Between the Abyss and the Light

Soteria felt as though her soul were a drunken sailor stuffed into a barrel in the midst of a storm, tumbling through endless chaos.

The chains of the Abyss wailed, while the laws of space shattered around her and forcibly reassembled.

When the dizzying sensation finally faded, she stumbled out of a silver gateway that was about to close and crashed heavily onto the cold, hard stone floor.

Her first breath nearly made her choke. The air here was far too pure.

There was no cloying stench of blood, no sickly sweetness of decay, and certainly none of that suffocating despair.

The fresh night breeze, carrying the scents of grass and dew, flooded into her lungs. She greedily gulped it down as though a drowning person had finally broken the surface.

Soteria pushed herself up and warily surveyed her surroundings.

Moonlight poured through the damaged dome, illuminating this long-abandoned little chapel.

The summoning circle on the floor was crooked and uneven, its chalk lines broken and intermittent, with several drops of blood haphazardly splashed over the crucial nodes.

A circle of this caliber had actually succeeded in summoning something? It was practically a miracle.

Then she saw the figure standing at the edge of the circle.

A human girl.

She looked no older than eighteen, so slender that a gust of wind might have blown her over.

Her gray dress was plain yet neat. Cherry-pink hair flowed down to her waist, gleaming with a dreamlike luster beneath the moonlight. Her features were delicate and fair, nervousness flickering in her emerald eyes, along with an inexplicable determination.

Around the girl's slender neck hung a necklace that seemed utterly out of place for someone of her status.

The silver chain was as fine as silk, and its pendant was a dark-blue crystal,