MERIKH: THE BLACK POWER

IMMORTALS, THEY CALL US. Funny how the word means nothing when you’re kneeling in your own blood. It runs down my face, stinging my eyes, turning the world into a blurred smear of red. I try to wipe it away, but I can’t move. A foreign power crawls beneath my skin, pricking and tearing as if a thousand needles are forcing their way through my veins. The world begins to fade. The voices around me dissolve into one deafening scream. “SURGE, MERIKH!” Six months earlier Breaking into the Abyssal Athenaeum had been Celia's idea. Which meant, naturally, that I was the one who picked the lock. "You're too good at that," Celia whispered behind me, the kind of whisper that was barely quieter than talking. "And you're too loud for someone who suggested this," I muttered, pushing the door open with my shoulder. "Move." We slipped inside. The forbidden wing had a different quality of silence than the rest of the library. The kind that made you aware of your own breathing, your own heartbeat, the soft drag of your shoes against marble that suddenly felt too loud. A slant of moonlight cut across the nearest shelf, catching the worn edges of old wood and the perfect, untouched spines of books that hadn't been opened in centuries. I took it in for exactly three seconds. Then I started walking. "Shouldn't we at least appreciate the atmosphere?" Celia said, already drifting toward the front shelves with that particular ease she had — the ease of someone whose survival instinct had never quite developed properly. "Appreciate it faster," I said. She smiled. That was the thing about my sister, danger had a very short shelf life with her. By the time most people were still processing the risk, she had already moved on to enjoying herself. I had never decided if I found that admirable or exhausting. Both, probably. The room carried the scent of old parchment and damp stone, laced with something faintly bitter, the kind that settled into places where time had lingered too long. Even beneath the dust of centuries, the room held itself with a kind of quiet authority, as though whatever lived in these pages refused to be forgotten regardless of who had locked the doors. "I'll take these," Celia said, gesturing toward the front shelves. "You check the other side." "Naturally," I said. "I'll take the darker half where the light doesn't reach. Excellent plan." "You can see in the dark." “That is not the point” But I was already moving. I didn't know what I was looking for. But that was never the problem. My fingers moved along the spines slowly, pausing at titles that felt like they might mean something, moving on when they didn't. History of the Segregation Laws. Cartography of the Dead Realms. The Founding of Luminora. Nothing that felt worth the walk here. Celia would have called it instinct — this habit of chasing things that didn't have names yet. I called it inconvenient. I pulled a book from the shelf, turned it over, put it back. Another had the same fate. Most of them were exactly what they looked like — old, forgotten, harmless. But occasionally one felt different under my fingers. Heavier somehow, as if whatever was inside it had weight beyond paper. I had no idea if that meant anything. I kept going anyway. If we get caught here, the best case was expulsion. I tried not to think about the worst case. My eyes caught a tittle on one of the books. Mysteries of the Isles of Death. I pulled it out slowly, the way you handle something you don't want to startle. Most of it was familiar — geography of the dead realms, behaviour of wandering spirits, the usual mythology that every immortal learned before they were a century old. I was already losing interest when the page turned and a heading stopped me. The boy locked in the tower A myth present in a library My lips turned into a smirk. Now that’s called interesting. I was still reading when a weight landed on my shoulder. I turned sharply, hand already raised — Celia caught my wrist with both hands, eyes wide. "O Deus," she whispered dramatically, "you were about to hit your own sister." "You shouldn't sneak up on people in forbidden libraries," I said. "Common sense." She opened her mouth to argue and a book slipped from under her arm. The sound it made hitting the marble was catastrophic. We both froze. The silence that followed felt different from the silence before. "Celia." "I know." "What did you even—" "I know," she repeated. I exhaled slowly through my nose and looked down at the book sprawled open on the floor. Then at her. She was already crouching to pick it up, movements careful now, a century too late. "What did you find?" I asked, keeping my voice low. Her expression shifted immediately — that particular brightness that meant she had found something worth the trouble. She turned the cover toward me. Somnium Transitus. "It's real," she whispered, and the excitement in her voice was barely contained. "An actual ritual. Used by a legend to cross between different realms — the living world, the dead, everything between. It's not just a story, Odessa. Someone actually did this." I looked at the book. Then at her. "I can already do that," I said. She blinked. "What?" "Cross realms. I do it every time. Quite literally." She stared at me for a moment with the expression she reserved for when I said something that genuinely derailed her excitement. "That," she said, "is not the point." "Then what is—" Footsteps. The kind of footsteps that belonged to someone who knew exactly where they were going. We looked at each other. The keeper. Neither of us moved for exactly one second — that specific second where your body hasn't caught up with your brain yet. Then Celia grabbed my wrist and pulled. “We have to leave,” her voice was laced with urgency. I shoved both the books in one place and searched around the room for an escape. It seemed quite impossible. The library had no windows and if the keeper came closer to the room he can feel our energy. I turned to Celia took her arms, “Look, I will distract him and you run,” Celia looked at me narrowing her eyes, “Well we will do the quite opposite.” She didn’t gave me time to consider and disappear behind the door. I followed because what else was I going to do. The corridor outside was darker than I remembered, the kind of dark that makes distances feel wrong. The footsteps were closer now as if they already knew something was here. Celia pressed herself against the nearest shelf, her back flat, her eyes closed. I opened my mouth. She held up one finger. I closed my mouth. She raised her palm, face hardening in focus. For few seconds nothing happened. Then from somewhere deep in the opposite wing a crash was heard. Then another. Books hit the floor in rapid succession, one after another. The footstep stopped and slowly started fading. Celia opened her eyes and looked at me. The corner of her mouth lifted slightly. I grabbed her wrist and we ran. The kind of sprint where your lungs burn with every ragged gasp, feet hammering marble too hard, echoes exploding off every wall but you stop caring because the exit glimmers right there. We hit the door together. Cold air hit my face outside. The atmosphere outside the Abyssal Athenaeum felt completely ordinary and impossibly beautiful. We didn't stop until we reached one of the alleys of Dejia. Then Celia doubled over, hands on her knees, laughing silently with the shaking shoulders. I leaned against a wall and waited for my heartbeat to make a decision about itself. "How did you do that?" I said finally, when I had enough breath for words. “You are not the only special person, sister,” she said moving forward. I rolled my eyes and followed her. “We can’t stay here,” I said walking beside her, “ Let’s go back to Luminora.” The lights are not particularly allowed to wander freely in the city of darkness. “We are already here,” she said as we turned onto the main streets of Dejia, “Let’s meet Jane before going.” Dejia hit differently at evening. In Luminora everything quieted at dark—lanterns lit in orderly manner, voices dropped, the city folded itself into something calm and considered. We had been raised to believe that was what cities did when the sun set down. Dejia had clearly not received that information. If anything, the city seem to wake up. Stalls spilled into the streets entirely, vendors called out upon each other, shadows moved playfully. Somewhere ahead someone had conjured an illusion of a serpent the size of a building, and nobody was looking at it the way one would look at something remarkable. A child sent a ribbon of darkness curling after a friend who shrieked and sent it spinning back. Two women at a corner stall argued loudly over something, their hands moving constantly, small dark sparks trailing from their fingers every time their gestures got emphatic. I slowed down without meaning to. Luminora had its own beauty — clean lines, warm stone, a kind of quiet dignity that I had grown up believing was simply how things were. Walking through Dejia felt like discovering that there was an entirely different way to exist and it had been happening this whole time without my knowledge. "You're staring," Celia said beside me. "I'm observing," I said. "You've been observing that stall for forty seconds." I looked away. The stall in question was selling small glass vials of what appeared to be bottled shadow — actual shadow, moving inside the glass, pressing against the sides like it wanted out. The vendor was a tall woman with dark ink markings along her jaw who was currently holding one up to the light with the casual confidence of someone selling fruit. I was still looking at the vials when someone hit my shoulder hard enough to knock me sideways. "Sorry—" the word was already fading as the person kept walking, not even turning around, absorbed into the crowd ahead like they had somewhere urgent to be. I steadied myself and frowned. Then I noticed it wasn't just them. Many people heading the same way with that particular energy that meant something was either very good or very bad. I looked at Celia who was already looking at me. We followed them. The crowd thickened the further we went, voices rising, bodies pressing closer until we were moving less by choice and more by current. The streets narrowed and then opened into a wide square that was already packed three rows deep. "The Lights in the city of darkness." We turned. Jane stood behind us, arms folded, that particular smile on her face — the one that meant she had been watching us for at least a minute before saying anything. "What a pleasant surprise," she said. "Jane." Celia lit up immediately. I looked between Jane's smile and the crowd ahead. "What's happening over there?" She fell silent. Something shifted in her expression. She pushed aside the crowd making way for us. We followed till we reached the front row. A man and a woman were kneeling; their eyes fixed on the ground. Two separate energies were felt from them. Light and Darkness…