The Mark of Aether

Unmasked Reality

Incidents were a written story, a stain on the pages of fate, bound to happen. Secrets were the whispers of the heart, born to be kept in its depths.

Not everybody was a friend; after all, the devil might be hidden behind the most beautiful of masks. Not every foe was an enemy, so many of them braced the light and turned to the greatest allies.

But what was undisputable was that no matter when or where, a betrayal would be a clear stab through a heart that wearied from the continuous breaks and burns.

And as I fell on my knees, my father's sword lying in front of my eyes and my hands bound behind my head, memories flooded in my brain like a raging ocean in a stormy day.

An unsettling feeling made my guts jump to my throat, thinking that all this hell we'd been living just vanished like a mist in the endless air.

Defeated, I raised my eyes to look at the deep, dull ones of that tall silhouette standing in front of me, bathed in the light of fire. Such familiar features, yet strange in the same time.

He knelt in front of me, his hand gripping my face. I felt my skin burn underneath his touch, my jaws breaking from his strong grasp. I flinched, feeling darkness smirching my soul.

"Get your hand of her!''

I heard Leon growl next to me, also on his knees, firmly secured by black warriors. As by pleasure, the man's other hand erupted in flames before it glommed my neck, making me scream and wail, pain eating me from the inside.

The shadow's eyes were choleric as he saw the reddish glint burning in the man's blue eyes. I tried fighting back, tried to move, to kick him or anything. But I couldn't. Not with his grasp or the noisome warriors pointing the tips of their weapons at us.

All I could do was swallow the pain and fight the burning tears blurring my vision.

"Such an ignorant soul. Powerful, but still ignorant,'' laughed the man, his voice so similar, so close to a voice I was so acquainted with that it was impossible.

He rose to his feet and headed to the golden sarcophagus in the middle of the dais.

We could not escape in any case. We were stuck on a platform hovering above seas of magma and fire. The closest stony bridge was skimpy and halfway deteriorated that I doubted it could even hold both our weights. But the true problem remained the guardians blocking it.

I sneaked a glimpse of Leon kneeling on the floor, a look of pure rage striking the blue of his eyes with scarlet red. His jaws were tensed from his anger while his aura was burning like a livid inferno. It was so reckless, so free that it could bring the whole place down if he loosed his temper.

"And she is all yours now!'' exclaimed the man with an acerbic beam, looking in the space behind the tomb.

A strong whiff of darkness surged in the air making me almost choke tightening around my lungs and increasing my heart beat. From all the times that I'd been near this kind of presence, not once have I felt so asthenic and vulnerable to its sight.

Black smoke started swirling like a pall, circulating like an uprising tempest.

From the mist of darkness, the outlines of a cloak could be seen before a silhouette emerged from the caliginous shadows into the light. A hood obscured the face, but I could still see it bold and clear, lurching in my mind like a continuous nightmare.

Bile rose through my throat and into my mouth while my stomach churned, a feeling piercing deep inside my being.

Every drop of blood in my veins sparked underneath the effect of his tenebrous presence, turning to peaking shards of glass stabbing me from the ultimate depths, tearing me and my heart apart.