Chaos

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At the head of a column of ghosts, with Risoven and the dead priests of Ondir at her side, Isabel approaches the crumbling wall. It buckles outward, looming toward her, holding back the weight of the thing behind it by faith and force of will. The many eyes, clustered together like sprouting fungus, roll in unseen sockets to appraise her, pupils contracting to pinpricks. 

It’s foolish, what she’s doing. At best, it will stave off the destruction of the world for only a little while longer. She hopes it will be enough time for someone wiser than she to find a more permanent solution. 

Another step, and an ear-splitting whine shakes the shattered sky. Isabel puts her hands over her ears, but it doesn’t help—neither the sound nor her hands have a physical presence here in the world beyond. Ripples form in the mud beneath her feet as the high-pitched note goes on and on, stabbing through her spirit form like a hot knife. Stones fall loose from the wall and dissipate upon hitting the ground. 

There is triumph in this horrible song, and a warning, and something else Isabel can’t name, a sort of mad, painful delight at causing the world itself to tear apart at the seams, as it screams with both love and hate of the task. If ever this thing possessed the power of reason, the ability is long gone. It is a creature—a structure, an all-pervasive thought—of pure chaos. 

Impossible

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One by one, the dead fall still and drop to the tiled floor. Silence falls over the hospital wing.

Berend stands on legs shaky with exhaustion, adrenaline the only thing keeping him upright, his empty pistol gripped in one hand as stiff as a corpse’s. A slow fire that reeks of disinfectant and rotting flesh eats at what’s left of his barricade.

Is it over?