No Longer Hunted

In the beginning, there was only Light. In the end, there is only ourselves. 

There is no real answer to what waits for us in the afterlife, so of course that’s the question everyone wastes their lives trying to figure out. Is it an eternal paradise, or is it simply nothingness? Not even the Reaper could tell you, honestly.

The thing about the “end” of something is, there is no story afterwards. The world moves on, of course, people continue to grow and live and experience. But our perspective has ended, and those experiences will never exist for us. Yet, that never stops us from starting anyway.

When we pick up a book for the first time, for example, we know the story will end eventually. There might be another book in the series, and that book might follow the same characters and storyline. But there will still be a final book, a final chapter, a final goodbye. We read anyway.

With books, however, the end realistically means nothing. There is no real impact on our life. A good story will have an impact on our soul, but we will still get to experience other stories and other worlds.

In life, we don’t have the same luxury. The end is the end. What waits on the other side, we won’t know until it’s too late to turn back.

The Light saw the beginning of everything, this much we know as fact. The Darkness, though, saw the end of ends. Shortly after the fall of Jonah, King Louis had a vision. He called together Abraham, and Liam, and Lincoln. He brought in Leon, and Logan, and Calypso. He summoned Heidi, and Jonathan, and Zebediah. Once he had everyone together, Louis told them of his vision.

Midworld in flames. Every creature fighting against the next. Chaos, anger, and strife. Bodies littering the streets like weeds. Vampyres, werewolves, Fae, witch, and human alike, dropping like leaves in the fall.

At the center, a girl of maybe seventeen, her long hair like ink stains in the breeze. One eye a vibrant cerulean color, the other as black as her hair. Fire swirling around her in a vortex of flame, completely out of her control. She was the cause for the fall, of that he was certain.

Louis had never seen the girl, but she was familiar in a way that he could not shake. The Elder Council, however, could not be bothered. The power Louis spoke of was unheard of, and they had heard of everything there was to know. Louis pled with them to take the vision seriously, but they simply laughed.

Abraham, still reeling from the fight with Jonah, was annoyed with Louis. “You bring me here, pull me from rebuilding my home, and for what?” He demanded of the King. “A bad dream?”

“This was no mere dream!” Louis insisted, though the other man had already begun to leave. “This girl will be the end of us all!”

Abraham did not reply, nor did he turn back. He just walked out of the door with a shake of his head, and returned to his Realm.

Louis then turned to his brothers, with the hope they would believe him. Logan and Leon would not meet his eye, Lincoln was looking at him with pity, and Liam looked almost excited at the idea. “Brothers?” Louis called to them, in desperation.

“You heard the Council.” Logan shrugged. “There’s no evidence to support your ‘vision,’ Louis.”

“I mean…” Leon added. “A mere girl, destroying all the Realms? That is simply impossible.”

Lincoln just shook his head, but the pity in his eyes deepened. Without a word, he stood and took his leave.

Leon and Logan followed, though Leon did leave a whispered apology as he went.

“Fire, you say?” Liam asked, his tone vastly wrong for the serious situation. He sounded almost… ecstatic?

“Yes. Fire, in a vortex, destroying everything. Why do you ask?” Louis answered, sounding defeated.

“No reason.” Liam replied cooly. “We will have to keep an eye out for someone who matches this description.”

“You… you believe me?” Louis barely believed what he was hearing.

“Of course, Brother. Your visions have never been wrong before!”

What Liam did not say, and what Louis did not yet know, was that Liam had a different plan. Liam had just fathered his first child, a daughter he had named Faith, and she had already begun to exhibit abilities that matched those in Louis’s vision.

Liam was almost positive his Faith was the girl in the vision, and he was determined to raise her into someone capable of the destruction his brother foresaw.

Louis eventually forgot the description of the girl in his vision, due to stress and time. Twenty-four years later, he stood in front of a girl with hair as black as ink and held her while she cried over the loss of her father. She was only sixteen.