The Celestial does not belong here.

His steps, quicksilver, weave a path through the low hanging mist that holds an inescapable chill. The kind that pierces through skin and sinew to wrap itself around one’s very bones.

A chill that says you should not be here.

In the mist, structures shift into being, rising and falling like quicksand, each one threatening to derail a trespasser with the way they distort the pathways. These structures too, are cloaked in the mist, the lines of their shapes smudged into something recognisable—but not entirely. Like in a dream where there’s a moment of familiarity but the memory of what it is remains just out of reach.

They resemble ancient colosseums, pagodas, pyramids and palaces, tall modern buildings—but among those are others. Squat houses, carriages and trees. He feels the surface beneath his feet ripple and change with every five steps—the unevenness of cobbles, the crunch of dirt, the soft whisper of grass, the unforgiveness of concrete.

Beneath the lingering whiteness all around him, he glimpses muted colour, but it never quite makes it through the density of the primordial fog.

He feels the air around him compressing the longer he continues on. The pressure builds, surrounding him—the Boundary’s attempt to reject him. A reminder that he is not meant to be here. No one is.

And yet, he feels the million eyes on him, as they rise and fall with the shifting surroundings. He hears the whisper-like breaths that are paced and contained as they track his progress.

Finding your way into the Boundary is easy. It’s getting lost inside of it that most should be worried about.

His wings shiver beneath his cloak, repelling the pressure, an extension of the agitation coursing through him right now. 

He doesn’t know how long he has before his absence is noted. Before they reach for his mind to ask where he is. But he can’t say anything, not until he is certain.

He’s created from the principalities, connected to all those who are born with a gift to communicate with the Fates. He can recognise each and every single one of the souls that have come into being since the beginning of his very existence.

So when a new one sprung into being two cycles ago, he’d frozen in place at the recognition. He’d felt its birth rise inside him, like a tide sweeping from his stomach all the way to his chest where it swallowed his heart with its power.

There had only been one such messenger of the Fates. Only ever the one. It’s nearing 800 years since she ceased to exist. 

Except now, he feels her soul pulsing and alive. Distorted. Wrong. But nevertheless, there’s no denying that it is hers. 

The Boundary has many paths. But they all lead to one of three places. The Human Realm, the Fade, or the Veil. 

To those who can’t find their way, they will waste away in the Boundary for eternity. Here, time is still. 

A human would be trapped here. They wouldn’t be able to find their way to the human realm. Humans aren’t born with the additional senses required to navigate the Fade’s treacherous roads. Though mediators might be able to manage it.

He knows the Veil lies in the opposite direction to where he is headed. His home. It calls to him. It’s where the Boundary is trying to push him back to. 

He does not belong in the Fade. He has no business in the Fade. But that’s exactly where he is headed. Because that is where she is. Even though she’d been an immortal Seer born of the Veil—somehow, upon her reemergence she has reappeared in the Fade.

Maybe they were telling the truth. She corrupted her soul.

His connection to her pulls taut, the invisible string vibrating from the power of it. Of her. 

She had always been a force to be reckoned with, her power second only to the Grand Celestials and the Prīmus. Him and his brethren. 

Once, there had been six Prīmus. 

800 years ago, when she fell, two of them fell too. 

And then they became four. 

It had left an irreparable chasm in the Veil. One that the Grand Celestials and the remaining Prīmus seemed all too willing to overlook. 

The pressure becomes more intense, solidifying more and more until it feels as if he’s wading through a thick, clinging substance. His wings beat against it, instinctive, trying to shake the restrictive feeling of it.

At his feet and all around him, the mist begins to change. The translucent white deepening to charcoal as above him, the boundary’s sky turns to night. 

The shapes in the fog cease to be.

The space around him sinks into blackness and the ground beneath him becomes thick and soft. Like freshly settled earth. The air shivers for a split second before heat explodes all around him. It’s all consuming. The force of it sends his robes rippling back, riding the wave of the air current. 

He’s reached it. The gate into the Fade. 

He won’t be able to cross into it entirely, but this will be enough. He’s close enough now that if he calls to her, she will come. 

It doesn’t matter that she’s in the Fade. It doesn’t matter what she has become.

Anyone born of the principalities will always come when he calls. 

He stops where he is. 

The road ahead is shrouded in darkness. Its stars will guide you straight into the mouth of the Fade and then leave you trapped in there forever. 

In the back of his mind, he feels a stirring. 

Someone has noticed his absence. 

He stares into the void of the gate. 

He wraps himself tight around the link pulsing with life. 

‘Darsha.’ 

The name, softly spoken, grows and he feels its release and the power of it cleaves into the earth, lifting it as it cuts multiple paths to extend past the gate, heading straight for its namesake. 

His wings flick behind him. He feels the Boundary’s rejection of him amplifying even as the stirring in the back of his mind turns inquisitive. 

He’s running out of time.

He knows she’ll respond. He just doesn’t know how long it’ll take his call to reach her. 

Then he feels it—that same connecting thread conveying something alien. Something confused. Its sentient… but like an animal. Not with the intelligence he had expected to connect with.

But still, the compulsion of his call has worked. She’s coming. She’s coming to him. 

He sees the bloodied point before he feels the pain.

He stares down at it, uncomprehending, where it protrudes from his chest.

‘What…’

He hadn’t sensed it. 

Blood seeps from the puncture piercing right through him. The strength of his flapping wings sends the darkened mist whirling from him. 

The shock lasts barely a second before he’s staggering forward. He feels the burn of the instrument slicing new parts of him open as he pulls himself off it, doubling the damage. 

He’s opening his connection to the others, to sound the alarm—he can explain away his location later—a pure flame bursting to life in the cup hold of his clawed hand, ready to reduce his attacker to ash.

He catches only a glimpse of a midnight blade.

His wings jerk as it stabs into his neck.

*

Nulla comes awake with a yell, his entire skin feeling as if it’s being flayed with a scalding knife.

He forces his eyes open, gasping as he pushes himself up to sitting, his lungs hurting and his eyes stinging as if they’re poisoned by the very air around them, completely unseeing.

Whispers crowd his ears, each hiss piercing through as they try to reach his core with greedy, anticipating fingers.

A needle thin noise rings in his ears as he forces himself to breathe through it, to breathe through the waves and waves of pain lapping over him one after the other. Instinctively, he shoves the whispers down. His veins pop in his neck, in his forearms and in his fisted hands as he wrestles with them for what feels like an age, teeth gritted.

Eventually, the noise fades and the sound of his own short, sharp breaths filters in and with it, he becomes aware of the sweat prickling on his skin as the pain begins to subside, of the soft bedding beneath him, of the weight of a blanket over his thighs.

A large rose window, with its complex tracery set against the black of night, comes into focus.

Blinking, Nulla stares at it as he tries to get his bearings.

His body feels completely off. Somewhere inside the building he hears a chorus of voices, singing.

‘It’s too early,’ he murmurs.

He should not be awake yet.

Before he can examine it any further, the thudding of running steps approaching has him turning to look at the door of the modest attic chamber only a few seconds before the door is thrown open.

A young human woman—no, not entirely human, a mediator—stands there, her almond dark brown eyes opened wide and a rose blush on her cheeks.

‘Oh my god… you’re awake,’ she says, clearly stunned, ‘I don’t understand.’

He thinks of the pain he’d woken up to—something unnatural. Not his own. And it had been strong enough that it had reached into his sleep and yanked him out of it.

Glancing at the deep night beyond the rose window, understanding dawns and a tight phantom band wraps around his chest.

‘I think a Celestial has died.’