Chapter Ninety-Four: The Pale Boy

  Jace shivered despite himself, the darkness pressing against him like a too-thick blanket, sticky with cold. “Who are you?” Jace demanded, trying to mask the unease scratching at his voice. “How do you know my name?”

  The boy smiled, a thin curve of lips that stretched unnaturally, pulling his face into something wrong, almost broken. “I know a lot about you. Quite a lot,” he whispered, each word drawn out like a taste he wanted to savor. “Though I’d like to know more. Your little Hades protection has kept me from peering too deep... but no matter.” His eyes flickered, something dark swirling within them, almost playful. “I can only look so far into your mind, but you... you can look into mine.”

  He tilted his head, the gesture jerking and spasmodic. “Curious, aren’t you? Why don’t you... take a look inside.”

  Jace felt it—a pull, sudden and irresistible. His Soul Sense thrummed beneath his skin, something instinctive, automatic, kicking in before he could even think. It was as if the boy’s words had triggered something deep within him, something that responded without permission. His senses blurred, overlapping—one Soul Sense folding into another, layers building on themselves until the world around him collapsed.

  And then he was falling, his consciousness yanked forward, sucked into the void of the boy’s mind. It was like slipping off the edge of reality, a cold rush that swallowed him whole before he could even understand what was happening. Everything else faded away, leaving only darkness, and the unsettling sensation of being drawn into something far beyond his control.

  It was nothing but darkness. He blinked, but there was no difference. Silence, except for the distant drip of water. He realized he was kneeling, the water reaching to his waist, cold enough to numb. His breathing was loud here, almost wrong in how alone it sounded.

  The boy’s voice came from somewhere, everywhere, echoing in the hollow dark. “I was born the day you arrived in Terra Mythica. In a way, Jason, I have you to thank for my existence.”

  The words twisted around him, slipping through the wet, cloying air. “Oh Jason, you shouldn’t be here. You were never meant for this world. The calibration... it wasn’t for you, was it?” The boy laughed, the sound like shattered glass scattering over marble. “No, it was for your brother, Alexander, wasn’t it? A brother you betrayed.”

  A pang of regret clawed at Jace’s chest, raw and visceral. The words burned. “I didn’t betray him,” Jace spat back, though his own voice wavered.

  “Oh, didn’t you?” The boy’s silhouette danced around him, flickering like a faulty projection. “Your ignorance, your neglect—always rushing into things, making those desperate, foolish deals. If you hadn’t been born, Alexander wouldn’t have died, would he?”

  Jace choked on the grief welling in him, loss like a blade twisting in his gut. “He’s not dead. He’s alive, and when I get out of here, I’m going to help him.”

  The boy laughed again, stepping across the water’s surface, his bare feet barely disturbing the dark ripples. “Oh, such naivety. I know how you feel J-j-jason because a part of me came from you.” His form twitched—he blinked out of existence, then snapped back again. “What am I?” the boy asked, echoing Jace’s unspoken thoughts.

  “In your world, you’d call me a g-g-glitch.” His voice shivered as his form did. “But in mine, I was first known as an Echo. A piece of a thousand souls, torn in the transfer, shattered across the Verse.”

  Jace clenched his fists, teeth gritting against the chill seeping into him. “What are you talking about?”

  “You still don’t see it, do you?” The boy’s voice cut through the silence like a dagger, laced with condescension. “You were never meant to be here. Yet here you are, and nothing comes without a price.” He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing, his lips curling in a twisted smirk. “I am your price. But which piece am I, hmm? Which part of yourself did you leave behind when you crossed over?”

  Jace’s breath caught as the boy’s face began to shift, morphing—Marcus’s rugged determination fading into Molly’s haunted, searching eyes, then into something even darker, a void deeper than the abyss itself. His form seemed to flicker, his features blurring and changing, each shift more unsettling than the last.

  “I belong to them too, you know,” the boy continued, his voice now a distorted echo of all the faces he wore. “To Marcus, to Molly. And to many others.” He paused, his gaze boring into Jace’s. “None of you are supposed to be here. You broke the natural order, and for every step you take, a part of you is lost.”

  The boy’s body twisted again, dissolving into a seething mass of inky darkness, tendrils unraveling and coiling outward, thick and suffocating. His voice was a whisper now, a hiss that slithered into Jace’s ears. “When souls shatter, when they are lost to Terra, it is me who grows. I am the hunger that consumes what is left behind. The dark seed that feeds on what was, and turns it into nothing.”

  The air seemed to solidify, heavy and oppressive, pressing in around Jace, making it harder and harder to draw breath. He could feel it—the presence of something, or many things—trying to force its way into his mind, tendrils of darkness slithering towards the fractures in his will, seeking entry.

  The thing that had once resembled a boy twisted its face into a grotesque smile, its teeth gleaming like shards of bone against the inky blackness. “You know,” it said, the mockery thick in its tone, “for someone who thinks he’s special, you’re really not that clever. Your friends, they whisper behind your back—what do they see? Someone poor, helpless, weak. But not completely stupid, I suppose.”

  “Shut up!” Jace roared, his voice cracking like thunder, cutting across the darkness. Rage flared within him, raw and unrestrained, surging up from a place he didn’t recognize. And then it happened—a burst of light, moonlight, pure and wild, erupted from within him, spilling outward. It was radiant, like a piece of the night sky that had suddenly awakened within him, breaking through the oppressive shadows.

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  He didn’t know where it had come from; his shard wasn’t here, no relic of power to hold in his hands. It felt deeper, older, as if it had been with him all along—a fragment of his soul, a shard of defiance breaking free at the moment of greatest need.

  For a heartbeat, the darkness recoiled, as if the boy—no, the thing—had not expected it. But then, just as quickly, came the laughter—deep, echoing, dripping with disdain. It filled the void around him, wrapping around the light like chains, mocking his defiance, making a joke of his hope.

  It chuckled, the sound hollow and cruel. “How quaint. Do you really think a spark like that can stand against the shadows?” The tendrils of darkness closed in again, moving faster now, curling around the light, choking it.

  “Do you think you can harm me, Little Thing?” The voice slithered around him, a thousand whispers bleeding together. “I am a part of what they call the Eternal End. A piece of its tapestry, woven into the essence of finality itself. For all things are, and all things shall cease to be. I am that cessation.”

  Jace had heard the name before. The Dark One. It hung in his mind like a distant echo, resonating in his bones. Something stirred within him—an instinct, a strange inspiration, raw and reckless. He cast Soul Sense again, feeling his consciousness dive deeper, plunging into the dark waters of the creature’s twisted mind.

  For a moment, there was nothing but shadow—a blank expanse that seemed to swallow his awareness whole. And then, a flicker. A flash, like the heartbeat of something unspeakable, and he felt it. He was closer to something—closer to a truth that clawed at the peripheral of his understanding.

  “Ah, yes,” the creature’s voice crooned, tinged with a mocking joy. “You are beginning to see… but can you understand?”

  The taunts hung in the air, but Jace ignored them, his focus unwavering. He cast it again, his mind pushing through the darkness, even as it grew thicker, more hostile, trying to shove him back. Either he was finally about to grasp what this nightmare really was, or he was walking into a trap from which he’d never escape. Either way, he needed to know. He needed to see.

  The thing laughed again, but Jace didn’t flinch. He drove forward, each breath more labored than the last, his vision narrowing, everything tightening as if the shadows themselves were closing in on him. And in that tightening abyss, Jace knew—whatever came next would either break him or free him.

  And then, without his control, he felt it trigger again.

  Soul Sense, Soul Sense, Soul Sense. Each time he dove a step deeper, the world shifted around him.

  And as he moved, the creature itself shifted. Its face changed. It became Thistle, then Marcus, then Jace.

  “What are you doing to me?” Jace cried out, but there was only laughter in response.

  Soul Sense. Soul Sense. Soul Sense.

  His aether was draining fast.

  Until finally, he couldn’t go any further.

  The darkness seemed to pulse, each word throbbing with an unspoken truth that tore at Jace’s resolve. He felt the probing presence, slithering through his mind, scraping at his thoughts. “I am the piece you all leave behind when you come here,” it hissed. “You might as well call me the Dark One’s Shadow—the puppet who became the master.”

  The form grew then, a giant shadow stretching upward, a mountainous form, eyes glowing a deep, throbbing red. Claws emerged, dark against darker still, reaching down, curling inwards. It was the Dark One’s true form, twisted and grotesque, towering over Jace, a bright glow radiating from its chest.

  “Yes, Jason, you see it now.” The thing’s voice dropped to a whisper, sinister and intimate, as it leaned in, its red eyes searing through Jace’s defenses, peeling back the layers of his soul. “The Dark One was once just a man, like you—a fragile, desperate man. My first little broken thing.”

  The whisper grew, swelling into a thunderous boom that seemed to echo not just in the air, but inside Jace’s skull, shaking his very thoughts. “In a way, I am him, and he is me—creator and created, bound in a twisted dance. He is my father, my maker... and yet, my child.”

  It grinned, a jagged, gleaming smile that seemed to cut through the darkness. “I, once the shadow at his heels, now risen, now flesh. The Shadow has become the man, until there was nothing but me.”

  Jace struggled, his body aching, his soul straining, the cold water thickening around him, becoming ink, swallowing him, dragging him down. He fought against it, his mind trying to push back, to escape the murk that encased him.

  The monstrous figure laughed, a sound like the dying echoes of a thousand voices.

  Jace’s mind throbbed, the ink tightening, his body failing him. He heard the echoes of his friends—outside, falling, screaming—while here he was, locked in a dark, eternal conversation, his soul caught in a vice.

  The thing leaned closer, its form losing cohesion, ink dripping into the dark water beneath. “Your mind is strong,” it whispered, almost regretful. “No matter.” And then it grinned, fading into the darkness, leaving Jace gasping alone, in ink that had become ice, in silence that swallowed all hope.

  “Just a bit deeper should do the trick. Your aether should be recovered just enough.”

  Jace felt his Soul Sense pulse once again, a subtle vibration that tugged at the edges of his awareness.

  I need you to understand me, Jace. To see me for who I truly am. The voice echoed in his mind, a chilling mix of desperation and command. Call it a remnant of my humanity, or perhaps a fragment of the broken humanities of all who came before me. But I need it—I need you to see me.

  The presence wavered, almost pleading, but beneath it lay a hunger, an inevitability that Jace could feel deep within. For when you see it, you will become me. And together, we will bring forth the Eternal End.

  A shiver ran down Jace’s spine as he felt his aether surge, finally regenerating enough for him to act. But before he could even form a thought, the Soul Sense triggered one final time, the sensation like a wave crashing over him—pulling him under.

  Everything around him dissolved, the world vanishing as he was plunged into a darkness so complete, it swallowed even his thoughts.

  The space was black—an all-consuming void that swallowed light and sound, leaving only the pulse of dread.

  Jace felt himself being torn from control, an invisible force shoving him into the recesses of his own mind. He tried to fight it, but it was like pushing against an ocean tide, his body no longer his own. His consciousness was forced back, pressed into a corner, left to watch helplessly through a window smeared with darkness.

  In a distant window in the darkness, he saw a faint vision of the outside world. Like the scene at the end of a long, dark hallway.

  He saw his friends. They were distant, so impossibly far away, their figures barely visible like shadows against a deeper night. They were fighting, struggling against the onslaught of demons, and without Jace, they were faltering. His stomach lurched as he watched Dex, fierce and defiant, his face streaked with blood. Ell, her hair matted, her hands trembling as she swung her weapon.

  Every movement seemed slower, each swing of a blade weaker, their faces marred by exhaustion and desperation. He could see the blood—so much of it—staining their clothes, splattering the ground. One after another, they stumbled, buckling under the weight of their wounds, their defenses crumbling.

  Jace’s chest tightened, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he felt their pain, their fear. They needed him. They needed his skills, his strength—things that only he could bring to their side. But here he was, buried in darkness, nothing more than a spectator to their suffering. He felt the cold grip of helplessness, a raw, visceral horror that twisted in his gut.

  The message was clear—without Jace, they would fall. And Jace was powerless, bound by the very darkness that sought to destroy everything he held dear.

  Jace couldn’t move for a long moment as his aether recovered, he had to watch as his friends were hurt, held in the Dark One’s mind.