Violet

The realisation slowly swept over me and for a moment, I just floated slightly, staring at the silent structures around me.

Lycans had built this, walked these streets and lived in these buildings. But they were all gone now, drowned and abandoned as everything slowly crumbled to nothing.

I moved forward in a daze.

The buildings varied in size and shape. Some were small and the others were massive, but they all had strangely shaped holes in almost every surface. Some were tunnels, but most just led into the structure.

I swam through those holes and peered into empty rooms. The interiors were filled with nothing but sand and silt, that swirled up as I swam through. I searched for furniture, for artifacts, for any sign of the people who had once lived here.

Nothing.

Whatever had been left behind had long since crumbled to dust or been buried beneath centuries of accumulated debris. I had used my syzygy to search deep beneath the floor, but I could not make out anything.

I ran my hands along the walls, feeling the jagged stone beneath my fingers. There were even tinier holes all over the surface. The inner and outer walls had been worn down by time and water. Any detail that might have once decorated them had been erased. I searched for carvings, for symbols, for the Rector insignia that matched my pendant.

I found only blank stone.

I swam deeper into the ruins.

The streets wound between structures in patterns I couldn’t decipher, opening occasionally into wider spaces that held nothing but even more rubble.

Everywhere I looked, I saw the same thing.

Emptiness. Silence. Decay.

I tried to imagine what this place had looked like when it was alive, but I could not picture it.

I searched for any form of documents or strange substances but found nothing.

There was no trace at all.

The disappointment was crushing.

I had found my people’s home.

And it was a graveyard.

It made no sense.

We were supposed to have been hunted to extinction on the surface. The wolves had documented our deaths, catalogued our households, celebrated our destruction. The records I had read in Rowan’s archives spoke of raids and battles and systematic slaughter.

But the city hadn’t been raided to the extent that every single thing was taken!

Or had the mineral in the water rapidly degraded every trace of lycan history?

I had no answers. Only questions, multiplying with every empty room I explored.

I swam out of a dilapidated building and still felt the pull tugging at my chest. I paused.

It hadn’t stopped?

I kicked off the ground and rushed in its direction. I felt a bit silly. I had been so consumed by this place I had thought the pull ended here.

I stopped at the tunnel I was about to swim through and looked back one last time at the drowned city behind me. The pale buildings glowed faintly in the hazy light, beautiful and terribly silent.

Maybe this wasn’t everything.

I turned and swam into the darkness.

The tunnel was shorter than the others.

The water grew warmer as I swam, tingling against my skin with an energy that made my syzygy hum in response. The pull in my chest was stronger here than it had ever been, drawing me forward with an urgency I couldn’t ignore.

Light appeared ahead, and it was disturbingly bright.

The tunnel opened up, and I emerged into a vast space.

I surfaced immediately, and when my head broke through the water, I forgot how to breathe.

It was a spacious cave, but there were crystals everywhere!

They rose from the ground in towering formations, some as tall as buildings. They also jutted from the walls in clusters, and others hung from the ceiling in glittering sharp points.

There were strange shifts and gradients of pink, orange and white, catching the light and blending together to smear a surreal glow all around the cave.

I went stiff.

Light?

I raised my head and saw the gaping wide hole at the top. Bright light was pouring through the opening, and it was too intense for it not to have been from above.

I took a step towards it, ready to crawl my way up when the pendant started to glow.

This time, it glowed harsher than before, nearly blinding me.

It was starting to get hot so I pulled it off my neck only to be caught off guard by the heightened glow of the crystals.

My eyes widened, the burning glare of the pendant in my hand forgotten.

The crystals all around me pulsed, responding to the pendant.

I could have sworn, it looked like the cavern was singing.

It sang with light and energy that I could feel all the way down to my bones.

Then the largest block and cluster of crystals directly in front of me pulsed even faster, the previously pink slab radiating and shifting between all three colours.

Then tendrils of colour started to separate from the slab, drifting upwards in swirling patterns that formed together and took shape above the pointed slab.

I watched, frozen, as the light gathered and condensed.

It took shape into a figure.

It was tall, slender and draped in robes that flowed. Its whole body was like living light and my chest felt so light. The pull was gone, and I knew deep down, that this had been the source of it.

It did not have a face. Even if it did, I wouldn’t be able to see anything due to the glare of the light.

But I strangely knew that it was conscious.

The figure hovered above the tall slab of crystal, its robes rippling in a wind I couldn’t feel.

It didn’t speak.

It didn’t move toward me.

It just waited.

I stared at it, my heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.

My pendant still blazed against my palm.

And then, after a long moment of stillness, it started drifting away.

It floated upwards, towards the opening in the ceiling.

It was leaving?!

My heart slammed against my ribs.

"No. Wait!"