The Akashic Mandate

Chapter 4

The last thing Elijah remembered was the burning fire of the Angel’s spear. It had pierced his chest, burning his heart and tearing his soul away from his sick, dying body. He expected the afterlife to be cold. He expected a quiet, peaceful darkness where the pain of the Ever-Blight could never reach him again. He expected nothingness.

Instead, he woke up choking.

Thick, warm liquid rushed into his mouth and down his throat. It tasted horrible. It tasted like old iron, salt, and raw meat. It tasted exactly like fresh blood.

Elijah’s eyes snapped open, but he could not see anything. Everything was dark, wet, and heavy. Panic exploded inside his chest. He was underwater. Or rather, he was under something like water, but it was much thicker and heavier. He thrashed his arms, kicking his heavy boots in the thick liquid. He did not know which way was up. His lungs burned. They screamed for air.

Fight! his mind screamed. Move!

He kicked harder, pushing through the heavy current. His hands hit something hard. A rock. He used it to push himself upward. A second later, his head broke the surface.

Elijah gasped loudly, taking in a massive breath of air. The air did not smell fresh. It smelled like sulfur, ash, and old decay. He coughed violently, spitting mouthfuls of the thick, red liquid back into the water. He was in a river, but the water was not blue or clear. It was a deep, dark crimson. It was a river of blood.

He did not have time to wonder why. The current was strong, and it was pulling him away. Elijah swam with all his remaining strength toward a dark, rocky shore. His muscles ached. His wet clothes pulled him down like lead weights. Every time he raised his arm to swim, the thick red liquid clung to him, trying to drag him beneath the surface again.

"Almost there," Elijah grunted to himself. He swallowed more of the disgusting liquid, gagging as he fought the current.

Finally, his hands slammed into thick, black mud. He dug his fingers deep into the soft earth, using it as an anchor. He pulled his heavy body forward. His knees scraped against sharp, hidden stones under the mud, but he did not stop. He dragged himself completely out of the blood river and collapsed onto his stomach on the cold, hard ground.

He lay there for a long time, just breathing. His chest moved up and down in rapid, desperate heaves. He coughed until his throat was raw, clearing the last of the horrible liquid from his lungs.

Slowly, his panicked mind began to slow down. He started to think. He started to remember.

The ruined city. The black veins on my arm. The sky shattering like glass. The Angel with six wings. The spear of fire.

Elijah quickly rolled onto his back and sat up. He looked down at his chest, expecting to see a massive, gaping hole where the Angel had stabbed him. He expected to see his own ribs and blood.

His gray shirt was torn perfectly in the center, right over his heart. But beneath the torn cloth, there was no wound. His skin was completely smooth. There was no blood, no scar, no pain. His heart was beating with a strong, steady rhythm.

"How?" Elijah whispered into the empty air. His voice sounded loud in the strange silence.

He suddenly remembered something far worse than the spear. The Ever-Blight. The sickness that had been turning him into a mindless, rotting Hollow.

With shaking, terrified fingers, Elijah grabbed his left sleeve. The leather armor was gone, lost somewhere in the river. He pulled his wet shirt sleeve all the way up to his shoulder. He closed his eyes tightly, terrified of what he might see. He was afraid to see the pitch-black veins spreading toward his neck. He was afraid to feel the freezing cold rot under his skin.

Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes and looked at his arm.

He stared in absolute shock.

The black veins were completely gone. The pale, sickly gray color of his skin had vanished. His arm looked healthy, strong, and deeply tanned. He touched the skin. It was warm. The freezing cold feeling of the sickness was entirely wiped away. He flexed his fingers. They moved perfectly, without the stiff, painful joints that the Blight always caused.

He was cured. He was completely, perfectly whole.

"I am alive," Elijah said softly. He let out a strange, weak laugh. "I am actually alive."

But as he looked away from his arm and finally looked around his new surroundings, his weak smile slowly faded away. The relief in his chest turned into a cold, heavy knot of dread.

If this was the afterlife, it was a terrifying place.

Elijah slowly pushed himself to his feet. His boots slipped a little in the black mud. He looked up at the sky. There was no sun, and there were no stars. The sky was an endless expanse of dark, swirling clouds that glowed with a sick, violent purple light.

Hanging in the center of the purple sky was a moon. But it was not round, and it was not white. It was massive, filling up a huge portion of the sky, and it was cracked right down the middle. Deep, glowing red light spilled out from the cracks in the moon, making it look like a giant, bleeding eye staring down at him.

Then, Elijah saw the impossible.

Floating high in the air, miles above the ground, were massive islands of rock and dirt. Whole mountains hung upside down in the sky, completely defying gravity. Great waterfalls of glowing blue liquid poured off the edges of these floating islands, vanishing into the purple clouds below.

Elijah looked across the landscape in front of him. He was standing on the edge of a vast, broken continent. The ground was made of dark, jagged rocks and black dirt. Twisted, dead trees with no leaves grew out of the ground like bony fingers reaching for the sky. The blood river he had just escaped flowed endlessly behind him, cutting through a deep canyon of jagged black stone.

"Where am I?" he whispered. The air felt heavy, charged with a strange, crackling energy that made the hairs on his arms stand up. "This is not Earth. This is not anywhere."