Chapter 5: An Ominous Laughter (2)
"*****"
A voice echoes.
A language not meant for mortals. It sounds familiar, yet uncertain. My eyes widen. My rigid body loosens. Fingertips glide across the ground. Instinct takes over—I twist abruptly, raising my forearms before my face like a boxer. They run. The giant and his followers, the ones who wished to see me suffer, flee.
My breath releases every worry, every pain, every fear. I rub my eyes—harder than usual, just to be sure. Yet when I lower my hands, they are even farther away. Their black, spire-like limbs pulse like my own heartbeat. And within merely twenty deep breaths, they are nothing but faint silhouettes on the horizon.
At first, I stare in silence. My shoulders sag, my hair falls before my eyes. Then, the corners of my mouth rise—higher and higher until my teeth show. My trembling hands run through my disheveled blond hair, still shaking from the rush of adrenaline. My breath, once ragged like a whistling kettle, twists into something else. A laugh. A hysterical, unbidden laughter that spills from my throat.
"In an apocalypse?" I say, my voice carrying the last remnants of a chuckle. "So, there is a way to survive after all."
My brows knit into a serious expression. My left-hand curls into a fist—my right hand tries, but stops midway. A sharp pain shoots through my forearm, and I click my tongue in frustration. I curse under my breath but shake the pain away as I slowly rise to my feet.
Since the very first breath I took after escaping death, I have been scanning my surroundings. And to my fortune, no colorful beings have appeared—only the dozen who followed that mysterious voice. Wiping the sweat from my forehead with my sleeve, I lift my gaze to the sky.
Pinkish-violet, like a withering rose.
My lips part slightly as my eyes drift farther, locking onto something even more bizarre. My breath hitches for a fraction of a second before continuing its rhythm. The sky is fractured. A pristine blue peeks through the cracks in the dying rose-colored expanse. A sun—radiating not golden light, but an ethereal blue.
I stare in awe as birds glide across its glow, shattering the light with their wings. But as quickly as I am distracted, I regain focus and push forward.