“I would like it if you idiots would stop this nonsense. Look around, you idiot. The Light is just as foolish as the dark. Neither of you can see beyond your own selfishness,” Darkness spat.
“Darkness, please,” I said, concern filling my voice as Noah gagged for air.
Darkness grumbled as his upper lip curled into a sneer. “He doesn’t deserve my kindness.”
The subtle thuds of someone approaching sent a quick jolt through me, forcing me to turn abruptly. Instantly, I found myself face to face with The Oracle, her piercing gaze widening as she seized my shoulders with an intense grip.
“Balance! I saw it,” she said between quick breaths. “I saw everything!”
My head shook as I tried to decipher her cryptic words. “What do you mean? What did you see?”
“I had one final vision before arriving,” she stopped speaking, only then noticing that Darkness had Noah by the throat. She cocked a brow at Darkness. “Is this necessary? She can stop it. She can stop it all.”
Darkness let out a guttural groan as he begrudgingly lowered Noah to the ground. With his hands poised at the ready, he shifted his gaze toward The Oracle.
“What does she need to do?” Darkness asked, daring a glance over his shoulder at the battle behind us.
“A sacrifice! Only she can restore balance,” The Oracle said, pressing her palms together as her eyes widened with hope.
Darkness’s brows squeezed together. “Tell her what to do!”
“All she has to do is to take the artifacts ahs foo dem…,” The Oracle’s words turned into nonsensical gurgles.
I narrowed my eyes, focusing on her mouth as she tried to form words. Suddenly, her hands shot up to her chest, where a beam of light was sticking out of the middle of her body.
The Oracle reached for me as she released a short, sharp breath, as the beam of light disappeared from her body. Blood poured out, soaking the front of her shirt before she collapsed to the ground, soaking the grass around our feet.
Noah met my eyes, still holding the jagged beam of light in his hands. My jaw dropped as he slowly retracted it into his hand.
“No!” I bellowed as anger raged through my veins.
I launched toward him, slamming my fists as hard as I could into his chest. He didn’t seem to care about the impact of my blows as he stood defiantly.
“What have you done? What have you done?” My voice scratched my throat as I repeated the words over and over again with each punch.
Noah didn’t get a chance to respond before Darkness grabbed his head, twisting it sharply to the side with a blood-curdling crack. Noah’s body instantly went limp.
My hands shot to the sides of my head, sliding into my hair and tugging at the roots. I couldn’t believe what had happened to both The Oracle and Noah, only seconds before being told how to put an end to the war. It seemed as though I had to be trapped inside one of Nightmare’s dreams.
“No, no, no,” I mumbled over and over again as Darkness cupped my face.
“I’m sorry, Remy. I’m sorry,” Darkness said, desperately peering into my eyes as if searching for forgiveness. “He killed her. You saw it.”
I swallowed hard. My heart felt as though it was sinking into my stomach as it forgot how to beat in the right rhythm to keep me alive.
“She has the artifacts!” a monster said, his voice impossibly deep.
As they all turned to me, dark and light alike, Storm raised her hands as she mumbled something inaudibly. A massive bolt of lightning crashed down from the sky, splitting the earth into two pieces.
The two pieces of ground slid apart, creating a colossal abyss between me, the demons, and The Light. However, it didn’t stop the war. The two sides continued to fight, throwing bodies into the massive hole.
I pressed my hand to my stomach as I scanned the area. There were corpses scattered everywhere and Light Beings clawing at the ground, begging to be saved. The eerie cries for help among the continued fighting were sickening.
My eyes shifted down as I dropped to my knees. It felt as though my insides were melting. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop the madness even though I’d been seconds away from hearing the answer.
I had failed.
The world was going to end.
From the shadows to my side, a demon lunged at me, its razor-sharp fangs dripping with vile drool and its claws ready to tear me to shreds. Before it could reach me, Darkness caught it in midair, hurtling the demonic entity into the widening abyss.
As a second demon charged toward me with fury burning in its eyes, Storm twirled her finger from afar, summoning a fierce wind. The creature lifted off the ground and was sent flying through the air with an unbridled force. Storm raced to my side without hesitation, her eyes scanning me intensely.
“Are you okay?” she asked, the words spilling from her lips.
“Yeah… yeah. I think so,” I said, wrapping my hand around the medallion as if begging it for guidance.
Nightmare joined Darkness to fight off the advancing demons and Light Beings who, in an instant, had turned their focus to me. They had one thing on their minds and it no longer was fighting one another. All they wanted was to take the artifacts from me to have absolute dominion over the realms.
To me, the artifacts were useless, likely because I was just a human who didn’t know how to use them properly. When the medallion had helped me in the past, it wasn’t because I knew what I was doing… it had chosen on its own to help me.
I twisted violently as an arctic shiver slithered like a spider across the side of my neck. A demon with massive square pupils tugged at the necklace as it grinned. Reacting with primal instinct, I jerked my arm back before forcefully thrusting my elbow into the demon’s grotesque face. The impact sent it reeling, stumbling backward several feet as its smile turned into a distorted mask of pain.
Storm took two giant strides, picking the creature up by the back of his neck with a violent grip. She puffed out her cheeks and blew the monster away as if it were nothing more than an evil bubble. Her breaths came rapidly as she locked eyes with me.
“They’re coming too fast,” she said seconds before throwing her fist into the face of a thin Light Being. “You need to get out of here.”
“Where should I go?” I asked, my eyes darting around, searching for safety.
