what it wants to be.
One moment it's midnight blue metal, cool and solid in my palm. The next it shifts, becoming glass so clear it seems to capture starlight that doesn't exist in this place. Back and forth it transforms, as if caught between two natures, two possibilities.
Just like me.
I stand in the center of a circle I can't see but somehow know is there. Voices drift through the darkness, each one dripping with contempt.
"Abomination..."
"Should have been drowned at birth..."
"Neither one thing nor the other – what use is a creature that doesn't belong anywhere?"
Part of me knows this isn't my memory.
These aren't my wounds.
I'm experiencing someone else's past, someone else's pain. But knowledge doesn't make it hurt any less. What is unraveling around me seems to intertwine with similarities of my own childhood, which begins to make me wonder what is real or fable.
What is mine…and what is theirs?
The crystal pulses in my hands, its perpetual transformation between metal and glass matching the rhythm of my heartbeat. It's the only warmth in this void, the only thing that feels real and true while everything else tries to convince me I'm nothing.
"Worthless..."
"Cursed..."
"Better off dead..."
It becomes harder to separate myself from these foreign memories. The hatred seeps in like poison, familiar in ways it shouldn't be.
Haven't I heard similar whispers?
Haven't I felt this same isolation?
Ghost girl.
Freak.
Death's little puppet.
Tears slip down my cheeks before I realize I'm crying. The sobs that escape my throat sound young, broken in a way that speaks of innocence not yet fully shattered. My hands — smaller than they should be – clutch the crystal closer.
"I just want..." The words catch in my throat, thick with longing. "I just want to be loved. To belong. To be warm..."
As if in answer to my plea, warmth suddenly envelops me. Not the gentle warmth of sunlight or the comfortable warmth of a fireplace – this is different. It's like being wrapped in a blanket woven from starless nights and ancient promises.
I look up, surprised by the comfort in what should be terrifying.
My breath catches.
Above me looms a creature of shadow and bone, its skull gleaming with an ivory sheen that shouldn't be possible in this lightless void. Multiple eyes blink in patterns that speak of curiosity rather than malice. What should inspire terror instead fills me with a sense of safety I've never known.
A Duskwalker.
But not just any Duskwalker.
There's something familiar about this being, about the way its shadows curl around me like protective wings. Its presence carries an essence of winter frost, of caves that have never known sunlight, of tombs sealed for millennia.
