CHAPTER 31: LAPIS LAZULI
Somewhere on Earth, it was an hour before midnight.
The city had begun to quiet in that deceptive way it always did before the real exhaustion set in.
Streetlights hummed.
Motorcycles thinned.
A neighbor’s television murmured faintly through concrete walls.
In one small room, the glow of a desk lamp spilled across scattered notes, highlighters uncapped, coffee rings drying into pale halos.
No one noticed the thick, bubbling miasma that pooled beneath the girl slumped forward in her chair.
Suryel had promised herself she was just going to take a quick nap.
Just ten minutes.
A reset.
Her cheek rested against the edge of her notebook, pen still hooked between her fingers, half a formula smudged under her palm.
The words Hell Week were circled three times at the top of the page, underlined so aggressively the paper had started to tear.
The darkness gathered quietly.
It did not rush.
It thickened.
Then it snapped upward, sudden and violent, like a rubber band released from too much tension.
The chair vanished with her.
The only witness, a random house lizard clinging to the wall above the desk, flicked its tongue and blinked.
It shifted one foot, adjusted its grip, and stared at the empty space where a human had been a moment ago, utterly unable to grasp what had just happened.
…
Suryel felt something break.
Not a bone. Not skin.
Something deeper.
Like sound itself slicing across glass.
Helel’s presence hit like a disturbance in gravity.
The miasma seed ruptured with a wet, violent snap, its surface fracturing outward in jagged veins as golden light tore through it.
The darkness recoiled instinctively, peeling back like burned fabric.
At the same time, a crack split through the dark nearby.
Her consciousness slammed awake mid-motion.
The first thing she registered was pressure releasing, like hands unclenching too fast.
The second was the smell. Ozone and old smoke, sharp enough to sting the back of her throat.
The third was light, wrong and dim, seeping through a haze that felt neither solid nor fog.
She sucked in a breath.
Suryel shot upright.
The chair tipped and fell behind her with a soft, almost polite thud, completely out of place against the tension humming in the air.
Her heart pounded as she squinted, scanning her surroundings.
The world around her refused to resolve into anything familiar.
A dim cloud of golden haze hung above her, shifting and breathing, casting soft, distorted shadows across what looked like nothing at all.
“This doesn’t look like Earth.”
Suryel said aloud, her voice echoing thinly. She swallowed, hugging her arms close to herself.
“Where am I? Am I still dreaming?”
The words trembled on the way out.
She hated that.
Her hand moved instinctively toward her pocket.
Something vibrated.
A bright, cheerful marimba ringtone cut through the haze, absurdly loud, absurdly normal.
Suryel froze.
Her stomach dropped.
Slowly, like it might detonate, she pulled her phone out and held it away from her body, staring at the glowing screen with narrowed eyes.
The caller ID lit her face in pale blue: Mum.
“Nope.” Suryel whispered faintly, color draining from her face.
She glanced around at the creeping darkness pooling along the floor and the gold haze suspended above her like a false sky. “No. No, no, no.”
The phone kept vibrating.
Against every instinct screaming at her to throw it, she shook her head, exhaled once through her nose, and brought it carefully to her ear.
“Hello… Ma?” She said.
The voice that exploded from the speaker was loud, sharp, and very real.
“WHERE ARE YOU?!”
Her mother demanded, words tumbling over each other.
“Do you know what time it is?! You didn’t even think to tell us you were going out? Are you at 7/11?! Are you seriously putting yourself in a higher crime index probability rate— all for the sake of snacks?! At this hour?!”
Suryel’s mouth fell open.
“What the fu— It is Mum.” She whispered to no one, mouthing disbelief, blinking rapidly, her grip tightening as she turned slowly, eyes darting across the shifting dark.
“Yes, this is your mother.”
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The voice snapped back coldly in a tone every child that had ever been in trouble know. “Oh, you suddenly remembered? And I heard that cuss! You are grounded, young lady!”
Static crackled faintly as her mother launched into her full government name with the precision of a missile strike, each syllable sharpened with panic and fury.
“You better come back home right now! I was worried sick when I saw you weren’t in your room! You wouldn’t answer any of our calls!”
The voice broke, then hardened again.
“Finish your hotdog sandwich and your juice pack and come home. Bring me a siopao to go on your way out. Now!”
The call ended with a sharp click.
The silence afterward felt louder than the yelling.
Suryel stared ahead, frozen.
Her hand went slack.
The phone slipped from her fingers and hit the unseen ground with a soft, hollow clatter, like it had landed on stone pretending to be solid.
She did not move.
Did not breathe.
She did not dare acknowledge the realization forming in her chest.
She had never, in her entire life of overfunded cinematic dreaming, IMAX-resolution nightmares, surround-sound nonsense, held her phone in a dream.
Never received a call.
Never been grounded in one.
Her gaze stayed stubbornly forward.
She also refused to look down, because the ground beneath her feet felt wrong.
Not collapsing exactly. Forgetting. Like it had misplaced the concept of solidity and was slowly apologizing by letting her sink.
“Uhhh…” Suryel said weakly, daring only a side-eye. Left. Then right. “Yael?”
Her voice cracked despite her best efforts. “Please tell me… This is still a dream. Right?”
Her mind scrambled, flipping through memories.
The cave. The three of them. Helel laughing. Yael steady beside her.
That had been a dream.
It had to be.
— Ping!
The sound snapped her attention downward.
Her phone screen lit up where it lay on the ground.
A Facebook notification glared up at her.
Someone tagged you in a photo.
“Oh crap, No.” Suryel laughed weakly, the sound wobbling as panic bled through. “Hahaha. It can’t be real!”
She internally screamed.
Her left eye twitched.
At the corner of her vision, a bubble in the miasma popped, wet and rude, like it had attempted politeness and failed.
The golden haze above her began to condense, tightening, pulling inward.
Suryel’s breath hitched as she watched it surge upward into the endless darkness overhead, stretching impossibly far.
Then it bloomed downward, branches unfurling in reverse.
A giant tree took shape.
Its silhouette mirrored the Star Bearing Tree she remembered, vast and sacred.
But this one was wrong.
Its branches were bare.
Its light hollow.
Gold without warmth.
A skittering sound rippled beneath her feet.
— Sskkkkrttt…
Suryel stiffened.
The noise scraped along the underside of the world, moving closer with deliberate patience.
Whatever it was, it did not hurry.
Her eyes flicked upward.
A low-hanging branch stretched out above, near her, close enough to touch.
“Okay,” She muttered with a breath, then she broke out moving. “Okay, okay, okay.”
She ran. “We can do this. We are not dying here!”
Her legs tangled immediately.
Suryel scampered like a drunken baby doe that had just realized it had four limbs and absolutely no idea how to use them.
She stumbled, windmilled, caught herself, tripped again, heart pounding so hard it drowned out everything else.
Inside, she screamed.
She leapt.
Every cell in her body screamed with her and decided to cooperate out of sheer spite.
Her hand slammed into the branch.
Her fingers locked.
Her whole being lit up in triumph.
“Yes!” Even every cell cheered in her body cheered.
Then the branch snapped.
??
“WHY CAN’T I HAVE ONE NORMAL 2D REM SLEEP FOR ONCE?!” Suryel screamed as she plummeted, rage and terror blending into one hot, furious thought.
If she was going to die, she was going to leave a mark.
She hit the ground with a wet splat, sinking up to her knee in the miasma.
Cold, sticky darkness surged up her leg.
“NOPE! You are not going to eat me. Not without a fight!” She snarled, slamming her fist down with everything she had. “You will remember my name it’s Suryel!”
The substance wobbled.
She hit it again.
And again.
The branch above disintegrated like snapped graphite.
Somewhere in her chest, something feral snapped too.
Suryel abandoned all caution.
Like someone rage-baited mid-game, she screamed a single, wordless syllable and punched the miasma straight on.
It swallowed her.
Then it gagged.
The darkness convulsed violently and spat her forward through a door that hadn’t existed a second ago.
Suryel tumbled out hard.
She rolled, came up on instinct, arms raised defensively, breath sharp, bracing for impact.
Nothing attacked.
Her eyes lifted.
They widened.
Above her, galaxies veined the sky in gold and white, spiraling across obsidian darkness.
Light pulsed softly through them, ancient and alive.
She lowered her arms slowly.
Her feet stood on a smooth lapis lazuli floor that reflected starlight like polished water.
Ivory walls rose around her, etched with faint, living patterns.
Pale columns stretched upward, elegant and impossibly tall, holding nothing and everything at once.
She turned slowly.
“This is…” Her voice softened. “Holy wow.”
She stood, brushing nonexistent dust from herself, and began to walk.
Each step echoed faintly, swallowed by the vastness of the corridor.
The place tugged at her memory, familiar in a way she couldn’t explain.
“This is amazing!” Suryel laughed, spinning in place. “I feel so at home here! Maybe I am dreaming!”
She twirled into a small, delighted dance, arms out, hair catching the starlight.
Her voice barely carried.
It vanished into the corridor, leaving her question suspended in the quiet.
She slowed.
Stopped.
Her brows knit as she looked down at the lapis lazuli beneath her shoes, then back at the endless stretch ahead.
The stone felt cold. Real. Solid beneath her weight.
A breeze passed, cold and gentle, brushing her nose like a fleeting kiss.
Suryel turned.
Behind her, the corridor fell away into a looming, endless dark.
A shiver crawled up her spine, colder than the wind.
She swallowed.
Then, because standing still felt worse, she stepped forward.
“Hello?” She called, voice cautious.
The floor hummed beneath her feet, resonating softly, as if the corridor itself was awake and listening.
“… I am dreaming, right?”
Author’s Note:
Lol, That wind kissed her nose like a— Oh you sweet summer child.
