I should have known.
I should have known this happiness...this peace wouldn’t last. I knew immediately where the shadows were herding us. I knew who was herding us. It was Kaos. It was always Kaos. Ever since the moment the pretender-god had arrived in Helovia, mistrust had burned hot in my belly.
My family was finally beginning to thread itself back together, only for everything to be torn apart all over again.
I heard the pleading.
The screams.
I saw the explosions of light and could smell the acrid smoke that symbolized another life that Kaos had purged from this place. I felt the burn of the light behind my eyelids even when they were pressed tightly shut. I felt the vibration of Papa’s chest when he screamed for his brother.
I felt everything.
And nothing.
I didn’t scream. I couldn’t. It was like I’d forgotten how to produce sound, or there was no longer enough air in my lungs to do so. I just watched, paralyzed, waiting for some salvation to save those who remained from the encroaching darkness. Everly released a single cry of anguish, speaking for the both of us in this one moment.
My eyes turned skyward - looking for the moon - for the one who held so much strength and so many answers. The moon had promised she would protect us, protect me from this threat. She’d held me in her arms while she promised me this, told me not to worry. I stared as the Gods pulled open the very seams of the Earth, but my eyes were drawn to Grandmama Moon. Is this where she had been? Trying to find a way to save us all? Fighting somewhere we could not see her? Help her?
But it was over soon enough. Vacant eyes watched, disbelieving, as such an integral part of my world simply evaporated in a cloud of light and stardust. Just like that, she was gone. Erased in less than the span of a single heartbeat.
There were voices. Familiar voices. Voices that would be comforting on any other day. I felt my head nodding in response to something that Mama said, felt my feet begin to move. The portal loomed closer, with strange light pouring from the now wavering opening.
Only one coherent thought formed in my head, managing to thread its way through the confusion and the chaos.
Virga. How will he ever find us? With each step, I understood.
He wouldn’t.
This was the end.
V E S P E R |
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let's let the stars watch, let them stare 
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[SWP] The beginning of the end :: the ending.
