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Lindi would never forget the horrifying first days after she bonded with Weldir, the faceless god shrouded in mist. How they continued to haunt her years later, flickering behind her eyelids like some waking nightmare.

The treacherous hike across a desolate desert, where the heat of the sun had baked her underneath her blood-stained, dirtied nightgown.

How the nights had grown so cold from the mid-autumn breeze that her feet were left numb, and her fingers ached against the chill.

The way one shoe had blistered the back of her right foot.

While the other foot, bare and exposed, had become torn from the dirt and rocks, causing her to limp forward with each step until she lost the other shoe, and that foot had joined in to radiate agony like it was creeping up her leg bones.

How Daekura, what he called them, had hunted a defenceless Lindi.

She and Weldir had quickly learned he could bring her soul to wherever he pleased within his mist bordering the Veil on Earth.

Her heart squeezed in anxiety at remembering how each time she’d died and returned to the ‘safety’ of his realm, she had to restart her journey.

To die. Only to be brought back to full health, as if it was nothing but a horrible nightmare flickering behind her closed eyelids. But each time she knew it was, when she floated in haunting darkness and then was pushed back to light – right next to the canyon where her life had turned to hell.

Where she’d fled from rabid, mindless horrors by willingly slipping off the edge and screaming the entire fall to her death.

Perhaps it was because she was human, but learning to control her newfound ability to turn incorporeal hadn’t been second nature to her.

She hadn’t even known she could will herself to change.

It was only after the third time she died, eaten by the very monsters she’d sought to escape, that she began using it as an evasive tool.

Then again, the mind didn’t think rationally when one was being chased by predators – and becoming an entirely new being was hard to conceptualise.

Lindi was human. She doubted she’d ever let go of that sentiment, despite the fact that she was now something other. She’d known then, as much as she did now, that she needed to swiftly adapt to the adversity of her new life – one she had stupidly chosen.

When she first returned to Earth, Weldir’s theory that she would have a physical form was immediately proven right – as that was the form she’d been given.

It’d taken trial and error to figure out how to change to incorporeal at will – and it was pure will.

The change was as easy as taking her next breath, so long as she remembered to actually do it.

Once she remembered this newfound ability, crossing the desert had been easy.

There had been no hunger to contend with, even when she was physical.

The heat had left her, as had the chill, both lost to the nothingness of her intangible body.

The sun didn’t scald her, didn’t blister her face, and sweat stopped soaking her skin and dirtied dress.

The monsters stopped chasing the only prey they could smell within hundreds of kilometres when there was nothing to scent.

There was freedom in that security, that safety. To no longer exist except for her own sense of self.

A sense of self she feared losing, but had already been turning away from.

Six years had passed since then, and she could feel her mind, her heart, her very will changing. Then again, never in her imaginings did she think she’d ever witness the things she had or do the impossible things she’d done.

Or take the vile actions she had.

It feels like forever ago, she thought, as she looked down into the hot wine she drank from. She held the wooden mug with both hands, letting its blissful heat tingle through her fingertips and palms, as she inspected her own features in the reflection of the yellowy liquid.

It was her face; it hadn’t aged a day. Yet the solemn expression that stared back felt out of place – as it always did.

She missed the carefree, high-spirited, sheltered girl she’d been. Or, rather, she missed the life that had gifted such a blissfully na?ve expression, and the people who had warmed her eyes and lifted the corners of her lips.

Lindi missed her home.

I think I’ll always miss them. Her parents, Allira and Nico, had been good, humble people. They hadn’t deserved to meet their ends the way they did.

She hadn’t deserved any of this, either.

Because after that long and arduous hovering walk across the plains and then forests of Austrális, there had been nothing to return to except more pain.

What had taken three days on horseback had taken Lindi days to cross, and it hadn’t been in the right direction.

After reaching civilisation, she’d then had to trek east towards Rivenspire.

She’d spent most of it in the back of a horse-pulled cart with her legs dangling off the edge, thankful to rest her tired mind more than her feet.

It had taken everything within her heart for Lindi to not confess the truth about Daekura, worried her companions would deem her insane.

Not everyone believed in these devils, and she understood that more people would have to see them before they’d stop being deemed as silly stories to frighten children.

Even in her walks across the desert, she’d only met four – two of which had come a long way to find her by tracking her scent. One even looked... similar to the first one that had been at the cliff that fateful day she’d married a god.

She couldn’t believe how wrong she’d been, and how quickly she’d dismissed the rumours to be falsehoods.

Before Weldir had sent her back to Earth from his realm, Tenebris, he’d told her the truth.

There was a portal connected to another world, some kind of Elvish world – not that she knew what an Elf was – and the Daekura were venturing through it.

He, apparently, couldn’t stop them – although his tone had hinted that may not be entirely true.

He was a fickle god when it came to his answers about himself or the Elvish, or even the Daekura.

Regardless... more were coming.

Every day, a handful of those creepy, snarling devils emerged from that portal, ready and hungry for blood.

Weldir believed that human blood was particularly delicious to them due to how they reacted to the Elvish in the past. Before long, the rare one or two that managed to pass over the desert, likely hiding in the shadows of large boulders, canyons, or rocky mountains, would increase.

Soon, no one would be able to deny their existence.

After contending with them, she knew no one was safe. Not her old village of simple farms, whose inhabitants were putting up meagre fortifications, and not the townspeople erecting walls metres tall. Especially not those who were refusing to erect any at all.

Some Daekura were large, some weren’t, but they would apparently grow in size, in formidable power, with each creature they consumed. She even saw one trying to fucking fly , although it didn’t get far with its small, underdeveloped wings.

And Lindi’s skin crawled as she’d been carted through the night, with her carriage companions none the wiser that those monsters could be lurking in the shadows.

They likely weren’t, as they were struggling to cross the desert, but Weldir had informed her that the forest surrounding the canyon was. .. growing.

Some of the Daekura were, apparently, aiding it. Eating away at the desert to offer a path of shade and life for bloodshed.

A few rather notorious beings were also growing the Veil, breaking off the canyon wall little by little – although Weldir was unclear as to how that was possible.

It was as if the canyon was alive, consuming the very trees the Daekura were growing, only for those trees to bring more life to the very bottom of the cliff.

She wished he had elaborated more, but he’d said she would learn more as time passed.

But enough time had passed for her. Enough to reveal that this new life felt rather empty.

She brought the mug of wine to her lips now that it’d cooled, blew on it, and took a sip of its sour sweetness. She tasted it, but it was like ash going down her throat as she lingered on the past six years and what she’d been greeted with when she finally returned home.

The house had felt foreign after what had transpired there, and her mother had been absent. The villagers had been relieved to find that Lindiwe Bernadi was still alive, but their faces had been strained at the same time.

Because what had been her next destination after such a long journey wasn’t the loving embrace of her mother’s arms, but the desolate seat next to a bed.

Allira had never awoken to discover that her daughter was alive and had returned.

No, she remained comatose, every day slipping further and further away, her pulse slowing and softening with each passing hour.

Considering her mother’s already dwindling health and her weak heart before that horrible night her family had been torn apart, everyone believed that she just couldn’t take it. Her heart was too hurt, physically and emotionally, to survive without Lindi and her beloved husband.

Lindi had been both blessed and cursed with just two days of visiting her mother before she’d passed.

To be there in support as she’d held her fragile hand in her final days of life, hoping her presence was soothing even if it destroyed her.

Although she’d been thankful to be given the opportunity to say goodbye to a living, breathing person, to feel the warmth of a final one-sided hug, it shouldn’t have been necessary.

None of this was.