He was sinking.

  The water rushed upwards as he fell, with no sign of stopping in sight.

  The waves turned murkier and murkier, darker and darker.

  Eventually no light could be seen while staring at what was above.

  The boy kept sinking and sinking, unable to resist any of what was happening.

  And yet, he felt at peace.

  There was none of the usual panic that would accompany anyone else in a similar situation.

  Eventually he looked downwards and the waters were clearer once more.

  He landed on a bank of white sand, barren, except for a couple of small rocks.

  The boy finally realized, without much surprise that he could breath.

  He sat himself on one of the rocks, expecting for something to happen.

  After some time, he noticed that the light coming from above, somehow had started to flicker in odd ways.

  He looked upward to try and see the cause of the anomaly.

  He couldn’t understand what it was exactly, but there was a large shadow with an unidentifiable shape that seemed to be moving above him.

  And yet, the boy did not feel any fear or apprehension.

  Soon, like a drop of ink sinking into water, an oily shadow made its way downward.

  Its form twisted and dispersed as it descended, but it coalesced once it had reached the sandbank where the boy was.

  After a moment, something flickered inside the noir figure. The human sized shadow that now stood before the boy opened its eyes. Its golden eyes.

  “Grettings, ******”, the shade whispered.

  A chill ran down the boy’s spine.

  Ever since he came to, there had been nothing about this situation that had filled him with even the smallest bit of unease. Not the murky depths, nor the illuminated area when no sun could be seen. Not the fact that he could breath and not the colossal shade above or the smaller shade that descended.

  But those words rattled something within him.

  “Aaaaahhh…that is right…you wouldn’t know about that anyway. I forgot that you never learned it.”, the shade whispered.

  “Who are you?”, the boy asked.

  “Now…why would you be asking me that? You should know who I am more than anyone else. We go very far back, you and I”, the shade answered back.

  “And yet, I don’t”, the boy remarked.

  The shade moved closer to the youth, its glistering honeyed eyes darting from spot to spot, as if looking for something on him.

  Then the shade opened its mouth.

  It was filled with rows upon rows of sharp fangs.

  “Rats!...”, the shade audibly growled, as it gnashed its teeth in frustration.

  “Disgusting vermin! I will have my revenge for this! I shall fill my stomach with their flesh for this transgression! This desecrating disrespect!”

  “Hey! Are you listening to me? Stop ranting and give me an answer.”, the boy snapped.

  The shade was immobile and mute for a moment but began chuckling immediately after.

  “Or what? What will you do, child? Unloved soul that you are. You have no power here. Not anything resembling mine, anyway”, the shade sneered, its golden irises gleaming with malice, like two suns above its curved moon of a mouth.

  The boy’s only response was to stare the creature in the eyes. It was his only form of rebellion in this unknown scenario that he found himself in.

  The shade started to slowly move away from him, until it reached the stone on the other side of the bank. Its form coalesced further into a humanoid one of similar height and build to the boy’s and sat itself.

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  “Apologies, child. I lost myself for a moment. Let us try to not sour our relationship any further. Others have already seen to that, as frustrating as it is.”, the shade sighed.

  “I have no idea what you are talking about. Now, what was that thing that called me before?”, the boy retorted.

  “Oh, did the word ***** stir something within you? It is of no surprise that it would. I could call you, tell you, so much more. So many more words and names that would rattle every fibre of your consciousness, if only you were able to understand their meaning. It is yet too early for that. Mayhaps in time we can mend our wounds enough so that you might earn it.”

  “Are you hurt or something?”, the boy asked.

  “No. Just my feelings, I suppose. You on the other hand, are a different story.”

  For the second time in this entire encounter, a chill ran through the boy’s spine.

  “How do you know that? Is this a dream? Am I just talking to myself here?”, the boy demanded.

  “If only your life, your short, young, unnatural life were that kind. No, this is no dream. This is my home, child. It took a long time for me to bring you back here, yet, I could tell that it would be inevitable that I would find you again. A shame that you are not in the same, pristine, condition that I last found you in.”

  “Great, thanks for clarifying.”, the boy snapped, irritated. “So if you aren’t just me, then what are you? What do you want with me?”

  “Ahhhh…is someone losing their composure? Did the mention that something has laid their hands upon you fill you with fury…? I am glad that we are still of the same mind on that, at the very least.”

  “You ask me what I am? Well, I am the one that saved you from certain death, many years ago, before you could have even formed a memory. You can feel it, can you not? A strange place defying understanding, a stranger with nary a semblance of being a person and your absolute and complete vulnerability before this reality. And yet…yet there is not a single drop of the venom called “fear” in you, is there? You don’t feel in any danger at all. Is that not proof enough that I do not mean you harm, child?”

  The boy quieted himself.

  “You saved me before? When? Do you have any proof of that?”

  “If you want any proof, then for now I can only ask you that you trust the feeling of safety within you at this moment. But yes, I did deliver you unto safety, once upon a time. It brought me no end of complications to do so and I am still dealing with those as we speak. Regardless, I just had to do it. You were right in front of me. Our eyes met. I saw that you were too perfect and too pure to just let you die. You were completely one of a kind back then…”

  The shade paused. Once more, those golden eyes examined the boy at the bottom of the well.

  “…I suppose that in many ways, you still are, albeit not in the way that I would have preferred…Aaaahhh…I see, I see…this curse laid upon you may yet serve us well, child, even if it only makes our goals harder to achieve. Perhaps purity and perfection can make one…inflexible.”, the shade remarked.

  “So I have been cursed by someone then…great…”, the boy sighed.

  “I meant it figuratively, child.”

  “Fine then, so what do you want exactly?”

  “Well, it goes back to my previous outburst. We once had the closest and most wonderful of relationships, you and I. It feels me with grief to even acknowledge that that may no longer be the case or that someone or something has come between us. To call it rude or even a breach civility would be an understatement. Rest assured, child, that I am to repay the transgressors in kind.”

  “I don’t get what you mean by that”, the boy retorted.

  “Then I shall be blunt. There was once a time, not that far removed from where you currently stand, when I could guess your every thought as if it was my own. When the sweat upon your skin felt as warm and as salty to you as it felt to me. When the beating of your heart reverberated within my ears, as if it was beating in my own chest. Such was the miracle brought about by the unsullied nature of your being. The only ever chance for me to ever experience such a thing.”

  “Are you being figurative again?”, the boy asked.

  The shade paused for a moment. Then for the first time, its mouth twisted into something resembling a human’s expression.

  “Hahahaha!”, the shade laughed.

  For the first time ever, it was a genuine laugh. A laugh devoid of malice. A laugh removed from the shade’s evident longevity. It sounded no different than if it had come from one of the boy’s friends.

  “Apologies, haha, allow me to enjoy this moment, haaaaa…”, the shade paused.

  “As for the answer to that last question of yours, I will keep it for myself, for the time being. However-“, the shade was cut off.

  Something in between a noise and a reverberation had reached the two sitting at the bottom of this sea. It was sharp like a whip and short-lived like a spark. It denoted pain and great hunger, mixed within a single audible note.

  They both looked up, the boy in specific, trying to figure out if it was connected to the great shape above them.

  “Our time seems to be reaching its end. You have things that you must attend to”, the shade remarked.

  The next moment, its golden eyes turned blood red and the blood froze in the boy’s veins.

  It wasn’t as if he had suddenly come to fear the shade in front of him, but something instinctual and primordial within him made him tense up and his breath to catch in his throat.

  Not missing a beat, the oily black shadow closed the gap between the two of them. Its movements were unnatural and unnerving. It was something like the flow of a river, fast and determined, but at the same time, sluggish and viscous like some kind of resin.

  “However, before you go, there is something that I would like to confirm.”

  The shade placed its hands upon his face, caressing his features like someone who had a deep and long standing fondness for the boy, yet its ruby eyes which seemed to peer down his own and into his soul denoted the opposite of the care and loving humanity derived from its attitude.

  As the creature stared into the boy, their faces close enough for him to have felt its breath if they had been meeting in the real world, it uttered a single question.

  “For how long do you intend to hold back, child?”

  Trepidation followed those words.

  The entity’s utterances caused something within the boy to violently stir and convulse.

  He had come to suspect it. He had come to dread the possibility of it. That he of all people had allowed himself to waste away and forget his purpose in exchange for temporary bliss and the companionship of those not with the strength required to be his equals.

  “Does starvation feel pleasant to you now? Not long ago, we shared a hunger so vast that it struck fear upon all that laid eyes on us. Has even your matchless drive been chipped away? Oh Father, merciful, how much has this child’s ethereal radiance been dimmed by the foulest infestations plaguing this world?”

  He glared at the creature.

  He was a calm person. A detached individual, aloof of most things that made men bound to the goings on of life. Yet even he had things that he couldn’t abide by.

  “Don’t you dare…”

  “Hu?”, the shade flinched, somewhat surprised.

  “Don’t even think that I would ever lay down my cravings. To hold back on one’s desires, on one’s genuine calling, that is a sin beyond measure. I shall never be covered with the sin of lethargy, nor the sin of sloth. On my word, creature, you may hold me to that.”

  The shadow snickered. Its hands moved once more, caressing the boy’s face with hands smooth like velvet, yet its talons made small incisions upon his face as they moved through the surface of the child’s skin.

  “Hehe, you are endearing child. So eager to prove yourself as one of the strong, yet so transparent before my eyes to the true reality of what goes on inside your heart. I find your self-loathing, the shameful recognition of your own inadequacies to be…quite thrilling, I must say.”

  The boy struggled to wrench himself free of the shade, groaning from the effort and the frustration at his inability to do it, pinned down by just the shade’s hands on him.

  “Heheheh, but no matter. It seems that fate has thrown the both of us a lifeline. My sweet little boy has been handed the opportunity to find himself among the strong once more. It seems that you will have two hands pulling you along…sorry, but your peers will laugh at you for it. It is kind of your fault for having let go of my hand before, even though you should be the one person incapable of doing it.”

  The shade leaned closer to his ear.

  “Make sure that you don’t let go of that hand too soon, will you? It is only natural to get some support when you are learning to walk for the second time”.

  The shade pulled back, now locking eyes with the boy once more.

  “Well, I need to send you off now. You are going to be getting busy soon.”, the shade quipped, with what would pass as a bright smile were it on the face of a human.

  “But let’s try to make our long-awaited reunion one to remember”, the creature said.

  “Any less forgettable than talking at the bottom of a lake?”

  “Oh yes”, it whispered.

  “Gha-!”

  Before the boy could argue back, the creature had lunged forward and driven each and every one of its cavernous mouth laced with teeth, into the boy’s neck.

  “Hehe, see Kenos?... Memorable.”

  As he could feel the life draining from his body and he collapsed into the white sand, he still felt no fear or hatred towards the shade, even though the pain was almost unbearable. Although, that was quickly going away as well, since everything was starting to fade to black.

  “Think of that as a small retribution for having left me for as long as you did”.

  And yet he could still hear the shade’s words inside his mind, in these final moments.

  “You are about to get your chance, child. Make your choice. If you remember our vows and honour them once more, then our prayers, my prayer, to grasp all the gems beneath the sky, shall be within our reach once more.

  Then everything faded to black.