Chapter 2 When Even the Sky Closed Its Eyes
It had been eighteen days. Long enough for the casseroles to stop, for people to start checking their watches again when they visited, for silence to spread like mildew through the walls of the house.
The funeral was held on a Thursday afternoon, under a sky the color of dishwater. The wind stirred but never committed to rain. It just pressed cold fingers against everyone's coats and curled around the caskets like it wanted in. The grass was patchy on the slope where they'd dug three side-by-side holes. Someone had tried to cover the raw earth with green mats, but they buckled unevenly beneath the chairs.
Auren stood the whole time.
His clothes didn't fit right. The black slacks were a little too short, the blazer borrowed from someone he barely remembered a cousin, maybe. It was too tight in the shoulders. He hadn't wanted to shop for anything. The idea of buying something for this day had made his stomach turn, so when someone shoved the clothes at him, he'd just nodded. Now he was paying for it. The collar scratched. The shoes pinched. Everything felt like a costume.
Lio's casket was too small. It didn't look real. Like a child's toy chest dressed up in flowers and guilt. Cassian's lay next to it, and then Elvira's hers edged with white lilies, soft roses, and a ribbon that said Mother, Sister, Friend in gold letters that gleamed when the wind caught them.
The preacher spoke, but the words dissolved in Auren's ears. Something about grace. Something about "in God's arms now." He stared at the curve of the hill behind the graves, watching a lone crow pace across the damp grass. Its feathers looked oil-slicked. Beautiful, even. He hated himself for noticing.
Someone was crying beside himhis grandmother, maybe. She reached out once, her gnarled fingers brushing the back of his hand like she wanted to fold her hand over his. Auren didn't move. Didn't blink. After a moment, she stopped trying.
His uncle Gerald tried to hug him when the service ended. The man always smelled like tobacco and starch. Auren let him, stiff as a mannequin, then pulled away too early. He saw the flicker of hurt cross Gerald's face. It didn't matter. None of it mattered.
In his pocket, he held a crumpled note. Just a scrap torn from an old notebook. One sentence. "I'm sorry." He'd meant to leave it with Elira's casket. He hadn't. He wasn't sure if it was cowardice or something meaner. Maybe he wanted to keep it, to punish himself with it.
The preacher was still talking to a cluster of relatives when Auren turned and walked away.
No one stopped him.
He climbed the hill behind the cemetery slowly, his shoes slipping a little on the damp earth. At the top, there was a crooked tree with bare limbs that reached into the gray sky like it was pleading. He sat beneath it, the bark rough against his back, and let the silence press in.
From here, he could see the graves below. Three new holes in the world. Everyone still gathered around them in clusters, black coats flapping like crows. He wondered if they were talking about him.
He wouldn't blame them.
He picked at a scab on his wrist. It bled a little. That was good. That was real.
They had all only ever seen the worst parts of him. That was the problem, wasn't it? All the slammed doors and shouted names and dinners skipped in silence. They thought he was angry, all the time. But he hadn't been. He'd been scared.
And now they were gone. All three of them. Gone because he couldn't say I love you without it sounding like an accusation. Gone because he never told Elira the truth. About the way his heart pounded around certain boys. About the voice in his head that snarled wrong, wrong, wrong every time he looked too long. About Marcus.
Even now, the thought of Marcus made something knot in his stomach. Not just grief. Not just guilt. Something else. Something dirtier. Something that whispered if they had known, they would've hated you anyway.
He pressed his face to his knees. The wind howled once across the hilltop and then died, as if embarrassed.
He didn't cry.
The world looked like it had given up pretending. Everything is dull. Everything flattened. Even the sky looked tired, closed off behind layers of low clouds.
Auren sat until the people below began to leave. The sound of car doors echoed up faintly. Eventually, the only ones left were the graves, and him.
He whispered, "I'm sorry." Not to anyone. Not loud enough for anyone to hear.
Then he stood, and he left the hill behind.
--Back Home
The door stuck the way it always had, swollen from years of humidity and no one ever bothered to fix it. Auren shoved it with his shoulder until it gave way, groaning open like it didn't want to let him in either.
The house was warm in a way that felt offensive. Late afternoon light spilled through the curtains in slow, syrupy stripes. It cast gold across the hallway floor, caught on the lip of the picture frames, gilded the dust that floated lazily in the air. It was beautiful. It was wrong.
The silence inside wasn't pure. It was filled with the ghosts of noise, the echoes of Lio's high-pitched laughter, the click of Elira's heels on the tile, the muted thud of Cassian's bedroom door always halfway shut. Auren stood in the entryway, hands in the pockets of the same black slacks, and couldn't take a full breath.
Shoes were still by the door. A pair of Lio's red sneakers mud caked into the soles, one lace frayed. The sight of them made his chest seize.
He stepped around them and wandered in.
The living room looked undisturbed. A basket of folded laundry still sat on the arm of the couch, half-empty. A bowl with a crusted spoon rested on the coffee table. Crayon drawings were pinned to the fridge with old magnets smudged, chaotic scribbles that vaguely resembled houses and trees and maybe a dragon. One of them had "TO MOMMY" written in thick, shaky marker. Another said CASSIAN in jagged letters.
Auren stared at the fridge until the edges of his vision blurred.
Then he turned, walked down the hallway, and opened the door to Cassian's room.
The air inside was different. Still and thick, like a sealed jar. It smelled like old socks and colognecheap stuff Cassian had insisted on using after shaving for the first time, always too much of it, sweet and sharp in the worst way. Auren took one step inside and stopped.
The bed was unmade. Not in a purposeful, chaotic wayjust carelessly abandoned. The blanket half-kicked off, a pillow on the floor. There were books on the windowsill, one with the spine broken, a dog-eared page holding the place where his brother had stopped. A dirty hoodie was slung over the back of the chair.
He shut the door gently.
The bathroom still held Elira's scent. That powdery, expensive kind that clung to her clothes and lingered in hugs. Her robe still hung behind the door, and her hairbrush rested on the counter, full of strands she'd never pull out now. Auren pressed his hand to the sink's edge and stared into the mirror.
He didn't look like someone who belonged here. His face was pale, drawn too tight. His eyes looked hollow, like someone had taken a lighter to the color in them. He leaned in closer. Something inside him said: You did this. You ruined everything.
He didn't flinch from it.
Back in the hallway, he laid down.
Right in the middle of the floor, the way he and Lio used to when they pretended to stargaze through the ceiling. His arm folded under his head, the wood cool against his back. He didn't know how long he stayed there, watching dust float above him in the golden light like the ghosts of all the things he didn't say.
He whispered, "I love you."
It came out flat, like air escaping a punctured tire. He tried again, louder. "I love you." But the walls didn't answer. No one said it back. The words evaporated.
He replayed the last fight.
He and Elira in the kitchen, voices sharp, knives on a countertop full of dishes. Her asking where he'd been. Auren snapping too fast, too loud, making it obvious it had been somewhere he wasn't supposed to be. Her voice breaking when she asked if it was him again. And then the look in her eyes when he didn't answer. When he couldn't.
He tried to rewind it, to find a version where she didn't leave the room in silence. Where he followed her instead of locking himself in the garage with the radio blasting and his hands shaking. But no matter how he twisted it in his head, it always ended with that awful quiet. That door closing. Her choosing not to say goodbye the next morning.
It had been the last thing between them.
And now it was everything.
Eventually, he stood.
He went into her room. Not to smell her sheets or touch the jewelry she never wore anymore. He went to the top drawer the one she used to keep locked, until she stopped trusting she needed to. He opened it slowly.
There was a jumble of old receipts, rubber bands, dead batteries. And beneath them, a small bottle of pills with a faded label. Something she'd needed years ago, when Cassian got sick and no one was sleeping anymore. She used to keep them hidden like something shameful. But she never threw them out.
He held them in his hand, the plastic cool and smooth against his palm.
Then he walked into the kitchen.
He filled a glass of water from the sink. The faucet sputtered a little, and a drop of water hit his knuckle, startling him. His hand trembled. The glass clicked softly when he set it down beside the pill bottle.
He stood there, staring at both, like they might move on their own.
Outside, the sun dipped low enough to paint the window in amber. Inside, the silence held its breath.
Auren didn't cry.
He just stood there, shoulders slumped, hair falling in his eyes, one hand still curled around that little scrap of a note he never gave her until the light began to die.
-
He didn't go back to the hallway.
He went to his room instead. The door creaked faintly behind him as he closed it not all the way, just until it rested against the frame. A half-closed door always felt less lonely.
His room was exactly how he left it before the world ended. Faint lines of sunlight cut across the floor, tracing the mess: worn shoes, a half-open notebook, clothes that never made it to the hamper. The posters on his walls felt like they belonged to someone else. So did the bed. So did the skin he was wearing.
Auren sat down on the floor again, his back against the base of his dresser, the bottle of pills in one hand, the glass of water in the other. His fingers didn't shake this time.
He looked at the pills like someone might study a map. The label was faded. He didn't care what they were called. He didn't need them to be strong, just enough.
It didn't feel dramatic.
It felt quiet. Final. Like loosening his grip on a rope he'd been clinging to long after it had burned through his palms.
He twisted the cap off with a soft click and tipped the bottle gently. One pill dropped into his hand. He swallowed it with a sip of water. Then another. Then another. No rush. Just a quiet rhythm. A mechanical, steady kind of release.
The room didn't protest.
There were no dramatic thoughts. No flashes of memory. No slideshow of laughter or joy or voices telling him to stop.
There was just the weight of everything he hadn't said.
His throat ached from holding it all in for too long.
He lay down on his side, then rolled onto his back. The ceiling tilted slightly, like it had come unfastened from the sky. Shadows swam across it, long and soft and slow-moving.
His body felt strangely light, but not in a peaceful way. More like his bones didn't care about staying anchored anymore.
He blinked. Once. Twice.
His fingers unclenched.
The last thing his eyes found was a crack in the plaster above him shaped almost like a leaf, or maybe a bird. He let his gaze blur until it became nothing at all.
And then, somewhere inside him, a question bubbled up not loud, not desperate, just a faint pulse of thought:
If there's something after this…
A field, a light, a gate, a god
I hope they're not waiting with blame.
He didn't want forgiveness. He didn't want punishment. He just wanted silence. Or maybe softness. Maybe a place where the air didn't feel like glass pressing in from every side.
The silence in the room deepened.
It stretched.
Then, for a moment, it became too loud.
Not with sound, exactly but with pressure. Auren's eardrums hummed. His breath felt like it was echoing inside a metal tunnel. The floor under him dissolved into something formless. Time didn't pass in seconds anymore it passed in heartbeats, then in spaces between them.
And then the crack came.
Not a sound. Not quite.
More like a shift.
A hairline fracture in the air.
The silence shattered like porcelain dropped on tile and in its place, something else crept in:
A faint chime.
Not music. Not exactly wind. But something in between. Like a thousand tiny shards of glass brushing past one another in a breeze, delicate and crystalline.
His vision dimmed around the edges. But not into darkness, into light.
Soft and shimmering.
Like sunlight rippling across the bottom of a shallow lake.
Auren didn't move. Couldn't. Didn't want to.
The light pressed in, curling around the edges of his body, around the tips of his fingers, the slope of his jaw, the back of his neck. It was warm not like heat, but like memory. Like a mother's hand on your forehead when you're sick. Like a blanket thrown over you without asking. Familiar. Unnameable.
And then the room was gone.
The dresser. The cracked ceiling. The walls with old posters.
Gone.
But not erased. Just… out of reach.
The chimes grew louder, still gentle, still dreamlike but with a rhythm now. Like something was calling him, or carrying him, or both.
His body felt like it was floating just above the floor.
Not up, not down just away.
And Auren, for the first time in months, didn't resist.
There was no sound.
Only lightsoft, rippling, endless.
Then breath.
Sharp and sudden, dragged into lungs that didn't remember how. Auren's chest spasmed. His mouth opened, and he coughed wet, raw, guttural. His body arched as if surfacing from deep underwater. The silence cracked, not with chimes this time, but with breath and heartbeat and the panic of being alive again.
His eyes blinked against a too-bright sky. He wasn't indoors.
He wasn't anywhere he knew.
The sky above was a wash of lavender, soft and unmoving, like wet paint not yet dry. Two moons hovered in opposite corners of the sky, one a pale peach, the other a soft silver. There were no clouds. No sun. Just color.
He was lying in a sea of flowers.
Not wildflowers, not anything he recognized. They shifted gently as if breathing, petals the colors of bruises and galaxies and milk-glass. Each one seemed to glow faintly, like something caught between plant and starlight. The stems tickled his neck and shoulders as he lay there, blinking at the sky. The grass beneath him wasn't green, but an almost luminescent white-gold, like strands of light made solid.
Auren's fingers twitched.
The sensation of touch returned in wavesprickling, hot and cold at once. The petals brushing his skin felt impossibly soft. His clothes, he realized slowly, had changedhe wore something pale and clean, tunic-like, stitched with threads that shimmered when he moved. Celestial patterns traced the sleeves: faint crescents, constellations, unfamiliar sigils.
His mouth tasted like rain and something sharp. Metal, maybe. Or memory.
He inhaled again.
The air was weightless and full of strange scents: not flowers, not earth, but something like cold springwater, burnt sugar, and a far-off storm. He could smell color, if that made any sense.
He didn't speak. Couldn't yet.
A rustle to his right. Then the sound of someone exhaling soft, surprised.
When he turned his head, a boy was leaning over him. Close. Too close. Their noses nearly touched.
The boy had blond, curling hair that caught the sky's lavender glow like candlelight, and his eyes were a piercing, unreal blue. Not icy, not warm, just clear. Like staring into a lake that had never been disturbed.
Auren's breath caught.
The boy tilted his head slightly, concerned. His lips parted like he was about to speak but didn't. Instead, he just watched Auren with wide, cautious eyes, like Auren was something fragile and still forming.
Auren blinked.
The boy's gaze flicked to his lips. And for the briefest, impossible second, he leaned in. Their foreheads nearly brushed. The heat of breath. The unbearable closeness of someone seeing you.
And then
"Hey!" a voice barked from behind. "He's awake, idiot!"
The boy flinched so hard he nearly fell backward. Auren's brow furrowed as a blur of motion filled the corner of his vision.
A girl stormed into view, yanking the blond boy by the collar of his ethereal shirt. She was a few years older than Auren, maybe seventeen, and all sharp lines and energy. Her hair was jet black, shaved close on one side and braided tight on the other. Her eyes were the color of wet barkearthy, piercing.
"Give him space, Kirin," she muttered, releasing the boy with an exasperated sigh. "Seriously."
Kirin. That was the boy's name, then.
He backed off, cheeks pink, hands raised like a scolded dog. "I was just checking if he could see me," he said sheepishly. "You're the one who said he might wake up all… fogged."
Auren tried to sit up.
The motion made the world tilt. The flowers around him leaned as if helping. Their petals brushed his arms, his back, his hair familiar and unfamiliar all at once.
His limbs felt too light, like his body didn't remember how to hold itself. Like gravity worked differently here.
The girl crouched down beside him, her expression a little softer now. Still wary. Still guarded. But softer.
"You alright?" she asked.
Auren opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
His throat felt raw. Like he'd swallowed stars. Or fire. Or grief.
Kirin leaned down again, keeping a respectful distance. "You don't have to talk," he said softly. "Just breathe. That's enough for now."
Auren's gaze flicked from Kirin to the girl, then up to the moons above.
His heart beat quietly. Not panicked. Just present.
The girl stood, brushing off her pants—strange and celestial-looking, like they'd been spun from sky instead of cloth. "We saw you by the flowers," she said, not unkindly. "Didn't want to leave you out here alone."
Kirin glanced at her, then back to Auren. "It's easy to lose track of time in places like this," he added. "Happens to all of us."
Auren closed his eyes.
The field breathed around him.
Something was shifting. Not in the air—but in him.
He wasn't scared. He should've been. But all the fear had burned out before he got here.
What remained was… quiet. Weightless.
He opened his eyes again.
Kirin was still watching him—head tilted slightly, gaze soft.
The girl knelt and offered Auren a hand. "Come on," she said. "If you can stand, you should. This place likes movement."
Auren hesitated, then reached for her hand.
It was warm. Solid. Human.
Real.
And when she pulled him up, the flowers shifted beneath them, whispering in a language only the dead could understand.