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All at once, his throat stopped feeling like it was about to explode, the fire in his veins disappeared, and Nikolai crashed to the ground inelegantly, his legs feeling like lead. Looking up immediately —the battle was not over, the Darkling and his men had to still be around, and where was Alina?— proved to be a gigantic mistake as he was immediately blinded by light. Groaning and squinting, he tried to get up, but the best he was able to get was kneeling up, his legs stuck to the ground by some force beyond his comprehension.
At last, he got used to the light and his sight returned to him. Of course, he expected to see Alina, who else in the middle of such brightness?
Instead, his eyes were met with the black gaze and hair of a ghost from the past.
“...Dominik?”
“Nothing is ever simple with you, is it?”
Nikolai’s jaw hung open for a few seconds. First of all, what kind of thing was that to say to your beloved friend you hadn’t seen in years and who probably just died? Second— for years he had imagined reproaches and resentment awaiting him in the afterlife, but the tone was nothing but fond.
“It’s a natural talent,” he finally managed to retort, way too late for it to have any snap in it. Still, it made Dominik’s lips curl up. “Am I…Am I dead? Just like that?”
Killed by… What, shadows? In the middle of a battle, never to see the end of the war? Truly a soldier’s fate, he thought sardonically. But in lieu of an answer, Dominik reached out for him, Nikolai automatically tilting his head closer, only for their hand and cheek to never meet, going through each other like neither existed.
Was that the afterlife, condemned to see your loved ones without ever being able to actually touch them? Sounded an awful lot like regular life, if you asked him.
“No. Something… is holding you back,”
“Holding me back? Like… Unfinished business?”
If his unfinished business was fixing Ravka and he would not be able to die until that was done, he was going to live for so long he would have the time to bury Alina and the Darkling ten times over.
“No, like… Literal shadows?”
“What?”
At last, he followed Dominik’s gaze and looked down at his legs. Which were not held down by a force beyond his comprehension like he had first thought— shadows were slowly but surely creeping up his legs, his feet and calves already completely gone in the darkness, the tendrils reaching his knees. Startled, he tried to get away but found no purchase at all on the ground, as if half his legs were not merely held down but completely gone.
“Dominik—” he called.
“I’m here—” but his hands could not reach him, not help him, useless as he tried to touch the shadows, to no avail. “Let’s—” he gave up on trying to help and instead scooted back, a phantomatic hand still hovering near Nikolai’s shoulder as the other described a wide circle in the air.
The nothingness shifted, threads of light slowly coming together to weave a moving tapestry, creating the likeness of a monster.
Nikolai’s stomach sank.
It was him .
Darkness creeping up his entire body much like it was doing to him right now, eyes turned black, wings of nightmares sprouting out of his back, fangs deforming his mouth. Alina desperately calling after him… But if his soul was here, there was nothing in the monster that could hear her.
“Is that— Is that what’s going on right now? I need to—”
Go back? Would going back give him his body back? Would he be trapped in that monstrous abomination? His heart picked up, panic flooding him as he faced a fate beyond anything he had ever imagined in his life. Dominik shushed him, still trying to offer physical comfort that was out of reach, and the darkness kept creeping up his body, engulfing his hips and stomach. He doubled over, suddenly hit by an all-consuming hunger that made bile rise up in his throat. A craving for flesh that twisted his guts and clouded his mind.
He needed to go back, to fight this—
“I don’t want to go back—” he pleaded weakly.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I wish I could—”
“I don’t want to go back—” hot tears ran down his face as the shadows crept up, all over his skin, all inside of him, his veins mere vessels for them to reach his heart. Vision blurring, watching, uncomprehending, the face in front of his, the young face of a soldier in an olive uniform, dark eyes wide in worry and despair, calloused hands from a short life of labour fruitlessly going through him.
“I’ll be here, I’ll keep watching over you, you are stronger than that, Nikolai—” the young man promised over and over, calling out his name, Nikolai, Nikolai, until it became foreign to his ears, until the darkness had taken over his throat, crawled up his cheeks. Until his hazel eyes could only widen in confusion, human language now no more than mere babbling to him, sounds he could not even try to reproduce with the fangs in his mouth.
And when the last shadow finished to rip him away from the Heart of the Making, only hunger remained.