“It dwells in the depths of the caves, never breaking the barrier between light and shadow.” He steps back, leaving behind the light of the flickering flame, now veiled in shadows in the corner of the room.

“It only feeds off those who can’t curb their curiosity and go wondering too near.” My uncle crouches low to the floor, arms held high with fingers mimicking the claws of the beast called Hail.

“Story goes, the last thing you hear before it takes you is the tick, ticking of his claws against rock.”

He mimics the sound. “Tick, tick, tick...” as he creeps, head low, teeth bared, moving toward our bed. He drags a mock clawed finger across the edges of our quilt. “It all happens so quickly.” We watch with wide eyes as he disappears beneath the bed’s horizon. “Right before it...” he whispers from the depths of our bedroom floor. “JUMPS!!!” Uncle yells, lunging into the air, his hair in a tousled mess, when he comes barreling into my sister and me. Tackling us down into our feather-filled pillows. Where we both squeal in delight. When Uncle inevitably breaks character, we all lay there laughing at another epic bedtime story.

I'm smiling in bed with my mirror of a sister, our red hair a tangled mess among piles of pillows, and our beloved Uncle, who finally made it home after months on the road.

When I roll over in my blanket, laughing, I inhale dirt from the ground, and I’m jerked back to reality, waking suddenly in a coughing fit. Throwing myself over, I force the last bit of dirt from my throat and spit onto the ground where my sleeping bag lies. When I catch my breath, I sit up in my bag, wiping my mouth with the back of my sleeve.

“At least it sounded like a good one. What was it this time?” She’s sitting near a low burning fire. Her body hunched over her knees as she pokes a leaf with a stick. One of her favorite pillows is pressed against her stomach, and her chin rests on her bent knees when she looks over at me.

I rub at my watery eyes and yawn. “Uncle was telling us a story.” I say, watching intently at her reaction. “Back when we were kids.”

A faint smile crosses her lips. We both loved his stories. “Which one?” She tosses the stick into the fire and watches as the log shifts. The faint flicker glows against her skin, matching that of her red hair, and mixes with the radiating light stone hanging around her neck. I touch the one wrapped in leather around mine, thankful for their light in the darkness of the night.

“The one... the one about Hail.” I say, It feels both ironic and unnerving to say it aloud, and I can see shes thinking the same thing when her smile fades and she presses the pillow tighter against her stomach and pulls her coat tight at a sudden gust of wind. When she changes the subject to clearing camp, I know the conversation is over. For now at least, as inevitable as the days end, so too will this conversation.

It doesn’t take us long to reload our packs and hush the firelight that we used for a quick breakfast. Our journey will come to an end today, one way or another, and I can tell by our silence that we both feel the weight of what’s to come.

The climb will take another five hours. Since we left camp just as dawn broke, we expect to make it before noon, but time seems to be moving faster than I’d like, and I expect we’ll be there before I’ve had a chance to spark my courage and stamp out the feeling that we should run far away from this place.

“I wouldn’t have guessed this would be our world.” Victus says, sliding on a dusty rock as we ascend a particularly steep section on our path.

“What do you mean?” I ask, using a tree to pull my way up behind.

“Us, this path, our parents, Uncle, those… all of it.” She swears when she slips and takes a knee to the rocky ground. I reach to help but she’s already pulled herself up and moving forward again.

“Yeah, I know.” There isn’t much more I can think to say. She’s right. Ever since Uncle went missing, it seems everything about our lives has been centered on this place.

“They should have never gone looking for him that night.” She admits. Something I often ponder myself.

“Maybe Father knew something we didn’t?" I say with sigh, our steps now slowing when we approach the two large stones we came all this way to meet. Together, we lower ourselves down into the bit of grass growing around the stones, and look upon the final resting place of our mother and father.

I watch as Victus pulls the same pillow from camp out of her pack and lays it between our parents stones. She’s embroidered our family crest in the proper gold and green thread.

“What did you bring, Runi?” My sister looks up to me with a smile, her characteristic silent tears already trailing her jaw line. If you don't take the time to look, you’ll miss her expression of emotion all together. It’s taken her time, but she’s gotten better at controlling it.

“Just letters.” I pull the brown envelope from my pack and lean it against my mother's grave. From the same pocket, I pull a second letter and place it against my father's.

We exchange half-hearted smiles and spend the next thirty minutes telling stories from our childhood. Lightening the tension in my chest and reminding me why I came on this journey. To recreate times long ago lost. My sister stands and trails off behind the trees to relieve herself, all the while singing a song our mother would sing.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, eyes closed, hands lightly resting against their stones. “It just feels like the right thing.”

I’ve already pulled away and begun shouldering my pack when Victus walks back over. Holding a pink flower.

“Moms favorite!” She says smiling and lays it near my letter.

“It’s a Dainthus.” I tell her.

“Hmm, I like that name.” She adjusts the front of her shirt, then slips her pack over her shoulders. “May I have a moment before we depart? …with mom?”

“Sure.” I give her a reassuring nod. I know it must be hard not having here. Especially now.

* * The Caves * *

We arrive just after noon, when the sun begins to warm the air around us. Another stone marks our final destination. But when I notice it for the first time, my stomach churns, and I want to turn and run back, far away from this place. But I know what I’d be running back to, and so instead I ground myself.

We don’t get too close when we finally stop, a good two meters from our uncle's final stone. The old helm I placed there years ago is still resting at its base. Even from here, we feel the cold, crisp air blowing past his stone and chilling our skin. We stand in silence for a moment. Listening, peering into the darkness of the caves beyond our uncle's final resting place.

“I can’t help but wonder if his armor is still in there? If he had it with him.” I say this after a few moments, when we hear nothing.

“It isn’t worth it if it is.” She says it more as a warning than a casual comment.

“Or… maybe he knows who took it?”

“No.”

“The kingdom could be safe again. How could we not consider it?”

“It’s too risky, we’ve managed without it.” She’s not mad. She says it with finality. We’ve had this conversation before; she’s avoided it all day, and she’s deflecting any further discussion.

“You brought something for him, didn’t you?” She’s ready to leave.

With a heavy breath I approach and kneel to lay a small book of stories by his stone. When I stand, a sudden rush of chilled air blows past me again, wavering my confidence, yet I still turn to look back at my sister, resolute. “If I just a quick look...”

“No Runi.” She’s letting her anger slip, and the wind picks up ever so slightly. “You need your strength for our decent.” Again, the finality of her words. She’s more of a queen to me now than I’ve ever seen her be towards me.

“I won’t stay long.” I say ignoring her protest.

“Runi! I demand you stop this.” The sky begins to darken with her words.

“Don’t!” I snap back. “Keep the light.” I warn her just before I take a knee and I lay an intentional hand against our uncle's helm. And I’m gone.

* * The Realm * *

It’s hard to explain the sensation of falling into the realm of the dead. Growing up, I always kept my abilities secret. Never even got the chance to tell our parents before they passed. Those who know always mistake what my ability means. Thinking I can speak with those who are gone. But it isn’t quite like that.

I try to keep myself grounded as I mentally fall, the intense darkness beyond pulling at the walls of my carefully fortified mind. It takes everything in me to keep it all out, to keep myself from becoming enveloped, lost in the inky abyss, filled with memories from beyond. I’ve never experienced such fog; it’s thicker and colder here than I’ve ever experienced before. I know the location of where the fallen lie can cause distinct realm manipulations. This place is seething in what feels like malice; I feel it pressing in on me, heavy, clawing at my mental walls. It's clear that the caves, the lives lost here, and what lurks within make this place so dark.

But the helm is my link to Uncle, and it doesn’t take long before I see snap shots of his memories and hear small whispers of his past thoughts. The bits of him that still remain in the realm, long after he himself has gone. Even with my link, this place is strong, and I get bombarded by other memories that linger, ones belonging to those long ago lost to this place. Someone screams—a man. I hear the empty laugh of a woman and watch a memory as darkness engulfs her.

I don’t have long here; I can already feel the pressure on my mind. So I spin away, looking deeper, and catch a fleeting glimpse of a memory I know must be his. When I follow it, I see his hand resting on a railing as he looks upon the kingdom's largest light stone, resting in its sacred alter back home. I follow this path, knowing it must lead to more of his memories. Just as another flys past, my father is yelling at him. I hear my uncle's thoughts: “He’s wrong. He’s afraid. They will come for us.”

I let myself fall deeper along this path, searching for more, searching for memories from that night.

I see the glow from the light stone in the distance. “This has to work.” His thoughts are a faint whisper in my head. He's holding light in his hand; has he taken it?

Another memory swirls from behind, assaulting my vision, and a loud scream has me shaken to the core. My walls shutter and fail for a fleeting moment, and I feel my mind weaken. Terror in the form of thick fog seeps in through the cracks, and I’m suddenly blinded, falling, and flailing about as the screams of thousands of people fill my mind. The fear taints my every breath, and I think I can taste blood. My mind is failing under the immense pressure of the memories of a thousand dead souls.

But I feel something take hold of me, and I find I can ground myself once more. With the last strands of power, I throw up my walls up once more. Sealing out all that threats my sanity.

Nausea overtakes me, and my vision is faint. I’ve never pushed myself this far into the realm, and I fear I’m slipping. But I haven’t seen what I’ve come for, and I'm still being held; I’m no longer falling. So I send my mind out one more time, just along the path of my uncle's memories.

I get a glimpse of the caves as he approaches, the light stone wrapped in leather around his neck. The wet cave walls illuminated by his torch. And the light stone it's... But suddenly, I’m being pulled away, back up the way I’ve come. I’ve lost the memory, but I hear my uncle's voice one last time. Growing faint as I’m whisked away. “Hail is here. Run."

Then I’ve fallen backwards into my sister's arms and feel the drops of rain on my skin. She’s yelling, but it takes me a few breaths to come back enough to hear her.

“Runi! Can you hear me?!” My vision is blurry, but I feel her holding me, shaking my body with each question. “Are you back?” She quiets herself this time; she's slipping, and she knows it. And I blink back tears and force myself to look up into the cloudy sky.

“Keep the light.” I manage to choke out through a dry throat. Lifting a heavy hand, I press it against her cheek, reassuring her. “I’m here.” I say, wiping a tear from her cheek. The clouds begin to gently roll away, and I feel the warmth of the sun on my face again. Waking me from my uncle's nightmare.

“How dare you.” She’s stone-faced, once again, in control, but the grip she has around me tells me she’s still fighting the urge to roll thunder. “To be that...” she stops herself, her eyes boring down at me as I gather enough of myself to sit up out of her embrace.

“He thought it would kill Hail.” I can’t bring myself to look at her. “The kingdoms light stone.”

I now know what my uncle thought he could do, why he was the one who took the stone. But seeing it firsthand hurts me more than I thought it would. “He thought it would end it for good.” I look up into the sky, taking in the fresh air as I choke back the tears.

“He didn’t know it would make things worse.” She says this, keeping her composure. “He didn’t know how many more there would be without the light stone.” She says this as she fingers the light stone around her neck. “Can you walk?” She's looking now at where the sun sits in the sky. “We have to get going.”

* * Queen Victus * *

I awake with a kick to my ribs early this morning, and I wrap my arms around my rapidly growing belly and squeeze gently. I'm surrounded by the many pillows I've made over the years. Cradling me in warmth and soft fabric.

The familiar sounds of my ladies in waiting come from my dressing room beyond the double doors. I sit up in bed and begin pulling apart my sleeping braid in anticipation of their entrance, when I hear an unexpected knock in the rooms beyond.

There’s a hushed conversation, and a moment later, the door to my dressing room opens slightly, and one of my ladies peeks inside.

“I’m awake. What is it?” I ask as I undo the top of my braid.

"Sorry, my lady, but a letter has arrived for you.” She closes the door behind her before shuffling over to my bedside. A tray in hand.

“Information from the outposts?” It had been another deeply dark night. I only imagine they hit the front lines hard. I’m reminded again, even days after having returned, how risky it really was for Runi and I to have visited our parents stones; let alone our Uncles.

“No, my lady.” I sense the somber tones In her voice, and my head snaps up to meet the worried lines set in her face.

When I see the parchment on the tray, I recognize the handwriting scrawled over the top, and I snatch it quickly, tearing at its edges. The room is clear before I steady myself enough to read.

For Queen Victus,

I saw where it fell.

I have to try.

Please forgive me.

I read her departing words scrawled at the bottom of the parchment. Near the stamp of her official royal seal.

I like the name Danthus too.

It's a good one.

~ Runi

Tears fill my eyes at the moment rain begins to tap against my bedroom windows. “She wouldn’t?” I whisper. But even as I say the words aloud, I know them to be untrue. She would do anything for family, just as father had tried to do.

I feel another hard kick against my side and jump, surprised. I let the letter fall and I roll awkwardly over in bed, wrapping my arms around myself, around us. “Danthus. Dani.” I try the name out, and it feels… right. “You will meet your aunt.” I whisper. “She is strong, she will make it.” I close my eyes, willing my sorrows away and imagining calm, clear blue skies. “I’ll keep the light” I say.