The nightmares crept in like whispers.
They started softly—the wind through the trees, or perhaps the echo of Eli's own voice, when there was no one there to hear him. But soon whispers became words, words became names, and names became memories that had no place in this life that he remembered.
He stood shivering in the field, arms wrapped around himself, watching the last rays of golden light disappear over the hills. The evening air was sharp; even in midsummer, it had a bite. It stirred the grass but it also carried something underneath.
Something that breathed.
Something that remembered.
"You haven't slept," Amon said from behind him.
Eli didn't turn. "I don't need to."
Amon stepped closer, reaching his hand towards Eli's back-but hesitating.
The mark.
It had grown again.
What was once only a small symbol over Eli's heart now branched out from there onto his spine like honeyed veins-thin and glowing, as though cracks had spread across porcelain.
"You glow," Amon declared, trying to make a jest.
Eli offered a weak smile. "I'm breaking."
"No," Amon said, stepping forward, finally touching him. "You are renewing."
Eli turned over his shoulder, his eyes full of shine. "And what if what I become... isn't good?"
Amon folded Eli into his arms. "Then I will love even harder."
Eli leaned into him, burying his face in the hollow of Amon's throat. "You don't understand. It's not just change. I hear him."
Amon's stillness. "Who?"
"The First Sin."
They returned to the cottage, but the door had no interest in opening.
Not in the physical sense.
Buzzing through the air was that feeling that resistance was emanating from inside.
Eli laid a hand on the wood. It shivered under his touch.
"He's inside," Eli whispered. "Or part of him is."
Amon reached for his sword-the one made from the last of his divine light. "Then we cast him out."
"No," said Eli. "We listen."
Inside, the air was heavy, like trying to breathe through velvet. The fireplace was cold to the touch, though no one had been near it.
On the table, a single black feather rested, long as a blade, humming with energy.
Amon took a step back. "That's not mine. That's-"
"From before," Eli finished.
He picked up the feather, and the second he did, the world went white.
The Memory
A battlefield of ash. Mountains cracked and bleeding light. A tall, fierce figure came in sorrow and smoke, dragging a sword of bone.
The figure turned.
It was him.
But not the Eli who now stood beside Amon. That Eli wore no kindness on his face. His eyes were voids. Smoke and shadow were his wings.
At his feet lay a broken Amon, bleeding, chained.
"I warned you," the First Sin whispered in Eli's head. "You made me once. When the world took him from you. You created me to make it burn."
The vision shattered.
Eli let the feather fall.
He was shaking. Pale. Eyes wide.
"That was me," he whispered.
"What did you see?" Amon replied hoarsely.
"I killed you."
Twist Revealed
The First Sin isn't merely a dark force; it is Eli's original soul, born from grief after Amon's death in an alternate timeline. That version of Eli had been sealed away-and reincarnated into the version we know now. But the seal is beginning to break.
And the First Sin wants its control back.
That night, for the first time in days, Eli slept.
But in his dream, he stood at the edge of a pit deep enough that it swallowed light.
And from it rose a voice-his voice; twisted and hoary.
"Let me in again. Let me save him properly this time. You are too soft to protect what matters."
And then a face stepped from the darkness.
Kael.
But not as he was.
Kael cast pale, hollow-eyed, and glowing with a wound in his chest.
"You are running out of time," Dream-Kael said. "He is waking up. And when he does, the world will burn. Unless you let me help."
With a gasp, Eli woke up.
Outside, Amon slept peacefully, unaware of the change that was occurring beside him.
Eli quietly got up, barefoot, and dawned the cold with his feet, looking up at the sky.
Kael stood at the edge of the woods.
Real this time.
Waiting.