Camille’s awakening comes like a sudden snap; it’s more like she’s inexplicably lost time rather than the slow and gradual awakening from a proper sleep. Not only is she awake — or now just suddenly aware — she is also standing, feet planted squarely in the space she finds herself in.

And as she takes that space in, a quiet forest at night, she finds immediately that it’s incredibly still. The sounds one might expect from a forest, all that white noise and proof of life melting into a barely detectable background, are all atrociously absent. She can notice her breathing. She can hear her heartbeat. And yet if a pin were to drop from stretching branch to unturned stone, she would certainly hear that too.

That quiescence brings with it a feeling that graces up her spine, settles around her shoulders and nape. A cold and prickly mantle, this sensation feels familiar and that recognition puts an anxious sort of twist into her guts.

It’s dread, potent and with a freeze-cinder sort of gravity pulling down her insides.

She moves. Her boots bring her from the great tree that hides the sky to the twisted and gnarled and mossy earth of a clearing.

Eyes turning skyward, that dread twists worse, twists hard, feels more like a knife now than a pull.

The sky is flat grey, stark white clouds floating still against the slate backdrop. It looks almost cartoonish, how there’s no stars to shine or a wisping away of the clouds. Yet the sight that disturbs the most is the ring of the moon, akin to an eclipse. The ring is thin and unbroken, light dripping from it like a viscous oil to dissipate into the sky. It twinkles and flows out, crystalline.

It’s wrong.

Pretty, but wrong, and there’s a sort of horror that accompanies the sight. Yet for a couple moments all she can do is stare, mind blank of thought, rather filled with the singular feeling of utter wrongness.

She doesn’t want to stay under that shine; when will the sun come?

The hour is unfelt, unknown. There’s nothing on her person that might tell her, either.

Though she wants to run, her legs move slowly and surely through the clearing to the other side. As she steps through, the dread and horror make way for something a little calmer. It’s akin to how she felt when she needed to soldier on — shut down, her therapist called it. While that shutting down wasn’t ideal from a therapy point of view, she felt it was in order to provide for her siblings.

At the thought of her siblings, a pang of saudade fills her middle like fireworks, bright and hot and so, so loud. The image of their three faces rushes back, the sound of their laughter.

With that painful pang comes the need to move, to find them. She soldiers on as she had before time and time again, thinking only of them.

She wonders what her old therapist would say about this.

Reaching the edge of the forest, she’s stepped into a residential area; it’s a cul-de-sac with those big houses that probably all have the same exact layout as one another. She’s never been especially fond of the suburbs.

There’s a sign of life here besides her own — dim lights from a house at the mouth of the cul-de-sac.

What sort of people does this place have in it, so still and unnerving? Would they welcome her or reject her, or even hurt her? These questions all clatter-crash into one another like a car wreck, but she’s moving anyway.

Slow and surely she goes, like an experienced pallbearer.

Before she can reach the house, more life teems forth from it; a person in dark clothing runs from the side to the front, aiming a shotgun right at her. Camille sticks her hands up immediately, heart suddenly pounding loud enough she’s sure the other person can hear it.

“Don’t shoot, I don’t know where I am, or—”

They lower the shotgun, voice low and scratchy, “Oh, hell. Camille?”

She balks for a second, hands lowering themselves, “How do you know my name?”

Righting their posture to full mast, they offer a small smile, that seems just a little regretful, somehow, “We’ve been waiting for you. Come with me.”

Skeptical though she feels at the invitation, she takes a step towards this person. That sad sort of regret in their smile belies a sort of humanity that seems hard to fake. They’re pierced up and covered in tattoos, made visible from under the black tank top they’re wearing; that might’ve made them intimidating to Camille before, but the shape of her name in their mouth makes the trepidation ease. Familiar and warm.

She feels the ice in her heart melt away.

“What can I call you?” she asks, “And what is this place?”

Before they answer, she blurts out, “And why is the moon like that?”

“Whoa, whoa. Those questions are above my paygrade.” they say, walking in step with her to the side of the house. “Caleb’s inside, he’ll … fill you in.”

Then their grin brightens, “But you can call me Laika.”

Laika. The name seems familiar, and it’s a feeling she can’t shake while they make their way to the backyard. There’s a basement door they reach; Laika reaches down to wrench them open, heavy and creaky.

Laika takes a few steps down the stairs, and turns to see Camille paused there. They laugh a little, and the sound is warm and familiar, too.

“I know it looks sketchy, but I promise it’s okay. We’re on your side.”

“All right.” she murmurs, and begins to follow them the rest of the way down. She can’t do anything but trust them; where else she can go when she doesn’t even know where she is? She doesn’t know what that moon ring means, and nor does she know what’s out there.

A shiver runs up her spine and down her limbs.

When they reach the basement, she finds it a lot more roomy than expected. A few people are sitting around in the room, mugs clasped in hands or guns being taken apart and polished. That makes her nervous.

“Yo, you found her?” a boy exclaims, incredulous, jumping up from his seat. Everyone looks up from what they’re doing to look at Camille. Just a little sheepish, she raises her hand in greeting.

“Almost gunned her down, but she’s here. Where’s Caleb and the others?”

“Out.” says the boy, “Except Hye. She’s in the other room.”

She’s confused; the lack of immediate answers both frustrates and worries her.

“Time to meet Veils, I guess. C’mon.” Laika heads towards the left, where there’s a curtain separating this room from the next. They part the curtain and step inside.

The furniture in the next room is mismatched and looks old, but the girl sitting on the couch, book in hand, looks even more out of place. Like she’s been plucked from a fashion magazine and placed into a dingy hideout.

She’s dressed in soft colors, flowy clothes. Her blonde hair piles on top of her head in a soft, wavy knot, though it looks loose and threatening to break free at any moment.

Something thrums between them, taut like a tightrope. But when their gazes meet, Camille feels sharp pain lance up through her ribs. With that comes a warm sort of fondness and familiarity, as though someone is stabbing her and hushing her through it all at once, words kind and reassuring.

“Camille?”

Hyacinth. Her name is Hyacinth, and Camille knew her once, knew her intimately for years and lifetimes. Those pale purple eyes of hers soften Camille’s worries, but the pain stays sharp. There’s that knife in her ribs, then the heavy feeling of blunt force at her temple; the ragged claws raking down her thighs, bruises all over.

She goes unseeing, then; at least, she loses sight of the room around her, of Hyacinth. Instead, she melts backwards, through time and distance and she sees Hyacinth there.

Camille’s head, laid in her lap, Hyacinth’s hand gracing her cheek. The pain of a fight, the hiss of it over a split lip. Hyacinth speaks in this half-dream, but she can’t hear what she’s saying, as though the words are being spoken from underwater. Camille laughs at the statement, but that hurts to do. Yet she finds she doesn’t mind, sitting with her like this.

All she feels is weary and warm and incredibly fond of this woman she seems to know so intimately, but has never met.

Then the melting sensation comes through again, fading her into something far more painful. Hyacinth, with a claw in her heart; Camille, screaming and rushing towards her. The claws are pulled free and the assailant — shadowy and incomprehensible — disappears. She can’t hear what Hyacinth breathes out, death rattling and coughing as she speaks. All Camille feels is anger and pure hatred to an aching intensity that shocks her waking self.

She comes out of those visions gasping, tears hot on her cheeks.

She’s laying on that couch now, and who knows how much time she had lost there? Hyacinth is sitting beside her, chair pulled up close. There’s more people in the room now, but she only just barely registers them before she’s sitting up and putting her hands over her face.

“Oh, Camille.” Hyacinth sighs, “You’re okay now. We got you.”

It’s silent for a couple beats while she breathes deeply. The pain is no more, but all her questions are back again; this time, accompanied by frustration.

“Can someone tell me,” she removes her hands from her face, wiping at the tears, “what the fuck is going on here?”

It’s silent again. She looks from Hyacinth to the others, finding there’s the same feeling of familiarity for all of them. It’s as though they’re just visiting a friend in the hospital.

“Caleb, you’re up.” says a man leaning back against a wall. His tone is slightly sardonic, and the color his words take tells her his name.

Namir.

She knew him, too.

Caleb speaks, “First — Camille, what do you remember?”

She sniffs, thinks.

“My name. My siblings and H-Hyacinth. How much it hurt.”

“How much what hurt?” he asks gently. The question makes her ache in and of itself.

“I don’t know.” she cries, then, tears coming again in wide tracks, “I don’t know anything and I need to know! I need to know where my siblings are, I need to know why the moon is like that.”

He inhales deeply then, clasps his hands together. He looks like the leader-type, and he’s familiar too, but the calm and nearly lazy way he moves, speaks, is even more frustrating. It’s as though he can’t comprehend or care about her pain — or maybe he’s numb to it. He seems as weary as he is authoritative.

“I don’t know where your siblings are.” he goes, matter-of-fact, “They’re more than likely in stasis.”

“Stasis?” she whispers, “What are you talking about?”

“The world is paralyzed right now. That moon you saw is a mark of that which shouldn’t be here any longer, but hangs on anyway.”

He comes closer, “It’s all a lot to hear, but it’s all true. You’re a Godshard like everyone here besides me.”

Before Camille can interrupt with more questions, he holds a hand up to hush her. She balks, but anger at the gesticulation spikes up into her heart.

“A demigod of sorts — you’re born of grief. You’re here to clear the world of the Ink that’s taken over the world entirely.

“The Ink is … inexplicable. All they want to do is hurt and hunt, especially you Shards. Most of the life on earth is in stasis and we haven’t figured out how to free them.”

Camille shakes her head, as if to dislodge the further questions that arise at the spiel. She whispers instead, “What kind of fucked up TV show did I just walk into?”

Namir snorts.

“I’m confused … the woman I saw in my dream felt like Hyacinth but she … wasn’t, at the same time.”

Hyacinth nods, “That’s probably a previous incarnation of mine. I’m … I’m Veils.”

“We’ve been doing this for a while.” says someone, seated on another couch to her left; this someone looks positively striking — skinny and pale, with a shock of green hair on their head. Gideon, representing Rage.

They continue, “Lifetimes.”

“We’ve been reincarnated.” she goes, more of a statement than a question. This registers in her as true, like something clicked into place.

“Yeah. A lot.” Gideon sighs, “But we always come together to fight the Ink, or so the story goes.”

“Do you all remember this yourselves?”

“Not quite. We remember bits and pieces, but that’s where Scribes like Caleb and Laika come in. They remember the gaps we can’t fill.” the voice comes from a man sitting next to Gideon — Zephyr. Gideon’s brother. Diligence.

“This is … a lot.” Camille murmurs, face once again obscured by her hands. She breathes deeply once, twice, and feels the emotion drain right out of her. Shut down proper, feeling a little more able to speak now, Camille keeps on with her questions.

“If we fought the Ink and are still alive, why does the sky still look like that?” she asks.

“We don’t really … Know.” Zephyr goes, “But one of us is missing. They’re of Compassion. It probably has to do with them, but no one remembers anything about them besides that — not even Caleb or Laika.”

Demyan. His name is Demyan.

With the remembrance of his name, Camille feels as though she’s going to throw up. Tears stream down her cheeks once more, and still the pain pulls her down under. She’s wounded, drowning, with the memory of him. His autumn-colored hair, the shape of his laughter. His tears over the state of the world when they were embroiled in war. How sensitive he could be, how much she absolutely loved and pitied him.

“Camille … ?” Hyacinth murmurs, “What happened?”

“His name is Demyan.” her breathing comes rough and quick and ragged and the vision of him crying over their battles makes it feel as though her insides have been taken out of her. Harsh and cold winds curl around her hollowed-out insides, knives on her nerves. “He’s — he’s … I-I don’t think he’s o-okay, he could n-never hack it with us wh-when we were together.”

“What do you mean?” another asks, softly; his name is Mikael, but this name only barely comes to her, anguish and fear making her shake.

“He wasn’t … wasn’t strong enough. S-soft.” she chokes on a sob, willing herself to breathe deep, “Oh, God, he’s d-dead isn’t he,”

“We won’t know until we look.” Namir says, a little flatly. “We were waiting for you so that we could look for answers.”

She nods, looking up at Namir through tears. Wiping them away, once again she steels herself against the onslaught of emotions and feelings that have dragged her along today. Never before has she known mental exhaustion like this.

Something deep and ancient and mourning inside Camille tells her it’s going to get a lot more tiring.