A subtle whine escaped his lips as his gaze continued to swallow the dying scenery around him. Where once that howling river of blue would cry with a song of life, now it all but seemed to wail with a sense of dread. A dread that Amaris could feel needling its way within his abdomen. His gaze skittered to the side, flashing along the wilted flowers of a bloom that could not grow—and from beyond their shadowed corpses, he could’ve sworn the image of his veiled friends returned.

The shadows of his Demonic little friends skittered like bugs across his vision, consuming his peripherals as they so often did. But unlike the past, these times their wilted and spindly forms did not come toward him—rather, they seemed to scatter into the dead vegetation around them. Fleeing. From a terror he could not place but knew far too well.

Aelia’s voice brought him back, as if she were the lighthouse that guided his sinking ship to shore. He turned to glance at her with the quiet drawing of his ears. Hope, he mumbled through a dry chuckle, leaning into her form beside his own. Are we sure it is not the Five that is punishing us now? He asked.

And much like the clockwork to his disheartened string of words, that feeling of intrusion began again. First, as a rapping against his mental door, and then as a booming voice, as the Other flooded through him.

Drink, it commanded of them, and Amaris all but whined against his sister’s silhouette.

He didn’t want to.

Not now. Not again.

Already, that itching in his throat was commanding, crawling along a bloody rawness he could not quite explain but one he knew was clearly pain. He dove his head into Aelia’s neck, as if the grounding of her body could save him too, while a whine echoed from between his clenching teeth. Aelia, he whispered past the voice, we need…to leave...

If he stayed any longer, Amaris could not trust himself to avoid the oozing water. Not until it devoured him from the inside out.