Fear—pure, absolute—flooded her senses.
The night felt gloomy. That more than anything unsettled her. It was the kind that hollowed the body, turning muscle to water and thought static. She once again standing in the narrow passage that was perhaps a figment of her own doing, for her mind to process the frightful event.
The moonlit lay across the floor in thin, indifferent bands. The persistent of the silence was long enough that she suspected she might wake before anything happened at all. Then her ears caught wind of a distinct sound behind her.
It wasn't very loud. It was the soft irregular drag of something being pulled unwillingly across the floor. She didn't turn at once. Some part of her senses seemed to believe that delay might still matter.
However when she did look, the figure was already upon her, emerging slowly through the doorway at the far end of the hall. Its body misshapen, it's outline resistant to the coherence, as though it refused the courtesy of a single form. She felt fear then, though it arrived without panic. It settled into her limbs, heavy and cold, fixing her in place.
The creature's surface was crowded with countless eyes that opened and close independently, each rimmed with red shining with a strained alertness that suggested pain. There was no proper face. Where one should have been, the flesh appeared closed over.
The creature stood tall and robots, with not a single sigh of humanoid outline, two thin hands barely fitting it plumb form. It moved again, compressing itself to pass through the doorframe, its body yielded in ways that made her look away. When it strained it lifted one of its small, imperfect hands. The gesture was uncertain. It might once have meant something.
For reasons she did not understand, the fear did not deepen.
Instead, something else intruded—an unwelcome recognition. She had the distinct impression that she was being looked at not as prey, but as someone remembered.
The thought disturbed her more than the creature itself.
A sound came from it then. Not speech, exactly. Something broken, pulled painfully from a place that no longer functioned as it should.
"Sis…"
The word faltered like what would come out of the mouth of a drowning man.
She spoke before she had time to reconsider.
"William?"
That's right the creature was familiar to her, not only that, it was her brother. Polarity noticed the creature now looked even more human at this point. Row of blood fell down its eyes. The creature suddenly stopped. Polarity then approached it to get a closer look.
The flesh along the creature's abdomen began to tremble. What had seemed fused there loosened, then parted, revealing a cavity from which light emerged—three small, restless sources turning slowly around one another. Their color was difficult to fix. Gold, perhaps. Or something warmer, more intrusive. They illuminated nothing properly, casting instead a vague, oppressive radiance that pressed against her vision.
She felt the effect immediately.
Her thoughts thinned, her body responding before her mind could follow. The floor receded. A dull weight passed through her, and then released her altogether. Polarity's body went slack instantly. Her pupils clouded, a pale film glazing her eyes as consciousness slipped from her grasp. Without resistance, without sound, her feet lifted from the floor.
…
Polarity woke with a sharp intake of breath.
The sheets clung to her skin, soaked through, their weight unpleasantly intimate. For a moment she laid still, registering the damp outline her body had left behind, the impression of herself pressed onto the bed as though she had not entirely return from elsewhere.
She pushed herself upright, her movements stiff, almost rehearsed.
"Strange," she said quietly.
The dream, had changed, that was not how it played out originally. Yes the dream was real, and her brother William did turned into a monster. However in his monstrous form had appeared only long enough to enact its purpose. The violence had been swift, inevitable. Emotion had no place in it.
The only way she knew it was her brother was when those 'people' showed up and killed him did she noticed the neck-brace she and her shared, that and the fact that the event happened over five years ago and her brother still hasn't come home.
This time had been different.
She drew the blanket aside and sat on the edge of the bed, her thoughts moving with a cautious slowness. Dreams did not change without cause.
'I bet it has something to do with the initiation ritual' she mused, those writhing light, the dream wasn't the first place she's seen them. The first was during her initiating into a secrete organization called 'The Order of Thinkers.'
Polarity was skeptical about this these people. To bind oneself to a secret society without certainty was foolish, and Polarity had never mistaken herself for a fool.
But information was of a rarer currency than gold, and she had learned, painfully, how expensive ignorance could be. If the past few years has thought her anything, it was that this world wasn't has simple as they was raised to believe.
It was as if the entire world was wrapped in a layer of mystery, the clues were everywhere. That was the most unsettling part. They blended seamlessly with normalcy. So much so, that one would just as easily missed it if they didn't know what to look for. It was the reason she had jumped at it when the opportunity presented itself.
And after that day, these markings appeared.
She rose and crossed to the washstand, pausing before the small mirror. Though the symbols remained hidden beneath cloth, she could trace them precisely in her mind, feel the way they curved and intersected, the logic of their construction pressing insistently against her thoughts.
They were not passive.
They read themselves to her, again and again, in a language she had never learned yet somehow understood just enough to fear. Outside, the city stirred faintly, unaware that anything had changed. Polarity remained where she was, watching her own reflection with quiet intensity, already certain that the dream had not been a warning.
It had been a response.
Name: Polarity
Gender: Female
Age: 21
Ascension: None
Evolution: None
Title: None
Miracles: None
As the saying goes, knowledge is power.
…
Polarity had woken to what one could describe as an ordinary.
The cottage was small but orderly, its brick walls holding the night's cold a little longer than they should have. Her bed was pushed close to the wall, the frame worn smooth by years of use. In the center of the room stood a narrow table, upon which lay a single sheet of sheep-skin paper and a quill.
At the far end, the hearth sat dark and unused, its ashes long since settled. She rose without urgency.
From a basin set near the window, she poured cold water and washed her hands and face, the shock of it briefly clearing the residue of sleep. She did not linger. When she reached for the wooden brush, her movements were practiced, almost ritualistic. She drew it slowly through her straw-colored hair, patient and thorough, dislodging what little dirt the night had left behind, along with the small inconveniences one learned not to dwell upon.
Her teeth she cleaned as she always did, rubbing them carefully with a strip of linen while chewing on a hazel twig until its end frayed into soft fibers. The taste was bitter, sharp enough to command attention. She rinsed her mouth with a mild herbal wash, swallowing none of it, and set the cup aside.
Only then did she turn to breakfast.
It was a meal many chose to avoid. Eating so early was thought unnecessary by some, indulgent by others. Polarity had never found either argument convincing. She prepared it quietly: stale bread softened in ale, its edges yielding as she broke it apart.
She ate without haste, savoring the simple warmth of it. William would have disapproved. He always had. The thought surfaced briefly, without bitterness, then settled into the familiar place where such things belonged. She finished the last of the bread, wiped her hands, and left the bowl empty on the table.