Ah. I see.

  You ask of me…

  A freefall. Doomed to it. His hands are clammy. Held tight through threaded steel fingers. Hair billows up above them, captured in a braid unwinding, and a face—shadowed once—becomes clearer the longer he looks. She’s grinning, flashing teeth.

  “Roach?” he asks her, and her smile stretches like the skyline.

  “Not for a while now.” Something whirrs, hisses, and then clicks into gear beneath them, too far out of sight for Rivin to catch before they surge upwards at the behest of a turbine’s roar.

  Rivin cries out in shock while strong arms embrace his waist and draw him into a muscular abdomen, his blanche face pillowed by chest. Naturally, he grips on tightly as they crest the sky—no longer falling, no, not as she clicks her heels and sends them hurtling up and over cloud.

  They’re flying. Soaring overhead.

  “Come then, child. Be not afraid.” I call Lachesis forward, and her soul blooms atop the effigy she’s crafted, feeding flesh to bone and foil until she’s once more human and whole. “It has been a hundred years since I last heard a human voice… His still… rings.”

  ‘I’m so tired, Maker. So tired…’

  I flinch away from the memory. “Speak freely, or not at all.”

  Quietly now, less the grand mistress of Fates before me, rather a babe returned to thy mother; aching to suckle.

  “It has been longer, Creator.” She begins, timid. “Far longer than that.”

  Rivin glances down, eyes blown wide. Her boots have grown colour, brown and steel-toed, but strapped into a thick and silver exoskeleton shooting jets of high-powered steam from the soles. He gasps. Kinetic boots. He’s never seen a working pair before, not even on a Seraph.

  When his eyes return, she’s still grinning, her skin growing warm and sun-kissed, but she says nothing, and he waits—waits while her lips fill in, full and struck through one side with a scar—waits as her dark auburn hair finds highlights and shades—waits while a metal arm gleams from a shoulder to the fingertip, steel scoured with crude signatures and creatures, several slapped over with bright stickers—waits for her to finish becoming.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” The Echo boasts, wiggling her brows.

  Rivin purses his lips. “…Yeah.”

  She laughs, jetting them sideways, the speed swallowing up his choked shout.

  Lachesis bows before me. Tricks shed away. I feel the etchings of her death; the torment knotted throughout a lifetime. The task she’d set herself in a first and frightening dream.

  “Mother,” she whimpers, face pressed to the mulberry tile. “Mother, please save us.”

  I do not answer.

  “I have waited a lifetime.” She murmurs, a gaunt arm peeking from beneath her white hair to claw at the floor. “I-I have called—”

  She is so small, and so I draw closer and raise her up from the void to cup her cheeks and wipe her endless tears. “I hear you now. Speak unto me.”

  “Ya ready, Hero?” The Echo inclines her head.

  Rivin nods, wrapping his arms around her waist before they surge, impossible and thrumming, towards the sun. They break through, the bright canopy ripping open as her robotic hand claws across the day, shredding it to reveal a familiar void. Rivin trips up when his feet strike solid ground, the weightlessness gone all too quickly and replaced with the pulse of his rapid heartbeat, the lurch of his lungs willed into exertion.

  Around them, the scenes have returned, no longer mere shadows playing with his eyes but rather striking and bold against the dark canvas. Glistening, their secrets spotlighted by an unearthly glow.

  Together, they run towards the brightest.

  She holds me where I hold her, fingers taut and desperate though they disappear within my light. “You must return.” She begins, pressing her face into me. “You must choose again.”

  “My child…” I stroke her gently. “I cannot.”

  “You must!” She implores, tugging at essence.

  “Don’t swarm me, little one.” I press her gently back. “Your pleas cannot change Fate as you so envision.”

  “I know that is not true.” She whispers, slumping now, heavy and into my hold.

  I tell her plainly. “It must be.”

  “We’ll need a few more hands,” The Echo chirps beside him. Rivin is panting too hard to respond, his body caught forever on the edge while never tipping over, when mercifully, she slows her stride to an even lope, and he sucks in air desperately.

  He spies from the side, pictures tearing open, and figures launching from the rippling abyss and into colour besides them, each draped in a unique blend of the same armour. The first, shredding through a scene of rushing floodwater, skids ahead, waving a gleaming machete. His mohawk, wet against his scalp and face, sheds droplets across a wicked smirk. Behind him, the vision ripples, sound leaking through the cuts:

  ‘Are you here to try and stop me?’

  A pause. ‘Should I try?’

  Laughter. ‘Everyone should try. If they care.’

  The figure clicks his tongue, shooting Rivin a finger gun. “Sup, shorty.”

  Rivin feels his smile pull. “Slink. It is you.”

  “No… No. No!” Lachesis hisses, throwing up her hands despite me. I am pushed away. “You are responsible, and you cannot turn eye!”

  “You test me, Little One.”

  She steps closer, her eyes wild and blown. “It is I who have been tested; my brethren, my sisters. Humanity.”

  I feel myself growing prickly. Scornful. “You have lived.”

  “You truly have been sleeping.” She replies, lips curling with a disgust that wounds me, that cuts deep across my whole. “Or blind. Or uncaring.”

  “Careful now.” My voice is low, but even here, my anger quakes the ground.

  The void shakes, and the second figure is less graceful, bursting through a vision of storming weather, a plethora of commands screaming out behind them as rain gushes out and onto the floor.

  ‘Sir, we have it surrounded!’

  ‘Soldier, stand down. Stand down!”

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?!’

  ‘Stand the FUCK down!’

  They stumble, trip and fall, into the arrival of the third, who narrowly catches them both; emerging from a flickering portrait of campfire, a dense and thick forest that blows a fresh and crisp scent into space alongside a merry song.

  “Damn it, Ricket!” curses Chip, righting himself. “This was supposed to be the cool part.”

  “I didn’t mean it!” defends Ricket, his bashful face hidden partly beneath a vermillion blindfold and thick red dreads. He turns to them, flashing a beaming smile as they fall into line together. “Good running, Riv!”

  “Please, all he did was scream.” A fourth, slim and lean-muscled, arrives through the floor in a jet of steam, engulfing a slashed image of cloaked figures, whispers leaking out from beneath their feet.

  ‘Always strapping me to sinkin’ ships…’

  ‘Help me make it float.’

  Lachesis tries to collect herself, balling her hands up in prayer. “I have…” she begins again, her eyes downcast. “Seen all.” She’s shaking.

  I cannot help myself, and so I touch her gently once more, on the head, and she looks up, with the teary eyes of all the children I’ve felt suffer and die and come return to rest in my arms.

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  “He has risen.” She says, simple. Unflinching.

  I snatch my hand away, scalded.

  “He has risen and we will all die.”

  Rivin’s eyes scan their features, the old scars clear and numerous across otherwise even olive skin. “Sen…”

  The man sneers a mean smile. "Surprise," before turning to The Echo, "we doing this or what?”

  “Stop rushing it, Sen. It's got to be perfect, remember? That was the deal.” A fifth and unknown spectre teases from the fringes, breaking free from an undulating ripple of smoke and rubble, but lacking colour like the others, cloaked only in silhouette and chased by a ‘click’ and a growl.

  ‘Try me, dog. I'll send us all to the sky. One way or another.’

  “Tch. Can't believe we're doing this…” Sen mutters in reply, running ahead.

  “What are we doing?” Rivin calls out, glancing between them. “We're going to the end, right?”

  “Hah! Is that what you told ‘im?” Slink chides, barking out a laugh.

  The Echo only winks at Rivin when his gaze returns, and he frowns. “Don’t lie—”

  “Don’t lie.” She copies, grinning wider. "Fine. We’re making some changes on the way.”

  “Changes?”

  A deafening blast from his side screeches through his ears, silencing him as Chip launches a missile into a shimmering scene, pulverising the fields of pleading sick.

  “No.. He will not be ruinous while I am complacent.”

  ‘I’m so tired, Maker.’

  I turn away. “I know this. It is best for you.”

  Lachesis staggers forward, incensed once again, running her fingers through her hair with frustration. “Stubborn still! Stubborn and manipulated!”

  “Watch that tongue.” I hiss and the blackness splinters, silver light cracking through abyss. “You have my attention, but my patience is a gift. Both are straining, Lachesis. Do not bend me further.“

  To my shock, she does not fall frail, instead pushing forward, pushing right up and into me. “Maker, I have seen beyond thee, and it is nothing; it is nothing, and you cannot watch—cannot bear—cannot sleep. No, you are, you become—”

  “Enough now,” I begin, pinching my sight closed.

  “Listen to me!” She pulls at me, shaking. “It will consume and consume, and you will be as one again atop the vermillion sky—”

  “Child, you will be silent…”

  “As one again!” She cries. “As He intended!”

  “Enough…”

  “YOU MUST NOT FORGET—”

  “Enough.”

  A roar carries over the distant landscape, quaking the ground and fracturing the sky ahead, shedding rays of luminous light onto shapes in the distance: people dancing, warring, fleeing. Creatures of incandescent colour and endlessly changing shape, trekking back and forth through fields and plains; larger than buildings, screaming a melancholy note.

  “What’s happening?!” Rivin cries out, watching as pieces of the abyss fall free completely, crashing into the darkness surrounding, swallowing more and more of the void within light. “What the hell are we doing?!” he pleads, glancing around in desperation. “Destroying everything?!”

  “That’s right!” Sen muses, tossing a grenade that tunnels out a silhouette, filling it with colour—an enormous beast becoming apparent as life floods into its shape. A pearl-white horse, covered in screaming faces.

  “We’re ripping out its insides!” Cheers Slink, retrieving a dagger from his belt to slash at the void, an oil slick of opalescent colour bleeding from the wound. Through it, Rivin can hear music, an orchestra playing in a dining hall lit by diamond chandeliers. Dozens of figures, doused in mourners’ cloth, sharing laughter, rich and exuded, alongside chatter and gossip, all while filling their faces through veils.

  “Did you hear?”

  “Oh yes, what a travesty.”

  “Such a shame. Yes. Yes. The commander is inconsolable. Poor dear.”

  “Oh, but he’s looking beautiful.” The voices giggle. “Yes, so beautiful in black.”

  His attention veers swiftly to Chip’s next blow, a bullet piercing an incandescent image that deflates like a balloon, squealing a torrent of violent air through the puncture before the unknown spectre rips the rest open with their fingers, shredding abyss like wrappings of a gift, revealing a dusty and depleted library sunlit through cracks and shattered glass, blades of green breaking through the old cement.

  ‘Come to torture yourself?’

  ‘I can still smell the pages.’

  “I implore you,” the soul cries, "please don’t let it be so. Please choose us. Choose us!”

  I pause, feeling myself grow increasingly hot. Angered.

  I always choose you.

  “It is not wise to demand of me.” I warn.

  Yet, she refuses to cower again; her face impassioned and furious. Young. Her hair, flashing a healthy blonde. “I have been tested, Creator.” She hisses, spitting bile. “And I will demand of you.”

  I draw back, shaking. “Too often I have meddled for worse...” I tell her, looking down, down upon the figures running towards us. The laughing crew of children, all grown bar one. “For desolation.”

  She throws herself into me, drumming her fists. “It is required!”

  “It is too high a price.” I respond.

  “You must pay it! We all must.”

  “Do not.” I am too close to shouting, excessively and loudly and horribly, until she's rejected and fallen, utterly defeated, and I, ashamed.

  So, I grow pale and approach, warming her hands. “I’m sorry, my child.” I whisper, shrinking myself.

  “Maker… Please…”

  “It is better this way.” I promise her. “If you have seen what comes from my involvement, if you have seen the truth in time yet past, and not in hopeful dream…” I move the hair from her face. “Then you must know...”

  She drops her head. “I.. have seen.”

  “So, you cannot ask it of me.”

  She reaches out. Finds my face.

  “Maker, I must.”

  “Now, just remember, Ghost.” The Echo muses, eyes blinking like stars as she tightens her hold on his hand. “Don't let go.”

  Rivin can only bite back his panic, swallowing it alongside the scream of his legs. “What’s gonna happen?” He manages through gritted teeth, just as Ricket jumps ahead, bursting upwards and then down to shatter the floor with his bat.

  ‘I’m losing, Hero…’ The new hole whispers.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means run, Riv.’

  In an instant, she yanks him close, so close that her lips brush the shell of his ear, tickle there and outwards, rushing him with a warmth that explodes his pale cheeks. Instinct has him reeling away, but her grasp is too tight. Too strong.

  The Echo snickers, whispering, “everything,” and the crack continues, puffing:

  ‘I am running.’

  ‘The other way, stupid.’

  And they leap.

  “Look upon them now. Look without blinking.” Lachesis casts her hand across the void beneath us, cracked open and bursting with a thousand shades of hue and sound.

  I creep to the edge, timid and restrained. Peek over.

  “Mother, look.” I can feel her smiling. “Isn't it beautiful?”

  The Echo changes fate with her hands, sailing across a night sky she strikes through with sunlight before they're riding together, galloping side by side across a vast field of green pasture. He tries to catch his bearings, his breath, but The Echo kicks up ahead, unafraid, and singing out loud, her hair free of any bindings and whipping out behind her.

  ‘Come for me.’

  She casts a glance over her shoulder, mischievous and smirking, and then spreads out her arms and folds back to the wind.

  ‘Come find me.’

  Rivin digs in his heels, and, pushed faster, the black stallion beneath him heaves and snorts as it jolts ahead, overtaking their giggling companion, and he feels himself snickering, laughing along. Feels his hands rising, the air lifting his arms. He tilts his head back, and the sky above is a boiling red. Beautiful in ways and colours he's never seen before. The air crisp. Clean.

  He breathes it in deeply.

  ‘It’s a beautiful day…’

  “Aren't they… just perfect?” Lachesis continues.

  They gallop over hillsides, dash clean through rivers and brooks, and yet he can still feel her hand, tight over his own, even as she rides ahead, even while she pulls the reins and jerks them to a stop, and then he’s suddenly pulled from the saddle and straight through the ground.

  ‘Call for me…’

  It caves beneath them, separating like water, and they're stepping into a dark night where a bonfire flares proudly at the centre of a ring of people. “How many times do I gotta say it, Ghost?” He hears her speak softly, breath fanning against his cheek, “The future…”

  He sees her dancing by the flame, rapping her palm against an instrument that sings her praise. Not quite wind-chimes but sharper. A sizzling tap, tap, tap. When she spins, her skirts flare like her hair. Every movement makes a sound. Catches the light. The others are there too. Hollering. Playing along. Lit by the flame. Everything is warm. So warm. He feels her smile pressed into his hair.

  “…Is ours.”

  Ricket waves him over, beaming, and Chip starts towards him, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Reach out…”

  Slink grabs his shoulder, pulling him forward. “Where ya been, Cap’n?” He pouts.

  Rivin feels tears welling in his eyes. He doesn't know why.

  “We missed ya.”

  He closes his fist tight.

  “Don’t you see, Maker?”

  He reaches up, and peels the scene from the corner, folding it away to reveal a downpour. A blackened sky. He's by a cliff, soaking in the grey. There's a crowd up ahead. Gasping and in awe. Each figure a midnight silhouette. He parts through them easily, his touch growing flowers on backs and shoulders. The world appears to warp at the center, droplets cast and spun like dancers around a star-white shape. He reaches out.

  “And take it.”

  Grabs hold.

  “Make it yours.”

  And squeezes.

  ‘Find me, Ghost.’

  They're pulled beneath a sky of stars, dancing and dressed in lavish attire: himself in a black suit, and she in a sparkling gown that drapes as well as water around her shape. She grins when she catches him watching, tipping up his chin with her hand before twirling away, her hair catching the breeze as she steps over the edge of the rooftop, a glamorous ball shining golden below.

  ‘Must I beg—?’

  ‘Try. See what it does.’

  He catches her hand. Pulls her back, and she twirls, graceful, around him.

  ‘I… used to build things.’

  The sky splashes purple. Her hair, white.

  ‘How do I get back to them?’

  She spins, the sky cerulean.

  ‘Come home.’

  He lifts her up. He's laughing. Hot with it.

  ‘We’re not done yet.’

  ”Don’t you see what I see?”

  The floor beneath them grows lush, like mountainside, and everything is bright when he twirls her high. He sees her smile, so clearly. The freckles full on her cheeks. The rapturous daylight slowly spinning into void.

  ‘Call for me…’

  “It is…” I begin. Caught.

  He lowers her back to the earth, flushed in the face. Fearless. When her smile twitches, golden eyes flickering above.

  ‘Call—’

  “An exquisite… Dream.”

  Her shoulders drop with a soft sigh, eyes returning to him, dulled but still warm. “This is it, Ghost.” She releases his hand.

  Rivin looks around, the landscape that of peaceful hills and thrush trees overlooking valley. “This is the ending?” He asks, not at all disappointed.

  She smiles sorrowfully. “Perfect day, right?” And he nods. Tilts back his head and feels the sun for all the last moments he’s allowed.

  “Time to go.”

  I look away.

  “Go on.” She urges, gesturing towards a ripple in the distance, a splice of the Triple Wick glimmering through dismantling vision. “Don't worry.”

  He doesn't move. Something tells him not to. “I'll see you soon?”

  She nods. “A little late.” Her smile eases. “Like always.”

  He puffs a breath. Steps forward.

  Another.

  Faster.

  “I'm sorry.”

  “Hey, Ghost?”

  He slows. “Yeah?”

  “Don't look back.”

  Rivin hesitates, forcing his eyes to the front.

  Then he runs.

  And he runs.

  “Maker, please—”

  Towards the glimmering light.

  I banish Lachesis.

  His chest tightens.

  He looks back.

  Sees her, waving.

  “Your dream will have to survive without me.”

  And everything shatters.

  White.

  Gone.