NOVPUB
Chapter 35 - Kai(1)
Kai's breath was ragged by the time they reached the river's edge.
He hadn't even realized how hard he'd been running how fast his legs had pumped across the uneven, flower-choked ground, dodging monsters left and right, cutting down snarling beasts when they got too close. His shoulders ached. His sword arm throbbed. His heart felt like it had been pounding in his throat for hours.
Beside him, Kathlyn was no better.
Her hands glowed faintly with heat, the air shimmering around her, but her steps had grown heavier. Her breath was clipped and shallow, her eyes darting constantly between Kai, the field, the monsters — and the river ahead.
That river.
Kai stared at it now, sweat sliding cold down the side of his face.
It was wrong.
It wasn't water.
It wasn't mist.
It was —
A flat stretch of pitch black, stretching in both directions as far as they could see. No ripples. No light reflecting off the surface. No movement.
It was like someone had taken a brush and painted a thick black line across the world, cutting the land clean in half.
Kathlyn bent slightly, hands on her knees, panting hard. She muttered under her breath,
"Why... why does it feel like it's pulling us in already?"
Kai wiped his sleeve roughly across his forehead, forcing himself to stand straighter.
"I don't know." His voice came out hoarse. "But this is where the story led, right? This is where she went."
He stepped closer, careful, boots skidding slightly in the loose dirt.
The monsters were still behind them — they could hear their snarls, the crunch of heavy feet, the scrape of claws — but none of them crossed the last few feet.
They stood just outside the stretch of black, pacing at the edges like a pack held back by an invisible chain.
Kai could feel it.
The pressure.
The mental drag that had been grinding into their skulls for the last hour, making their thoughts sluggish, their focus blurred — it was gathering here, right at the edge of the river.
Like something was waiting.
Not a guardian.
Not a beast.
Not something they could fight.
Just...
a threshold.
Kathlyn stood beside him, fists clenched, shoulders tense. She shot him a glance — a flicker of sharp, defiant blue — and then took a breath.
"Well?"
Kai's lips tugged in a thin, dry smile.
"After you."
Kathlyn snorted softly, but didn't argue. She stepped forward.
Kai followed.
And the moment their feet crossed the line —
The ground beneath them dissolved.
Not literally.
They didn't sink or fall.
But the sense of ground, of space, of weight —
It slipped away.
The black river spread out under their feet, swallowing up their shadows. The world fell quiet.
No more monsters.
No more wind.
No more faint sound of the Prism's flowers.
Just —
Silence.
Kai swallowed hard, forcing his hands to stay loose.
He could feel Kathlyn tense beside him, her fists twitching slightly.
Neither of them spoke.
Because they both knew
Whatever happened next, they weren't walking back out the same.
And the river waited.
Kathlyn had taken no more than three slow, careful steps when it hit her.
A pull sudden, cold, not physical but complete.
Her breath seized.
Her feet felt like they left the black surface, like she was falling, like the space around her unhooked and stretched, dragging her inward.
She opened her mouth to call for Kai
And the world snapped.
—
She blinked.
The cold was gone.
She was standing on rough pavement, looking at an unfamiliar stretch of gray sidewalk.
The buildings around her were squat, lined with signs she couldn't read, their shapes strange, angular, foreign. Cars rumbled softly in the distance, horns blaring occasionally.
She staggered back a step, heart hammering, only to realize
No one could see her.
People passed by on the sidewalk like she didn't exist. A woman in a long coat, a man with a phone pressed to his ear, a pair of kids dragging backpacks too big for them.
Kathlyn lifted her hands. They looked normal. Solid But none of the passersby reacted, even when she waved her arm sharply.
What the hell...
Then her eyes snagged on a smaller figure.
There.
Across the street, standing near a low brick wall, was a child.
Messy black hair. Oversized hoodie. Small, tense shoulders.
Kathlyn felt her stomach twist.
"...Kai?"
The boy was young very young. Six, maybe seven years old at most. His arms were wrapped tightly around his middle, and his head was tilted down, watching something in his hands.
Kathlyn instinctively took a step closer and the world lurched, skipping the space in between like she'd jumped forward in time.
Now she was just behind him.
She peeked over his shoulder, frowning slightly.
In the boy's small, pale hands was a notebook.
Not his.
She could tell immediately from the bright stickers on the cover, the looping handwriting on the first page.
It was a diary.
Not his diary.
The boy the child Kai was flipping through the pages hurriedly, his brows drawn together, his mouth tight. His eyes darted over the words, as if he were desperate to absorb something, anything, everything.
He wasn't smiling. He wasn't smug He wasn't mocking.
He looked... lonely.
Kathlyn felt her breath catch in her throat.
She saw, just a little further back, two other kids older, maybe nine or ten, running around, laughing, chasing each other down the block.
Child Kai watched them.
Tightened his grip on the diary.
And kept reading.
Kathlyn felt a wave ripple under her feet a shift in the space around her. The black river waited at the edges, like it was reminding her she wasn't supposed to stay too long.
She forced herself to focus.
This wasn't the Prism's memory.
This was Kai's.
A small, sharp piece of his past.
And here, she realized, this wasn't just a kid being nosy.
This was a boy trying clumsily, desperately to understand what made other people laugh together, run together, belong together.
Because he didn't.
And maybe he didn't know why.
Kathlyn felt something prick at her chest an ache she hadn't expected.
She stepped forward, wanting to touch his shoulder, to call out
But her hand passed straight through.
The scene flickered.
The light dimmed.
The child Kai straightened slightly, closed the diary, hugged it briefly to his chest then stuffed it under his hoodie and ran off.
Kathlyn stood alone on the empty street as the world blurred at the edges.
And then the black river surged back, swallowing the space whole
And she was yanked back into the waiting dark.
