Silence echoed loud in the room.

  Gray thunderclouds rolled into the skies of Azbeth. Ares kept his gaze steady on Athena. Questions bloomed like ink in Athena’s mind. Lightning cracked–somewhere in the distance, and thunder boomed a while after it. As the moonlight was taken aback by the vicious storm.

  Athena’s voice was low as the hum of the rain. “What did you see?”

  Ares wiped the sweat from his temples, his icy blue eyes shaking as they met the floor. “T-thats the thing, I don’t know.”

  Athena stood, wobbly. Her voice still held the low tone. “Hubris?A Sin?”

  Ares shook his head. His hand was shaky on the collar of his hospital-gown, revealing the burn marks. “No–I-maybe? It didn’t look like a Sin, or Hubris. It was someone who looked like a blacksmith. He took this giant hammer–fresh from the furnace– and began to attack me with it, giving me the burn marks.”

  Athena froze as she continued to listen. “-And he said, Now we’re welded together keep your eyes open,”

  Suddenly a sharp pain hit Athena’s back. She fell to her knees, her hands hugged her back. Her skin pulsed, with black blood. Something under her skin moved–like a gear in a clock was shifting.

  Her veins felt frozen, like instead of blood she had knives in her veins. Athena stood again, her body throbbed with pain.

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  “Something similar happened to me..” She looked away, to outside the window.

  Ares met Athena’s gaze outside the window, before Athena addressed him again. “So what happened now?”Ares looked up at her, his icy eyes became filled with fear. “There-there was this girl. She looked maybe about five. She came up to me, before her arms were tied by thin orange strings and she was pulled into the darkness.” He stood, hovering over Athena. “You don’t understand Athena, she looked just like her,”

  Athena stiffened. At the mention of her sister, her body’s pain stopped. “Was it her, though?”

  Ares shrugged, plopping back on his cot. “I didn’t get a good enough look.”

  Athena started pacing back and forth. “So we both met someone. And they both said that we were ‘welded’ to one another now. What does that mean? What do they want with us?And wh-”

  She was interrupted by her brother. “Athena, we can stand here asking questions all day, but without any answers, one question will lead to another. So let's try and sleep, okay?”

  Athena opened her mouth to protest, but nodded. She sat back down on her cot, the pain in her body still gone, and laid down. Sleep enveloped her like a blanket. Athena’s finger twitched, then her hand shook. She stirred, awaking in the black pools again. Instead of Hubris though, there was a little girl. The same one? Athena thought.

  She inched forward, her glassy blue eyes never met Athena’s. Athena took a step forward, and knelt down. The girl finally looked up, her glassy eyes cracked when they saw Athena.

  The girl took a step forward again, and hugged Athena tightly. Athena tensed, before hugging her back tightly too. When they pulled back, Athena raised a hand to hold the girls. But before their hands even touched, they went through one another-yet it still was like there was a greater mass pushing them away from one another. As their hands mixed, their skin turned fully ebony with silver lining. An orange string grabbed Athena’s neck, as one did for the little girl. And it ripped them apart.