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CHAPTER FOUR / VOL. I, AM I MISSED
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HERE IT IS: the repeated image of a girl on fire, burning so hot that her skin starts to swelter and even in the dreamlike state her mouth goes dry. Orange and gold swallows the scene, specks of white dotting her vision like looking at the sun for too long or holding your eyes shut so tight that you see unimaginable colors in the darkness. The fire is unlike any she's seen before—golden like ichor but just as radiant and consuming, not like the violent flames that burned everything she was to the ground. Will can feel the heat swallowing her, burning against her skin, but this time it doesn't just dance around her, leaving her skin untainted. She feels every excruciating moment, unable to fight against the fire that laps at her body.
All she does is burn.
The ground shifts and thunder sounds just above her. It takes every ounce of power in her body to look up at the stormy sky, dark and foreboding, hanging over her head like a ghost that haunts her. And then a deafening crack fills her ears, not from the sky, but from the earth beneath her, splitting in two and creating a great divide like the one that exists inside of her. Will's body is not her own and as she falls beneath the earth, seeing the dark sky disappear, she can do nothing. Nothing but watch as the world slips away.
The last thing she hears are these words echoing in her head, feeling as grim as an epitaph: free me.
Will wakes in a cold sweat, shooting up like a bullet and examining the exposed skin that looks burned, red and inflamed by the fire from her dreams. It still burns. The rest of the cabin is silent, only the sound of snoring and Will's ragged breathing fill the nothingness. Her sweat-soaked clothes cling to her in a way that makes her squirm with revulsion as she pushes herself up from the bed, lacing up her shoes before exiting the cabin like it's on fire. She can't breath—stifling and suffocating, Ares' cabin watches her leave with haunting glass eyes and a gaunt frame that looks more like a consequence of war than war itself. Will doesn't look back, instead looking at the other cabins that are deathly silent, a slow decay that surrounds us. The cool night air is a welcomed feeling against her burning skin and as soon as she's outside her flesh returns to flesh and all signs of redness dissipates, leaving only a tint to her cheeks from the cold. There's only one place that Will wants to be right now—somewhere that felt like home, where chaos and violence reign. She longs for the comfort of disarray.
