Cas' Memories

It feels like waking up from a hazy dream.

None of it was real. It couldn’t have been. The depths, the Watcher, the trials, Parrin’s prison and the strange shadow within, it was all just one long, terrible nightmare.

But something has changed. The tall trees whisper soft things to each other, the ocean far below splashing as it crashes into the cliff, all just as it was the day they leapt into Abisis. But something about the air feels different and wrong, polluted somehow, stained.

It’s not that, though. It’s her.

She takes a few shaky steps into the copse, eyes lifting to the sunset colours blooming above. I don’t feel like myself.

She’s not the same person as when she left. If that was all a dream, then her dream self has taken her place.

But it wasn’t a dream, not even a nightmare. They all have a few new scars inside and out. The trinkets they collected are still here, and two glowing blue eyes poke out of Kadoren’s pack. Tiny markers of reality, the only proof that it really happened.

The world is changing. But they’ve changed too.

This time, it really is over. There’s no telling what the future holds. But they’ll never have to go back there again.

Aimlessly she lets the others lead her down the winding hill and into the new world. She’s not the same as she was. But maybe that’s a good thing. She hasn’t decided yet.