Ash drifts between my fingers like gray snow, coating my skin in the remnants of what once might have been buildings, people, lives. The sky above hangs low and sickly, a bruised purple-red that seems to pulse with unnatural light.
I blink, trying to remember how I got here. Wasn't I just in my dorm room with Ellie? The memory feels distant now, like something I watched rather than lived.
"What the hell?" I mutter, turning in a slow circle to take in the devastation surrounding me.
In every direction, the landscape is nothing but rubble and ruin. Twisted metal frames reach toward the poisoned sky like skeletal fingers. The remains of what might have been skyscrapers lie scattered and broken, their concrete bones pulverized to the dust I'm standing on.
Something catches my eye in the distance, a pike jutting from the ground, something impaled on its tip that doesn't quite belong in this wasteland.
I pick my way across the debris field, each step releasing small puffs of ash that dance around my ankles. As I get closer, my stomach clenches with unease. There's a head mounted on that pike, and it's wearing some kind of mask.
"Huh?" I approach cautiously, curiosity overriding my instinct to run in the opposite direction.
When I reach the pike, bile rises in my throat. The head is wearing what looks like a knockoff Batman mask, but definitely designed for a woman's face. The cowl is cracked and weathered, the eye holes empty and accusatory. Beneath the mask, the flesh has mummified, stretched tight over facial bones in a permanent grimace.
My eyes drop to a crude stone tablet at the base of the pike. Words have been chiseled into its surface with what must have been rage-fueled precision.
HERE LIES DARK STAR.
HUMANITY'S GREATEST TRAITOR.
MAY NONE REPEAT THE MISTAKE OF STEALING MY LUKE FROM ME EVER AGAIN.
"What the fuck?" I back away from the grisly monument, my heart hammering against my ribs. "Where the fuck am I?"
I spin around wildly, searching for anything familiar in this apocalyptic landscape, any clue to how I ended up here or what happened to turn a world to ash.
"Honestly, I don't know either."
The voice behind me is smooth as velvet and sharp as broken glass. I jump, nearly tripping over my own feet as I whirl around.
"Lileth?"
He stands a few feet away, looking exactly as I remember him, towering and terrible, skin cracked with glowing fissures, massive bat-like wings folded against his back. The dark mist still curls around his feet, seeming to eat away at the ash beneath him.
"Long time no see, my child," he says, his venomous green eyes studying me with something between amusement and curiosity.
I take an instinctive step back, memories of our last encounter flooding through me, the museum, the frozen time, the burning sensation as he transformed me. "What is this place? What happened here?"
Lileth's lips curl into a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "This is a possible future," he says, gesturing at the wasteland around us. "Or perhaps a nightmare made manifest? It's difficult to discern the difference sometimes."
I strain my ears at a faint scratching sound coming from somewhere beneath the ash. It's like something digging, tunneling just below the surface, but I can't pinpoint where it's coming from.
"Oh cool. So I'm dreaming right now?" I ask, suddenly feeling much less concerned about the apocalyptic landscape and severed head on a pike.
Lileth's expression shifts to one of annoyance, his glowing fissures pulsing brighter for a moment. "Well, yes, but…"
"So you wanted to have a little pow-wow in my dreamscape?" I interrupt, closing my eyes and concentrating hard. I picture a juicy cheeseburger, complete with melted cheese, crisp lettuce, and a sesame seed bun. When I open my eyes, my hands are still empty and my stomach still growling. "What the hell?"
Lileth stares at me incredulously. "Did you just attempt to manifest food while I'm speaking to you?"
"WELL, IT'S A DREAM, ISN'T IT?" I throw my hands up in exasperation. "I'm hungry!"
"Well, no," Lileth says with exaggerated patience, like he's explaining something to a particularly slow child. "It's more of a half-vision, half-dream. A space between realities where I can communicate with you."
"Well, I feel hungry," I grumble, kicking at the ash beneath my feet.
Lileth's eyes narrow dangerously, the green glow intensifying. With a flick of his wrist, an invisible force slams me backward. I hit the ground hard, pinned by pressure that feels like a concrete slab on my chest.
"You're annoying me, child," he says, his voice eerily calm despite the obvious display of power.
I look up at him, immobilized in the ash, and can't help the laugh that bubbles out of me. "Oh no, please don't hold down the masochist who likes to get hit while he's fucked. That will assuredly get me to be compliant."
Lileth releases the invisible pressure pinning me, and I tumble forward into the ash. He regards me with a scowl that would terrify anyone with a proper sense of self-preservation.
"You're a handful," he says, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Thank you," I reply, getting to my feet and dusting ash from my clothes. "That's kind of you to notice."
He rolls his eyes, those venomous green orbs flashing with something between amusement and frustration. "So," he says, changing tactics, "how are you enjoying your newfound powers?"
"They're great," I say, perking up at the chance to share my accomplishments. "I saved someone today. Well, technically yesterday."
Lileth laughs, the sound echoing unnaturally across the desolate landscape. "You certainly did, didn't you?" His wings shift behind him, stretching slightly before folding back against his spine. He sighs deeply, his expression growing more serious. "Your progress is rather slow, though, isn't it?"
I frown, genuinely confused. "What do you mean? I can finally run five miles now without getting winded. Before all this, I could barely manage one."
The digging sound beneath us intensifies, like something large is tunneling directly under our feet. Lileth doesn't seem concerned by it, though his gaze briefly flicks to the ground before returning to me.
He sighs again, more dramatically this time. "I see... you're a goblet half-full kind of man."
"Of course I am," I respond, crossing my arms defensively. "Optimism is how I've always survived…"
Lileth regards me with those unsettling serpentine eyes. "There's a lot you don't know about yourself, Shane."
"Like what? My personality?"
He stares at me, expression suddenly deadly serious. "No. My child, you're an incubus still living in a human vessel. If you want to unlock your true power..." His lips curl into a wide smile that reveals those elongated canines. "Well, I don't want to spoil it for you."
The digging sound is almost deafening now, ash vibrating beneath my feet like there's something massive about to break through.
"I don't want to stop being human," I say firmly, standing my ground despite the trembling earth.
Lileth nods, looking unsurprised. "I figured as much."
My mind races with implications. "We never made an official deal, so is my soul still my own?"
"Sure," he says with a dismissive wave of his hand, talons glinting in the eerie light. "I didn't help you for your soul."
Just as I'm about to ask Lileth the burning question, why he helped me in the first place, the ash beneath my feet erupts. The ground splits open with a deafening crack, and a crimson figure launches upward in a spray of gray dust.
My heart nearly stops as I recognize the twisted form emerging from the earth. A woman clad in swirling red symbiote material, her face partially covered by a weathered red hood. Twin pistols gleam at her hips, and the symbiote writhes around her like living blood.
"THERE YOU ARE, SHANE!" she roars, her voice a distorted blend of human and something else entirely. "WE'VE BEEN LOOKING EVERYWHERE FOR YOU!"
I stumble backward, heart hammering against my ribs. "What the hell?" I spin around, looking for Lileth, but the demon is nowhere to be seen, vanished as if he'd never been there at all.
"Carnage?" I manage to choke out, recognizing the symbiote's distinctive appearance from my world's comics. "How are you even here?"
The masked figure stalks toward me, each step leaving crimson footprints in the ash. The symbiote pulses and writhes around her body like a living heartbeat.
"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW FAR WE HAD TO GO TO FIND YOU HERE?" she snarls, her voice scraping against my eardrums like broken glass.
My mind races, trying to make sense of what's happening. "Wait, no… This is supposed to be a dream. You can't actually be here."
Carnage throws her head back and laughs, the sound like metal being torn apart. Then without warning, she lunges at me, symbiote tendrils stretching outward like crimson spears aimed directly at my chest.
I jerk upright with a strangled gasp, my body drenched in cold sweat. My heart pounds so violently I can feel it in my teeth, and for a moment, I can't tell where I am.
"Shane? Shane, what's wrong?"
Ellie's face hovers above mine, her blue eyes wide with concern, hands gripping my shoulders. The symbiote ripples across her skin in agitated waves, responding to her alarm.
"Jesus," I pant, struggling to catch my breath. "Ellie, I…"
"You were thrashing around," she says, her voice uncharacteristically gentle. "Kept muttering something about Carnage."
The nightmare's already fading like morning mist, details dissolving faster than I can grasp them. The head on the pike, Lileth's face, that wasteland of ash, the horrifying figure erupting from the ground, all slipping away like water through my fingers.
Ellie's eyebrows knit together in confusion. "What's carnage?"
I rub my eyes, trying to hold onto the fragments. "Another symbiote," I mumble. "Red one. Violent."
"Huh?" She looks genuinely puzzled, her head tilting slightly. The black substance on her skin ripples with what almost seems like curiosity. "My other says there are no others on Earth."
"Not yet," I whisper, the final pieces of the dream evaporating completely.
Ellie's arms tighten around me protectively as I drift back into darkness, this time dreamless and deep.