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I walked For how long, I couldn’t be sure, but if this was the Dark Room, then a pinpoint was supposed to appear sooner rather than later, a place I could use to reenter reality But as hout the vastness of the dimension, it finally hit me This was the Dark Room, only with one crucial difference This ti

My heart pounded faster I’d agreed to this – I thought I was prepared for it, too But suddenly I was no longer so sure Worse, I was afraid How long had I been there? How long had I walked? And as I , that I could vaguely see in the diraphy of the old Dark Rooone I called on its shadows from deep in my heart, summoned on the soulfires I once stoked, fierce as the throat of a dragon, but nothing No response

Instead, I saw five shapesin the darkness

I ran Who kno far, and how long, but I ran, away fros that pursued me with relentless stamina, humanoid silhouettes that hounded ed, so did theirs When I stu and sent , so did they I slowed and came to a stop The shadows followed My mouth fell open as I took them in These were my shades, actual manifestations of my self, formed out of the darkness This was the consequence of the Apotheosis My shadow had been split into five pieces

It felt like the ulti that I had companions in that black dimension, only those that had no faces, no features, and no voice I couldn’t rightly decide just then whether is was better that they were co five shadows speak in my same voice would have drivensolitude

But I didn’t have to find an answer just then Not just yet, as a familiar white face drifted fro I expected in the Dark, and I told her asback my frustration

“I thought I could handle this,” Iinsane on my own in here”

“This is your cross to bear,” she said, standing comfortably in the e and stewing until such tih power to step out on your own”

“How long has it been?” I said “At least tell me that”

She looked down at her nails, gazing first at the backs of her fingers, then at her palm “Days Weeks Perhaps months What is time to you now that you are made immortal? How does it matter?”

I looked at my hands Months? But I only just died How could I have been out for months?

The shades watched her in rapt silence, unht have reserved for her in the old days, when I still feared her, when I still understood the interplay of power between hu else in between? What did I have to lose?

“It matters because the people I still love are out there,” I said, unable to contain the anger in ic and power and the politics of gods But I still have those that I love, and every passing , or sick, or dying”

She blinked at , I could sense herThey long for your companionship, but you left them”

I toreme when you’re all that I have left?”