The red wound pulsed on the horizon.
Lucifer had been walking toward it for what felt like days. The grey sky never changed. The ground beneath his feet shifted from sand to stone to sothing that felt like dried skin. He didn’t ask how Damaris knew the way. He just followed.
Then they found the first sign.
A tree.
Not a real tree. Sothing that had once been a tree, now frozen mid-fall, its branches twisted into shapes that looked like arms reaching for help. Embedded in its trunk were faces. Human faces. Frozen in expressions of silent terror.
Damaris stopped walking.
"The Collector passed through here."
Lucifer touched the bark. It was warm. Alive. Wrong.
"How can you tell?"
Damaris pointed at the faces.
"These were souls. Unique ones. The Collector took what it wanted and left the shells behind."
Lucifer’s hand dropped.
"They’re still conscious?"
"No." Damaris’s voice was quiet. "Just echoes. mories. The soul is gone. The body is just... furniture now."
They walked past the tree.
Then past another.
And another.
The landscape beca a graveyard of frozen things. People. Animals. Things that had no na. All of them caught mid-motion, their bodies preserved like insects in amber.
The Collector’s trail was impossible to miss.
---
They found the village at the base of a collapsed mountain.
It hadn’t been built. It had been left. Buildings made of crystallized mory, their walls transparent, showing the shapes of people inside. None of them moved.
Damaris stepped into the village square.
"mory echoes."
Lucifer followed.
"They’re not real?"
"They were real. Once." Damaris touched the wall of a nearby building. His fingers passed through it like smoke. "The Collector consud their souls. What’s left is just... residue."
A shape walked past them.
Lucifer’s hand went to his shadow.
Damaris grabbed his wrist.
"Wait."
The shape was a woman. Tall. Dark hair. She walked from one building to another, her feet making no sound, her face blank.
She didn’t see them.
She couldn’t.
Lucifer lowered his hand.
"Can she hear us?"
"No."
Another shape appeared. A man. Then a child. Then an old man with a cane.
They moved through the village like ghosts in a loop, repeating actions they’d done in life. The woman stopped at a doorway. The child picked up a toy that wasn’t there. The old man sat on a bench that had long since crumbled.
Lucifer watched.
"How many?"
Damaris looked around.
"Hundreds. Maybe thousands."
"The Collector took all of them?"
"The Collector takes what it wants. The rest..." He gestured at the frozen figures. "The rest are just decorations."
Lucifer’s shadows stirred.
He thought of Francisca. Frozen sowhere. Waiting.
"Let’s keep moving."
They walked through the village.
More shapes appeared. More echoes.
Lucifer tried not to look at their faces.
Then he saw her.
---
She was sitting on a broken fountain in the center of the village.
Her hair was shorter than he rembered. Her clothes were different—a simple dress, grey like everything else. Her face was turned away, looking at sothing in the distance.
But Lucifer knew her.
"Francisca."
The na left his mouth before he could stop it.
Damaris turned.
The shape didn’t move.
Lucifer walked toward her. His boots crunched on the crystal ground. His shadows pulled back, as if they recognized her too.
He stopped in front of the fountain.
"Francisca."
The shape turned.
Her face was Francisca’s. Her eyes were Francisca’s. But there was nothing behind them. No recognition. No warmth. No life.
Just an echo.
"Luce," she said.
His heart stopped.
"You’re not real."
She tilted her head.
"Real enough."
Lucifer’s hands curled into fists.
"Where is she? The real her?"
The echo’s lips curved—a smile that didn’t reach her empty eyes.
"The Collector took her. Like it took everyone else." She gestured at the frozen village. "But she fought. Harder than the others. That’s why he kept her."
Lucifer’s voice dropped.
"Kept her where?"
The echo leaned closer. Her breath—if it was breath—was cold.
"The Void Between Heartbeats."
She whispered it.
Three words that didn’t make sense.
Lucifer grabbed her shoulder.
"What does that an?"
His hand passed through her.
The echo flickered.
"The space between one mont and the next," she said, her voice fading. "Where ti hesitates. Where the universe holds its breath."
She flickered again.
"Find it. Find her."
Then she was gone.
The fountain was empty.
Lucifer stood there, his hand still raised.
Damaris approached slowly.
"The Void Between Heartbeats."
Lucifer turned.
"You know it."
Damaris nodded. His golden eyes were dark.
"It’s a legend. A gap in reality. It exists between ticks of the cosmic clock—the space where ti itself pauses before deciding what cos next."
Lucifer’s jaw tightened.
"How do we get there?"
"You don’t." Damaris shook his head. "It’s not a place. It’s a mont. A fraction of a fraction of a second when the universe hesitates."
"Then how did the Collector get there?"
Damaris was quiet.
Then:
"Collectors are older than the rules. They can step into spaces that shouldn’t exist."
Lucifer’s eyes narrowed.
"And us?"
Damaris looked at the horizon—at the red wound pulsing in the distance.
"We need sothing that can force ti to hesitate. Sothing powerful enough to make the universe blink."
Lucifer’s hand went to his chest.
The Human Authority pulsed beneath his skin.
"Like the Authority?"
Damaris stared at him.
"Maybe." He paused. "But using it that way could tear a hole in reality. Not a door—a wound. One that might not close."
Lucifer’s expression didn’t change.
"Then we’ll close it after."
Damaris sighed.
"You really are my son."
They left the village.
Behind them, the echoes continued their loops, unaware that soone had passed through.
Ahead, the red wound grew larger.
The Collector’s domain was close.
And sowhere in the space between heartbeats, Francisca waited.
A/N
The novel will get better with ti, right now currently doing many works apart from writing, school works and so many things, but there is nothing I can not over co.
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