Chapter 2: I’m Done (Part 2: Finale)

Instinct drove Milo’s boots toward the place where Layla and Henry had been.

That way was nothing more than a cliff of boiling vapor now.

He spun.

Everywhere he looked, the same gray. It ringed the whole debris field in one unbroken circle. Far out, where the pointed roof of a chapel had poked from the rubble a minute before, only murk was left.

Ruins at the field’s edge went into it one by one, quiet as lamps going out.

It’s coming. I can’t even tell how fast.

Milo bolted for the deep ruins with everything he had.

His boots skidded on split timbers and one softer thing. A human leg, from the feel of it. He did not look down.

This was a closed ring of cloud. In other words, a tornado. One disastrous wave ripped the town apart, another seeded the wood with plague, and now, wind sealed him inside their wreckage?!

Milo fixed his eyes forward. Checking the distance wouldn’t slow the wall down.

Shit. It really is three in one.

Curiosity number one, answered.

Another row of wreckage disappeared into black vapor. Thinking only of the next footfall, Milo ran. Debris flew past his shoulders now, and dust stung his eyes.

Pulling the shawl from his neck, he covered his nose and mouth. Cracks snapped open under his boots and forced each stride shorter. To his left, a slab sank, and half a body dropped with it.

Three Calamities at once. How does anyone survive three?!

The roar swelled and pressed against his ribs. He squeezed between a crushed roof and a dead man with work gloves tucked into his belt.

A gust slammed into his back.

Milo planted a boot on a corpse’s arm rather than go down in the ash.

The boot slipped. His ankle folded sideways.

Pain shot up his leg and he lurched.

"Argh!"

His knee nearly struck the ground before the good foot got under him, and he hopped another half-dozen paces one-legged.

Putting the other down sent pain up his shin, but it bore his weight.

Good enough for the rest of his life.

Milo ran.

A beam crashed behind him and peppered his back with splinters. The ground thrashed harder, each jolt knocking another piece of breath out of his lungs. Soon, the ankle might not matter anymore; he needed air more than speed.

I’m going to die tired.

But the roar was weaker ahead.

A closed ring turned around one calm point: the eye.

Nobody outran a tornado. In theory...

People survived by reaching the middle.

Still, in the middle of most closed rings, on the single patches of ground the wind would not touch, a Host lived.

Wardens died hunting them, and he was going in with one good leg.

From the right, wind shoved him off course. His bad foot came down.

"ARGH!"

Milo screamed into the shawl, tasting blood where his teeth cut his cheek.

Yet he pushed for the middle, aiming for the calm and no longer sparing the ankle.

At the peak of the roar, air wrenched the shawl from his mouth and snapped his coat tight around his chest. Beyond the black churn, ash lay flat. The calm was one stride away.

The push-off fell to the bad ankle, and the joint bore him one last time.

Milo threw himself forward.

Instantly, the wind ceased.

He hit the ash on both palms and slid, dust rolling ahead of him in a low wave before slowing and settling.

A wall of black vapor revolved around a perfect circle of unmoving air. Pushing onto one knee, he found his ears ringing and blood warm over his tongue. Breathing hurt, but his lungs worked.

"T-The Eye!"

Milo spat red into the mud and drew the first full breath since the wall closed.

He had made it. Except something stood at the center.

In the quiet, he looked at the entity, and it stared back.

Memories detonated inside his skull. A flash of white erased everything in front of him.

「You have stood inside an Eye before.」

A street. Roofs tearing, going up instead of down. Screams from the well square. A dozen voices braided into one. The youngest of them was calling for him.

My... town?

「My Eye.」

His mother’s wet fingertips, pinching a thread to a point. A circle of dead-calm air with a boy in it. Ten years old. Wrapped in a shawl too big to be his, the hem still pinned where she had stopped sewing. Past the calm, everything he had ever known was in the gray. He was perfectly safe.

My... family?

「You have been denied resolution.」

Empty ground. His whole family gone, every branch of it. Eight people dead, and no proof of it. Only glances, frowns, and lies.

It... existed?

The images cut off.

His bad ankle throbbed under him again.

Around him the ring swirled, packed too dense to show what it was doing to the world outside.

As sunlight warmed his bruised hands, Milo looked up to see that the sky above the Eye was... blue.

Every sky in his memory had come in a dark palette, most often violet-black or gray. Orange and green drifted in at times, but always dim.

It was blue now.

Deep, live blue, with sunlight coming down in bright columns. Light he knew only from ancient paintings and songs adults danced to after having one too many drinks. One of the columns even shone over him.

And I get to see this now?

「You passed the trial.」

"The trial?" His voice came out flat, tongue rasping over the words. "The fuck is this?"

Everything below Milo’s jaw had gone numb.

"What happened to my family? To my town? What did you do?"

An old, yellowed sheet materialized at eye height. Ink surfaced on it and scratched itself into strokes, letter by letter, scritch-scritch, as if an unseen pen were working the page.

[ Trial passed. ] 𓂃🖋

[ Blessing attained. ] 𓂃🖋

There was plenty of blank paper beneath the two lines, and no mention of his family.

Milo waited. To feel changed, too. A wiggle of the fingers came up empty, and the strange numbness stayed.

If this was a blessing attained, it felt like nothing at all.

"Can I ask a question?"

The ink of the earlier words dissolved and scrubbed itself into a new line.

[ Yes. ] 𓂃🖋

"Am I hallucinating?"

[ No. ] 𓂃🖋

"Am I dead?"

[ No. ] 𓂃🖋

The paper floated in the sunlight, its shadow wavering over his bruised hands.

"Can I wish to be dead?"

For the first time, the answer did not appear instantaneously. A string of vowels lengthened over the page before dwindling to three letters.

[ Why? ] 𓂃🖋

Milo stared at the word. His hands stopped trembling.

"I’m done."

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⋆˚࿔ Coming right up: "BANG (Part 1)" ... ⤵︎ [!]