Page 69 of Shadows Ascend (Remnant Archives #2)

T orn, rendered.

I was floating in a haze of pain and anguish.

Who am I?

Darkness.

I was the darkness. A hungry void that desired nothing yet craved everything.

Faintly, I remember I was ravenous in my chase for the bird shifter’s soul.

His name mattered not—all I could recall was that he needed to be fucking wiped out from the universe for all of time.

My need for it had been powerful, my hunger for him infinite.

He had been mine to goddess damn devour until the time decided to make another foe to feed me once again.

There had also been fear and anguish, so much of it that I thought…perhaps it would be best if I consumed that too—an entire universe to gorge upon.

Then her voice screamed up towards me and I had hesitated.

Why did I hesitate? What was it about her sound that made me feel a shattered heart and remember a fragmented soul?

Torn, severed.

I was still floating, battered and wrecked.

That’s what had happened. I paused and the red light burrowed deep, cutting through my all consuming darkness. There had been alarm, something inside me knowing a fear of this power that ripped through me. But in my ignorance, I did not listen and it had cost me.

Now that same power crawled through the holes of damaged darkness while I drifted through nothingness. Its presence fed off of my splintered soul, a deadly parasite that pulsed and writhed.

How had I gotten here?

What had I forgotten?

Fuck, who was I?

Torn, fractured.

“I'm not letting you go, shifter…”

Goddess that voice…it was light in darkness. Why did I want to hear more of it?

“You once said that one day you would get us right, and I would have nowhere to hide. Well you got us right Emon, and I will never let you go now.”

Emon …my name was Emon.

I stilled.

Memories flickering in and out of existence.

The sweetest of laughter, fierce emerald eyes, a soft caress, shadows cool and soothing.

I grasped at them, untouchable.

But still I clawed towards them brutally.

Torn, shattered.

I was torn and shattered.