Page 50 of Crossing Between

I was nowhere and everywhere.

The world had dissolved into endless gray, a featureless expanse that stretched in all directions without horizon or boundary. I couldn't feel my body. Was I standing? Floating? I had no sensation of up or down, no weight, no substance.

"Hello?" My voice didn't echo. It didn't even sound like it traveled beyond my own consciousness.

Whispers brushed against my awareness. Dozens, no, hundreds of voices speaking at once. They surrounded me, slipping through the grayness like ghosts, too faint to understand.

"Who's there?" I tried again.

The whispers intensified, overlapping each other in a cascade of sound that still somehow remained just beyond comprehension. It was like standing in a crowded room with everyone speaking in languages I didn't know, the pressure of communication without meaning.

A tendril of panic curled through whatever remained of me in this place. Was this the trial? Just floating in this eerie nowhere land while disembodied voices taunted me?

The grayness rippled, and suddenly a scene materialized before me, not around me, but in front of me, like watching a television screen suspended in nothingness.

It was me. Little me, in a black dress that was too big, drowning my small frame. My hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail that Mom would never have approved of. Ryan stood beside me, barely five, clutching my hand with white knuckles. We were at our parents' funeral.

I watched as little Zoey stared at the caskets with dry eyes, too shocked to cry, too young to fully comprehend the permanence of death.

I remembered that day. The suffocating smell of lilies, the oppressive weight of black clothes, and muted voices, the way my grandmother's hand felt clammy on my shoulder.

"I didn't understand," I whispered to the grayness. "I thought they were just sleeping."

The image shifted, rippling like water disturbed by a stone. Now I was looking at our living room, later that same night. Little Zoey sat cross-legged on the floor, next to the casket that held Mom's body. I watched myself close my eyes.

"Come back," little Zoey whispered. "Please come back."

I felt it. That tug, that connection I hadn't understood then.

The raw, untrained power surging through me, reaching out across the veil between life and death.

In the vision, Mom's body jerked upright in the open casket the funeral home had delivered for the wake the next day.

Her eyes opened, but they were wrong, vacant, confused, lacking the warmth and intelligence that had made her Mom.

The necromantic magic had worked, but imperfectly. I hadn't known how to bind the soul properly, hadn't understood what I was doing. I'd brought back the shell without the essence. I hadn't understood anything.

"I didn't mean to," I told the grayness, my voice breaking. "I just wanted my mom back."

The scene shifted again, and this time it was years earlier.

A picnic in the park, Mom and Dad laughing as Ryan chased after a butterfly.

I was showing Dad a cartwheel, beaming with pride as he clapped.

Mom's hair caught the sunlight, turning it to spun gold.

Dad's deep laugh echoed across the grass.

We had been happy once. Normal. Before the accident that took them both, before I discovered what I could do in the worst possible way.

The image rippled and changed. Ryan, now grown, sprawled across my couch, empty beer bottles on the coffee table. His charming, mischievous grin as he promised, yet again, that he'd start looking for a job tomorrow. The way he'd brushed off my concerns with a laugh.

"Nothing can touch me, sis," he'd raised his bottle in a mock toast. "I'm invincible."

Another ripple, another scene. Me, dressed in my best interview outfit, walking confidently to the bus stop, and then spectacularly wiping out on concrete. I'd met Kenji right after.

Despite everything, I almost laughed at the memory. God, I'd been so mortified.

The scenes vanished, and the grayness turned thick and oppressive. The whispers that had been background noise suddenly amplified, becoming distinct voices. Hundreds of them, thousands, all shouting at once.

"Please, no!"

"Help us!"

"It burns, it burns!"

"My children, where are my children?"

"Don't let it take me!"

Screams of agony mixed with desperate pleas pierced through the formless void around me. Sobbing, wailing, begging voices pressed in from all sides, creating a chorus of suffering that threatened to drown me. The sound vibrated through my bones, making my teeth ache and my skin crawl.

I couldn't see anyone. There were no faces to match these anguished cries, but I could feel them, like cold fingers brushing against me.

Souls in torment, consumed by terror and pain.

Their suffering radiated outward in waves, washing over me like an icy tide, each ripple carrying fragments of their desperation.

Something about their cries felt ancient and eternal, as if they'd been trapped here forever, and would remain long after I was gone.

My chest tightened. I couldn't breathe. Were these the souls the Essencefeaster had devoured?

"Stop," I gasped, covering my ears though I had no physical form to shield. "Please stop!"

The voices crescendoed into a deafening discord, desperation clawing through each scream until I couldn't distinguish one tormented cry from another. My heart slammed violently against my ribs like it was trying to escape the horror surrounding me.

When I tried to inhale, my lungs seized, refusing to expand as if the air in this gray limbo had solidified.

Black spots bloomed across my vision, spreading and merging as the grayness around me pulsed.

A cold, primal fear crawled up my spine.

Not the fleeting kind that comes from watching a horror movie, but the bone-deep terror of facing something ancient and malevolent that recognized me even as I failed to understand it.

Somewhere in all of the dissonance, I thought I heard a voice that sounded achingly familiar, but it disappeared beneath the tide of suffering before I could grasp it.

"I can't...I can't breathe!"

A tremendous BOOM thundered through the grayness, silencing the voices instantly. The pressure released, and I sucked in a desperate breath as the gray parted like curtains.

A figure appeared before me. Shanna.

She looked exactly as I remembered her from the scene Quilith had shown me, but somehow more.

Her beauty was luminous, transcendent, her silver-blonde hair floating around her face as if underwater.

But her eyes, they were filled with such profound sadness that it made my heart ache just to look at her.

Shanna smiled, the expression gentle and sorrowful all at once. She reached out, her hand cool against my cheek. The touch felt impossibly real in this unreal place.

"It's a heavy burden," her voice like distant chimes. "Being a soulbinder with creator magic, child."

I stared at her, overwhelmed by her presence.

"Please," my voice thick with emotion. "I need your help. The Essencefeaster, it's taken my brother. It's hurting people. I have to stop it, I have to save everyone." My words tumbled out, desperate and pleading. "Including Ryan. There has to be a way to save him, too."

Shanna's expression didn't change, but something in her eyes deepened. She said nothing for a long time, her hand still resting against my cheek, her gaze searching mine as if looking for something hidden within me.

When she finally spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper. "Would you sacrifice yourself to stop the demon?"

"Yes," I answered immediately, without hesitation.

But even as the word left my lips, images flashed before my eyes.

Varon's rare smile that seemed reserved just for me, Kenji's playful wink, and the tenderness of his kiss, Elias's gentle strength, and the way he called me "kaerasta.

" For a single, selfish moment, I wanted to take back my answer.

Shanna saw my pause and the conflict in my eyes. Her smile turned knowing, almost maternal.

With a graceful wave of her arm, the gray nothingness around us transformed.

Suddenly, we were sitting in a cozy parlor, with overstuffed armchairs and a cheerful fire crackling in a stone hearth.

Bookcases lined the walls, and soft rugs covered a wooden floor.

It looked like something from a Victorian novel, warm and inviting.

Shanna sat in one of the chairs and patted the seat beside her on a small loveseat. "Come, sit with me, Zoey. We have much to discuss, and little time to do it."

I moved toward her, feeling my legs and body again as I sank onto the cushion.

The loveseat was as comfortable as it looked, and the fire's warmth reached me even across the room.

Despite the comfort, my heart was racing.

I was talking to Shanna, and hopefully, she was going to help me save Ryan and stop the Essencefeaster.