CHAPTER 17: THE MUNDANE REALM
Suryel had woken and returned to her mundane human life already changed.
Not in any way that announced itself loudly. No sudden enlightenment. No blinding revelation. Just the quiet, unsettling realization that her body felt sturdier, like something inside her had learned how to brace before impact.
She moved through her days with that strange, newly earned balance, as if she had survived something terrible and come back with better footing.
The memories followed her anyway.
Three nights lingered in her mind. Three nights where Death had run after her through shifting dreamscapes, relentless and patient, like a tide that knew it would win eventually.
Sometimes, when she caught herself staring too long at shadows pooling at the edges of her vision, her shoulders would tense and she would shudder lightly, breath hitching before she could stop it.
Those thoughts, she decided, were unhelpful.
So she swept them aside with the rest of her worst impulses and half-formed catastrophes.
She pushed them back into that mental corner where her most unhinged daydreams lived, where fears dulled from repetition and neglect.
Like dust swept under a rug.
It settled there, undisturbed, crushed beneath the weight of old slippers and the stubborn decision to keep moving.
When Suryel had chosen not to run, when she had faced Azriel’s trial head-on instead of bolting like every survival instinct told her to, she had not understood the scale of what she was doing.
She had only known that running would hollow her out.
That single decision rippled outward anyway.
On that day, something shifted. Not just within her, but across the Eternal Realm, the Abyss, and the Mundane world all at once. No alarms rang. No proclamations were made. Still, the air itself seemed to hold its breath, waiting to see whether the shift would become rot or renewal.
Even those who did not know her name felt it.
Suryel noticed the change in quieter ways.
Her dreams grew… Emptier.
The usual unusual visitors stopped appearing.
No sudden figures waiting at thresholds. No voices watching from the edges. No pressure bearing down on her thoughts like unseen eyes tracking her every step.
At first, the absence unsettled her.
Then she realized something else.
She could move freely.
The first time she tested it, she did so cautiously, half-expecting resistance. But there were no Authoritative restrictions pressing against her awareness. No invisible walls snapping her back into place.
She wandered.
After the initial ache of missing Yael hit her, sharp and sudden, she surprised herself by smiling.
Sadness lingered, yes, but it didn’t pin her down. She let it sit beside her instead, like a quiet companion, and followed wherever her feet decided to take her.
She tried climbing the Star-Bearing Tree again, fingers slipping against bark that shimmered with constellations.
When she grew dizzy from the height, she laughed and leapt into the Black Lake below, hoping to hit the surface with a splash that echoed far longer than it should have. But a branch of the tree caught her and buzzed warnings at her to keep her play among its roots.
She crept through the Undead Cemetery dreamscape next, cautious and alert. After triple-checking that there were no floating cloaks hovering suspiciously nearby, she stuck her tongue out at the Rising Dead and jogged past them before they could react.
Later, she drifted into the Archive Library Tower and trailed behind the stern-looking librarian, mimicking his precise steps like a shadow glued to his heels. He never acknowledged her, but she could swear his pace quickened.
In her waking life, she hummed again.
It slipped out of her while she washed dishes, while she walked crowded streets, while she waited for buses and trains. Her family noticed the change before she did. The way she lingered at doorways less. The way her eyes lifted more easily.
After a while, Suryel found herself sitting within a dream that felt like rest rather than escape.
She sat along the water, tucked among thick, gnarled roots that twisted protectively around the shoreline. The surface rippled softly, reflecting light that didn’t belong to any single sky.
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Every now and then, she lifted her head and searched the horizon.
She admitted it there, quietly, without excuses.
She missed Yael. The absence of his presence pressed against her ribs in a way she couldn’t joke away.
And if she was being painfully honest with herself, there were moments when she even missed a certain smug, ruby-eyed smirk she refused to name aloud.
The realization annoyed her.
“I’ve never even seen his face properly,” Suryel muttered once, toes brushing the water. Her voice carried into the quiet dreamscape. “So why does it feel like I remember what he looks like when he actually smiles?”
The waking world found her later that day in a cathedral.
She lay flat on a pew, sketchpad balanced against her knees, pencil moving steadily as she traced the vaulted ceiling above.
Gold leaf caught the light and fractured it into warm brilliance. Baroque carvings twisted heavenward, impossibly intricate, as though angels themselves had grown tired of subtlety and carved their devotion directly into stone.
This was one of her sanctuaries.
Whenever she felt the itch to roam without a destination, she came here. She drew silently, tucked into corners or sprawled across pews, rarely speaking unless spoken to first.
She had become familiar enough to the caretakers and clergy that they recognized her on sight.
They had given her a nickname.
“The sketching noir cat.”
It had been muttered affectionately by an elderly deacon one afternoon, when a younger priest had frowned at her presence.
The old man had waved him off with a soft chuckle and said, “Let her be. She’s not misbehaving.” He liked watching her draw.
The focus she brought to it. The way the world seemed to narrow around her pencil. He kept his distance, having noticed early on that she stiffened at attempts to engage beyond polite greetings.
Still, sometimes he watched her with a quiet, hopeful sadness. The kind reserved for creatures you wished would choose to sit beside you of their own accord.
The new priest did not have that patience.
Father Francis had introduced himself immediately upon arrival, bright-eyed and earnest. He had asked for her name within days.
And every time she saw him approaching now, her spine tightened.
Every. Time.
Suryel paused mid-sketch and scanned her surroundings, senses alert. The cathedral hummed softly with the presence of others.
Tourists murmured. Shoes scraped faintly against stone.
Somewhere, a caretaker adjusted a ladder.
She relaxed slightly.
Still clear.
She returned to her drawing.
Unbeknownst to her, Father Francis’s curiosity had grown roots far deeper than idle friendliness.
Weeks earlier, while touring the cathedral museum, he had spotted her from behind. Her posture, the dark clothing, the way she tilted her head as she examined the walls.
He had recognized her instantly from the whispered stories.
He had smiled, thinking she was simply searching for inspiration.
He had been about to call out.
Then she stopped.
She pivoted sideways abruptly, movement sharp enough to freeze him in place. His breath stalled. His brow furrowed.
A thin line of shadow slid past her.
It slipped from an open gallery door, stretched unnaturally long, and vanished straight into the stone wall across from her.
Suryel hadn’t flinched.
She hadn’t blinked.
She had simply resumed walking, face forward, as though nothing had happened.
Since that day, Father Francis had watched more closely.
He noticed how she sometimes glanced upward, eyes tracking something unseen, before quietly leaving.
How often she seemed to make space for things that weren’t there.
It happened too many times to ignore.
Today, he decided, he would confirm it.
Respectfully.
Excitedly.
The old deacon’s disapproving frown flashed through his mind as he approached.
Suryel heard the footsteps before the greeting. Strong, energetic strides. No wooden tap.
Her shoulders sagged.
“Ugh. Father Francis,” She muttered, snapping her sketchpad shut. She shoved her pencils into her bag with practiced speed.
In her hurry to flee, she didn’t notice the sketchpad slip from her grip and fall open on the stone floor.
“Good afternoon?” Father Francis called brightly.
She was already gone.
“Daughter, wait,” He said, bending to retrieve the fallen sketchpad. “You dropped—”
His voice died in his throat.
Circular rainbows spilled across two pages. At their center stood a throne made of solid light, surrounded by eyes and feathers caught mid-motion.
His hands trembled as he flipped through.
A glowing tree rising from a lake.
A ballroom built from gemstones.
An endless tower of books.
Five pages of a creeping cemetery.
A sphere of tangled vines buried deep in the earth.
Then an unfinished portrait.
A smirking face.
With the cathedral ceiling above him as its background.
Father Francis sucked in a sharp breath. His fingers fumbled as he snapped the sketchpad shut and tucked it under his arm.
He ran.
Out the West Door, into the swelling crowd. He scanned faces wildly.
She was gone.
A crow cawed.
His gaze snapped toward the sound.
A man in a fine suit stood nearby, dark eyes glinting with amusement. He grinned.
Then he vanished.
Helel woke with a gasp.
He bolted upright, eyes wide, breath uneven. “Where am I?” He demanded the empty room. “How long was I out?”
He lay in his old resting chamber in the Eternal Realm, the space unfamiliar and painfully known all at once.
After the consensus at the Star-Bearing Tree, his brothers had laid him here.
He stared at his empty hands.
“Suryel…” Helel whispered, eyes sharpening with purpose.
Author’s Note:
Me after promising myself I am just going to take a nap but ended up in a surprise ‘coma’: “Where am I? What century is this? Am I still alive?” ??
