FOURTH BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES OF FANTASILIA SERIES
𝘈 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘭. 𝘈 𝘣𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘦. 𝘈 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘵. 𝘈 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦.
Xanthiene Vivenca, a fairy with a bounty for her soul, is caught between...
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He was drowning.
Or, at least, that's how it felt like. His lungs strained to take in air while his body sank into the darkest depths. Of what? He didn't know. His limbs refused to work despite his silent, panicked pleas. Everything hurt.
Fitting end to a murderer.
He gasped but no air came out. He tried swimming back up, to find the surface, but his eyes remained hazy and useless. The darkness smothered him, taking away everything, including his breath. He drifted down. Further. There's no surface to find at all.
Hold on, please. We're here. Just hold on.
Who said that? It's a voice he knew so well. He shouldn't hear that voice, not after what he did. It belonged to a friend he betrayed. To all the people he hurt. To his mother whose own bane he plunged into her heart. He shouldn't be hearing those voices. Moreover, he shouldn't be hearing her voice. It's the voice of the friend who once promised to help him and of the girl he loved.
His form slammed into an ocean floor or something just as soft and unstable. No matter how hard he forced his limbs to move, to do anything, they stayed locked. Rigid. Heavy. Useless. Pain, huge, cruel blasts of it, controlled every corner of his mind and soul. Then, a bolt of warmth speared through his veins and he felt himself move without his consent.
More voices split and merged in his head. They were screaming, tearing, picking at his senses. Air invaded his nose until he choked like it was poison to his system. His form slammed against the soft ocean floor. Again and again. The pain was a laughing noise at the back of his head. A current roared in his ears. His mind floated out of his body.
Was this...was this what dying felt like?
Footsteps. A sharp tinkle of something metal. A dagger coming to reap his soul from the land of the living, maybe?
Then silence. Was this the afterlife?
The pain reared its ugly head back. A fresh gust of air passed without hindrance through his lungs. His form melted against the floor, only now he felt the hardness of it. He wasn't in the ocean. He was...
The voices fell silent. Were they waiting for something?
A fist of pain slammed into his gut. His chest tightened as his stomach churned. He choked. Something went back out of his throat. He coughed and retched, each heave shaking something inside him. As much as he wanted the rueful noise coming from his own lips to stop, he couldn't.
Steady now. He is still disoriented. A familiar, masculine voice rang in his ears. What...what was he doing here?
Slowly, his body rose from the ocean. The darkness peeled away from him like it was loosening its hold on his limbs and throat. Light broke through, first as a thin line, then it grew bigger, rounder...
A sudden flash of light blinded him as his eyes shot open. Surface. He reached the surface. Strands of white hair lined his vision. He knitted his eyebrows. No, not white. A different shade. Was it beige? No. Khaki.
