KeLani Pov
I was sitting on the big bed in the safe house, coloring in my special book while waiting for Mama to come back from her meeting with a family member. She hadn't been gone very long—not even an hour—but I already missed her. The darkness wolves she left to protect me were prowling around the edges of the room, their glowing eyes watching me carefully.
Suddenly, the emergency device on the nightstand started ringing. I scrambled across the bed to grab it, my heart doing a happy little jump. Mama was calling! She must be on her way home already.
"Hi Mama!" I answered cheerfully.
But Mama's voice wasn't happy at all. It was tight and scared, like that time the bad people almost caught us in the park.
"Lani," she said urgently, "there are bad people outside the house. You need to hide, right now."
I froze, the happiness draining away like water down a sink. My breathing got all fast and heavy, and I could feel my heart beating in my ears.
"Mama, where are you?" I asked, my voice coming out small and shaky.
I could hear her crying on the other end of the phone, which scared me even more. Mama tries not to cry in front of me. She always wants to be strong for me.
"I'm trying my best to get there," she said. "I'm coming, treasure. Just hide."
I walked to the window and peeked through the curtains. My tummy did a scary flip when I saw them—men in black clothes with guns and strange machines, surrounding our house. The barrier Mama had made was flickering like a broken light bulb, turning transparent in places.
A terrible thought came to me then: maybe it was good Mama wasn't here. In the book, Mama always dies in S City. Always. Maybe if she stayed away from the house, she wouldn't die this time.
But that meant I was all alone with the bad people.
I put the phone back to my ear, tears making my voice wobble. "Mama, am I going to die? The barrier is breaking. They're going to take me."
"No," Mama said, and her voice got strong and firm like when she's making an important promise. "You are not going to die. I won't let that happen."
I could hear her running, her breath coming fast. But I knew she wouldn't make it in time. The barrier was already cracking open in places, and the men were pushing through.
"Baby, I need you to walk into the darkness of the wolves," Mama said suddenly.
I looked at the big shadow wolves, their bodies made of swirling darkness. Mama had taken me into her darkness dimension many times, but always with her holding my hand, always with her protecting me. The idea of going in alone made my whole body feel cold with fear.
"I've never been in the darkness without you," I whispered, watching as one of the wolves came closer to me, lowering its big shadowy head. "What if the darkness takes me away?"
I'd seen what happened when people got lost in Mama's darkness. They didn't come back the same—if they came back at all.
"You trust Mama, right?" she asked gently. "The darkness won't hurt you. It's part of me, and I love you more than anything. Now go into the darkness, now!"
There was a crash from downstairs—the bad people were inside the house. I didn't have any more time.
"I love you, my Lani. My light. My treasure," Mama said, her voice breaking with emotion.
Thinking this might be the last time I'd ever hear her voice, I whispered back, "I love you too, Mama."
Then I dropped the phone and ran straight toward the biggest darkness wolf. It opened its mouth wide, impossibly wide, and I jumped inside.
The darkness swallowed me whole.
It wasn't like being in the darkness with Mama. When she was there, the shadows felt warm and safe, like being wrapped in a blanket. But now, it was cold and empty, stretching endlessly in all directions. I couldn't see anything except swirling shadows, couldn't feel anything solid beneath my feet.
"Mama?" I called, but my voice sounded tiny and got swallowed up by the darkness.
I tried to remember what Mama had taught me about her darkness—how it responded to strong thoughts and feelings, how it could take you where you needed to go if you concentrated hard enough. I closed my eyes and thought about Mama, picturing her face, trying to feel that special connection between us.
But nothing happened. I was lost in the emptiness.
I don't know how long I wandered in the darkness. Time felt strange, like it wasn't moving the way it should. I got tired and sat down, though there wasn't really a floor—just more darkness that somehow held my weight.
That's when I saw it—a strange purple light floating above me, different from the black and gray shadows around me. It wasn't like Mama's darkness at all. It pulsed and swirled, almost pretty in a scary way.
At first, I thought maybe it was Mama coming to find me. I reached toward it, hopeful.
That was a mistake.
The purple light darted down, faster than I could pull away, and wrapped around my hand. It burned like touching a hot stove, but I couldn't yank my hand free. The purple stuff spread up my arm, eating into my skin like it was hungry. I screamed, but there was no one to hear me in this place between places.
The purple light grew, expanding around me, swallowing me whole just like the darkness had. But this was worse—much worse. This wasn't Mama's darkness that loved me because she loved me. This was something that wanted to hurt me, to consume me.
I felt like I was falling through an endless abyss, tumbling through nothingness. The sensation was horribly familiar—like dying had felt in my past life, when the fire had taken me .
Was I dying again? Was this the curse that followed Mama throughout all her lives? Was there really no way to break it, no way to live happily with her in this lifetime?
As the purple stuff crawled over more of my skin, eating away at me little by little, I got colder and colder. My thoughts started to feel slow and far away, like I was falling asleep but in a bad way.
I'm sorry, Mama, I thought as my eyes grew too heavy to keep open. Who's going to take care of you now? Who's going to make you smile when you're sad? Who's going to keep you from giving up?
The last thing I remember thinking before everything went dark was a simple question: If I'm gone, will Mama give up and let the darkness take her too?
Then there was nothing but cold and silence as my soul began to drift away, fading like a star at dawn.