Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The island was connected to the mainland by a bridge that yawned over the churning dark waters below, several miles of crumbling grey stone and gaps where the walls and pillars and fallen into the hungry ocean. It's thick mist swirled about the supports to obscure the majority of the crashing waves that sounded like wet angry fists beating the sides, continuously pounding and demanding it cave to the pressure.

The whispers amongst her peers, when she had been younger, had been that the water would rise up some day to devour them all. They had feared the shoreline, huddled high above the white sands that gleamed like bones even in the weak light of day. Behind their hands, everyone spoke of the glow of the water foam crashing against the shore and the sound of seagulls in the distance that wasn’t unlike the wounded, shrieking for help. It didn’t matter how far inland they went because of several reasons, but the most prominent was that the island just wasn’t that large.

Everyone in Corona grew up this way. They shied away from the shore, from the bridge out, and most importantly, from the tower that stood midway between the mainland and the island.

She had seen a massive door cut into the stone of it, once, allowing the bridge to tunnel through it's wide base, but her spyglass had been handmade from scraps and the other kids called it unreliable. That pitch black mouth lingered in her dreams for weeks into years, and sometimes she still shuddered when she woke up in the early morning. It had been part of the reason the few people her age had avoided her like they avoided the sands, whispering when they thought she would not hear.

So they thought she was crazy. It wasn’t as if she enjoyed their favorite pastimes or wanted to join in on their games; they got more and more ridiculous and simple minded as she got older. Nearly two decades of isolation, however, it does affect a person.

Given how the door had shaped her childhood, it surprised her that she was considering the spyglass in her hands. It was brand new, which was almost impossible here-- nothing was ever new. Everything was pieced together from the things that were left behind in the abandoned structures that dotted their town, but this metal looked clean, felt smooth to her hands. Cassandra Ward, the only child of the small town’s leader, twisted the rings of cold metal and held it up to her face to get a better look at the lenses.

“Where did you get glass this clear?” Most glass on the island was foggy, covered with grime and scum from the salty air, no chemicals could ever scour it off. Yet the glass set within the rings was clear and even nicer than her original spyglass.

In front of her, one of the younger island children bounced on his heels with his gloved hands twisting rapidly. Like everyone else of Corona, his hair was dark and thick, frizzed a little from the air conditions. Unlike everyone else, a stripe of color unfamiliar to most cut through the darkness. It wasn’t unlike the water in the old faded pictures that the library kept under lock and key. Blue, that’s what the pages called it, but dingier. Dimmer.

He was buzzing with excitement that Cassandra knew no one else on the island could manage. It annoyed her, and endeared him to her in a strange sort of way. She knew the others shunned him for not fitting in, reminding her of the days where she sat with her eyes trained on the murky horizon.

“I actually made it by superheating some of the sand, that’s why it’s so clear. It’s actually brand new! Most of the glass on the island is probably a few decades old, you know?” His eyes were a duller paler shade of his hairstripe, but they seemed intense right now, “Actually! The glass on the island could be a few hundred years old! Did you know there’s no books in the library on the history of Corona that mentions time or dates?”

She did know that, but she didn’t tell him that. He was happy to expand on his theory about the island’s history and secrets while she twisted the spyglass and turned to scan the horizon. In the swirls of gray fog, it wasn’t hard to locate the tower. It stretched up high into the sky, often blocking out the meager rays of sunlight they got, but even with the glass she couldn’t tell how high it went. Thick heavy storm clouds crowded it at some point, pregnant with water that never would fall and swallowing the height. It was one of the many mysteries of Corona that no one wanted to discuss.

Reluctantly, she swung the spyglass down the tower, her sight crawling inch by inch until she reached the base. She then snapped it aggressively and winced a bit at how loudly the metal clacked together.

“Is it still there?” His voice was almost reverent and she suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. He wouldn’t be so eager to see the tunnel if he understood just how wrong the whole thing was. Even at this distance, it beckoned to something deep within her, something ancient and primal, and raised a chill down her spine. Under her thick wool sleeves, goosebumps prickled up her arms and raised the hairs all the way to her nape.

Morbid curiosity was still insatiable curiosity and she handed his spyglass back to him, damning the boy to the same fate that plagued her. It was not as if she hadn’t warned him, excessively, but people who were alone often thought they had nothing left to lose. She knew there was worse.

Varian Grieves fumbled as he opened the glass back up, the thick material of his gloves hindering his attempts until it finally unfolded. She knew the moment he got the angle just right because his skin went more ashen than usual and a quaver rippled up and down his limbs. A good adult would have warned him off and not exposed him to what would happen, would not have let him been exposed to the tower and the tunnel. She thought she was a better adult, however, for not lying to him and letting him find out on his own. Perhaps, she was also a worse adult for going about it this way and shoving him head first into the abyss.

Being alone with such knowledge had almost driven her to the brink several times over, but at least he would have someone who could help him navigate the horrors. Someone familiar with how the shadows would consume his existence and drive him into apathetic madness.

There was a reason the skin beneath her eyes looked bruised.

“Still there,” he whispered and could not disguise the tremble in his words. There was no way to properly explain the tunnel to anyone, not without them seeing it. Experiencing it. He was realizing that now, understanding why she felt uncomfortable around the other islanders.

Pitch black was not dark enough to describe the opening nor did it explain why the mere sight of it filled her, and now him, with existential dread. If the sea was a million little scavengers prepared to snap up anyone who dared step past the safety of looming dingy walls, then the archway over the bridge and through the tower was like a lolled tongue out of a drooling maw, patient and welcoming. It terrified her to her core, and somehow compelled her to keep looking, no matter how she wanted to look away.

It’s cold grasp had seized her, permanently, shackled her to it and cursed her for life. Everyone else kept their eyes down, fearful of it's looming presence, while she had always turned to look up at it. Odd that such a foreboding dark monument would act like a lure and that almost fifteen years had yet to sever the bond it had forged when she had first locked eyes with it.

“There’s nothing about the bridge or the tower in the library. Not in the sections they’ll let me in.” Varian’s voice still shook, he looked pitiful in his too large gloves and thick woolen coat. He ducked his chin behind his scarf, as if trying to hide himself from the imposing monolith, but she saw how his eyes darted to and fro, almost frantically-- he was trying to force himself not to let his gaze drift back to it. She could have told him it was a losing battle. It had seized him, too, and she was responsible for feeding his curiosity, for condemning him to this. Even hell was more gentle in the books than what she lived with.

What he’d live with.

“You will have nightmares tonight.”

It was the only warning she could give him. Telling him what he would see would only scare him more, but at least she could prepare him somewhat for the paralyzing imagery that would torment him in a few hours.

His head snapped up, the whites of his eyes fully exposed thanks to how wide they had gone. With pupils blown, the odd color of his irises was swallowed by the shadows of fear, not unlike the thing that plagued her dreams. She looked away, because while this was not as terrifying, it was highly uncomfortable.

“Nightmares?”
“You’ll get used to them.”
“What do you dream about? What do you see?”
“... You’ll see.”

Maybe he would not dream the same as she did, maybe the insidious shade would play on his fears in new ways than hers-- but it wasn’t worth scaring him further with her own dreams. He would find out on his own.

She didn't want to linger on the nightmares, but still, unbidden and undesired, she heard the sound of bristles sweeping over hair and the eerie whispers of a song in her head. Cassandra clenched her jaw as she pressed a hand to her temple. It would stick in her head for the rest of the day now, putting her on edge.

Like him, she looked for a distraction, watching him from the corner of her eye as he fiddled with his coat.

He could barely open his pockets with how he shook, but he managed, wiggling out a worn and ripped little pad of parchment and a nub of graphite to write with. The words weren’t concealed from her as he wrote rapidly, but his handwriting was messy and hurried as his hand struggled to keep up with his brain’s rapid fire thought process. She could make out that he was planning what to research first, outlining what he already knew to eliminate some questions.

For a child, he was rather meticulous.

“There’s a section of the library they don’t let me visit,” his buck teeth gave him a tiny lisp as he fussed over his notes, almost desperate to not look at her or up at all. There was no blame to be found for that, she hated looking up, too. His eyes would only seek out the tower from now on, looking for answers, drawn in by whatever infection the darkness had seeded in them both.

She pretended to not pay that much attention to his actions and instead scuffed the ground with her foot, some of the loose dirt and grass coming up. “There’s a few places in the library they don’t let anyone visit,” Cassandra admitted, “But I think you’re talking about the restricted section behind the librarian’s desk.”

His head whipped up so fast his neck could have broken from the sheer speed, shaking rapidly as he locked eyes with her.

“The answers aren’t there,” she watched the fleeting hope die from his eyes in a flash before she reignited it, adding, “But they might be in the library’s secret basement.”

“Secret basement?”

One of the highlights to no one wanting to be around her or look at her, Cassandra had found, was that it was incredibly easy to start digging into the places people didn’t want to be. Not that she had found the answers there, yet, but the library was packed with books and some were in languages she didn't know. Others made references to things she just couldn't understand. Perhaps the child could help since he was fairly brilliant?

They'd both been contaminated by the tower, and it had rooted a deep curiosity in her that could only be sated by solving the unspoken mysteries of Corona. She was sure it would be the same for him who had followed her out of curiosity.

And no matter how it terrified her on an intense visceral level, it goaded her to seek out the other lost spaces within the town that she could reach without becoming drenched in a cold sweat.

Secretly, she hoped that someday solving all the other mysteries would give her the courage to finally put a foot on that desolate bridge and walk into the fog. Maybe having to protect a child would do be the kick she needed to finally pick up that rucksack from her cot and venture into the madness.

She needed to do it soon, because while the whole of Corona, and even herself, whispered amongst the grey and gloomy shadows that she was cursed, Cassandra knew it was not simply her. It was the entire island that was doomed, under the thumb of a skeletal giant that laughed miserably at them. No one had come to the island for nearly two decades, and the population was beginning to dwindle again.

Perhaps it wasn't urgent, yet, but she was sure time was of the essence.

"Follow me."