Eli beckoned Nero forward with a graceful gesture, his bronze eyes reflecting something that might have been amusement. Or perhaps was it curiosity? With a being like this, Nero found it impossible to tell.
He hesitated for only a moment before following.
What choice did he have?
Running would be pointless. Resisting would be futile, after all.
He stepped toward the door of his old room then froze. A cascade of memories. Old memories. Good and bad memories. They flooded through his mind.
He was still for a moment.
Then he pushed the door open and stepped through.
The transition was immediate and jarring. In the blink of an eye, he was standing on the familiar looping path of Malady's Garden. The grey fog surrounded him on all sides, the dead trees reaching upward like skeletal fingers grasping at an invisible sky.
Nero turned back quickly, his heart racing with a sudden desperate hope that maybe, just maybe, he could return to that familiar warmth.
