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When she wakes up, she is scared. She is looking at corners, staring into the shadows, watching for eyes creeping in the dark with claws and teeth larger than life, larger than death. Aiming to swallow her whole. Made to tear, gnash, eviscerate. Bleed her out and cut and dice her into bite-sized slices.
And then she remembers, a yell held in her throat but a grief so wide it drowns her in its expanse. She remembers—remembers—and remembers.
There is a bed—a familiar one—that she is lying on, her blanket thrown off and messed from frenzied panic and silent thrashing. Colors a teenage girl would have in her bedroom, little trinkets and tools and things she distantly recalled using. Patterns she once thought comforting, pleasing. Things she had decided for herself.
A life she had no choice but to throw away when she picked up that Amulet under that bridge. A life that ended when she chose to go back, because. Because. Because—
A boy she only just started to get to know, body broken and bleeding and crushed because he saved her, because he pushed her out of the way, but she was the one with the armor, the one meant to hunt, meant to protect, and he took her place.
Tobias Domzalski dies at approximately 7:20 PM on the 20th of July, 2020—
Claire Maria Nuñez takes a breath at around 6:30 AM on the 23rd of December, 2017, a glowing, ghostly green copy of the Amulet rebuilt by an alien prince held in her hand. As if in a deathgrip. Rusted yet brand new, ticking and counting down to something she can neither see nor comprehend.
She all but slams through her bedroom door, leaps down her stairs, and rushes past her parents—her parents are here, alive, breathing, eyes not tired but lively, jovial, happy—her baby brother (not him, not the one that wasn’t Enrique, not her other brother of another species and another lifetime), then out her door, grabs her bike.
Uncaring of the fact that she forgot her helmet (she has driven and walked and fallen through swathes of monsters stretches of dead land fields of corpses what does it matter), Claire cycles, legs pumping, mind basking in the feeling of wind rushing past her, remembering what it was like to be younger. Remembering that this all but becomes dust. Remembering that this is something worth protecting.
Remembering why she came back. Remembering, remembering, her purpose, the destiny she is running to, hands outstretched and trying to pull that boy with her, wishing that he hadn’t taken her place, hoping in the infinity of a single moment that he just stayed away, that he wasn’t a part of this—
Claire only vaguely feels herself there, only vaguely is aware of the fact that she is several years in the past, that she has traveled through time, standing in front of Toby Domzalski’s front doorstep.
Distantly wondering if she should even be here, if she should be trying to confirm that this is all real, that the boy she couldn’t save is alive. Hand numbly moving to that doorknob, ears hearing the sounds of shuffling and footsteps inside. Feeling the warmth of this home.
But she just had to see. Had to know. Had to talk to him, had to hold those hands and make sure they were still alive and not cold cold cold—
And that’s when the shadows catch up to her. When she wasn’t looking—when she wasn’t being scared.
Claire tries to wrench her wrist away, but it’s too late. Darkness manifests in the periphery of her vision, a single hand instantly gripping her, stopping her—Claire opens her mouth to scream, to stun her attacker—
“It’s me, Claire,” says the voice of Jim Lake Jr., eyes blue and hair not white and young. Blue jacket, white (not red?) undershirt, pupils boring into her. Her panic fades. Her terror abates.
Shadow magic, fading away. Shadow magic he used to appear here. Shadow magic he shouldn’t know… yet.
“Jim,” Claire starts, disbelief and surprise and relief, palpitable in that singular syllable. Then confused. Then worried. “H-how—it was me. It could only have been me.”
And Jim—takes out an Amulet, just like hers. Ticking down to something he can neither see nor comprehend. She stares, and he gently pulls her away.
Into shadows, then into an old, abandoned playground. The magical smoke clears, and he lets her go, stopping to stand by a broken swingset. He looks at it with nostalgia, then grief, then a burning agony.
When Claire looks into his eyes, when Jim says nothing but aligns their Amulets to face each other, she knows, in an instant, what he’s been through. What it all means.
A mark of a traveler. The mark of someone looking for something, trapped in a maze they all but threw themselves into. Not willing to back out, not willing to leave.
Jim explains everything. Claire tells him her story in return.
Tobias Domzalski wakes up at approximately 7:00 AM, in his own home, his own bedroom, remembering nothing important at all. Nothing but the fragile memory of a tune he thinks he heard in a dream. A song sung for him.
When Claire finds out Toby Domzalski has died, always died, for someone, for the world—has always been the last second savior—she wonders if, maybe, there is no point. If she should have continued past that moment, walked past her grief and instead turned it solid, turned it into the foundation of a new world. A world that that boy saved.
She tells Jim just as much. He smiles back, and she knows he’s thought the same thing. Knows that he can tell her what he’s decided on. What Claire will end up choosing, too.
That if there’s even a chance to not live with that pain, to let tragedy not be their fate, then they will take it. Locking themselves in, down this weary, soul-breaking road.
So Jim Lake Jr. shows her the art of darkness, of emotions, of a different type of magic. Of a path she had once taken lifetimes ago—that she would always take, if given any other way.
“But you can do it. Why teach me?” she asks him, sat down at a creek in the middle of the forest. A place she and him had once woken up in, in a different skin, in a different body. Rock and dysphoria. Confusion and loneliness encircling them both. It’s not so different now.
He sits across from her, body so unnaturally relaxed and in control she wonders how old he really is. Sparks of purple appear at his fingertips. Pulsing, bright. “Because you were always better than me. Even when I learned how—when I took the Shadowstaff instead of you, and Douxie gave me the instructions he once gave to you in my first life—I knew I could never be as good as you.”
“Oh,” she says, thoughtlessly. She brings up her Amulet—the one that refuses the incantation she had given it to summon her armor. Its only purpose to go back when the time comes, ticking and humming and playing a song Jim tells her is a song from time itself. An orchestration so undefinable and undefiable he learned to breathe to its rhythm.
And she knows he has one of his own, too, in a back pocket or somewhere in his jacket. Much older than hers. So much older. One that has seen and been to a dozen times and worlds.
Claire Maria Nuñez puts her hands together, and wills darkness to pool in her grasp, in the cup of her palms. And because Jim Lake Jr. believes, and because Claire Maria Nuñez needs it, and because there is a grief in the air bigger than them both, shadows gather and drop like mist. Like water.
Like magic, hers, untamed and wild and neverending. But never enough.
The story is as follows:
This tragedy is theirs. It is not Romeo and Juliet, two lovers so foolishly killing themselves in the name of each other, unable to live a life without the other. Tobias Domzalski is no Juliet, no pale rose that needed to be loved and sought for. He is not Atlas, holding up the world. He is not Eurydice, being dragged back into hell.
Tobias Domzalski is but a boy, with a fate older than kingdoms but a name newer than death. A new myth, maybe, if you were bold, terrible, insane. A boy who loves his friends so much he’d be a hypocrite and let the world crash on him instead, in their place. Who would let himself be crushed under falling corpses, falling rubble, falling grief. An inevitability.
He is the star of the last act. He is the one that makes the audience silent. He is the one that needs no lines to catch the heart of the theater.
Claire learns all of this, going through the motions of her old life in another role—the role she was, apparently, meant to bear. Darkness gliding through her hands as she throws bolt after bolt and lets it drag her through dimensions to fall and land somewhere else. Moves to the tune of time but tries to dance on her own, compose something else, break the rhythm and change destiny. Forge a new fate.
Bular the Butcher raises his blades in his own final act, and Jim Lake Jr.—does not slam Daylight into his gut. Instead, Bular’s arm falls, and Tobias Domzalski traps him under the weight of the world, a ceiling crashing down on him and a hammer to keep him on that broken ground.
A bridge, left closed, to be opened some other time, to let armies spill out into the Earth when the script calls for it. A scholar raising his fists in victory, with a warrior and a veteran cheering in tandem. Spies and traitors and victims with their hands wrapped behind them, to be judged another day for their sins and their redemptions.
Claire Maria Nuñez learns this: You do not need a sword to win. You do not need a villain to lose.
Your fate is your own, and that is why tragedy is almost unavoidable. That is why when Jim grasps the Amulet of Daylight—blue, not green, unlike the ones resting in their backpockets, hidden away from the world until that moment comes—rips it free from the stone corpse of NotEnrique, he looks to her and says sorry.
She can only look blankly at the remnants of their battle, and wonder why she feels nothing but a grim conviction to keep on going until it’s time to go back.
Who and what is Tobias Domzalski to Claire Maria Nuñez?
He is part of a pair. He is the warm, glowing sun that stands at Jim’s side and waits for his time on the stage, waits to be called. He is a boy who is content about his station in life. He is a man who tirelessly smiles when no one else can. He is the lines you write in reply to the vast monologues. He is the laughter of the audience. He is the reason you roll your eyes and can’t help but smile. He is the one you can rely on to make you laugh when you are exhausted with the world.
He is a new constant—a new movement. There is a personal gravity to him and a vibrancy that orbits his entire being. Time sings for him, to him, holds him close and watches his every move. As if waiting for his moment. For Kairos to pull him on stage and throw down his sword, thrust towards the sky and play his role. To define him by a single moment.
Tobias Domzalski is also her friend. He annoys her with the names of minerals and crystals that make up Trollmarket. He grabs her hand and drags her to whatever he thinks is new, something fun. He calls her names and tells her she’s pretty in the same breath. He brings her presents and helps her learn to get up on a bad day. He sits there and listens to her long rambles about fashion, about poetry, of old stories and mythos.
He is the one that she and Jim dance in tandem with, blind and deaf as he is to it all. He is the one that makes the world just a little brighter at the end of the day, makes life not seem so grim.
So she knows, just a little, just a drop compared to Jim, why he loves him so much. Why anyone would turn back the world for him, for a single boy, a single man, a single collection of right moments. If you could keep a promise you once made and never let it be broken—
Claire Maria Nuñez can see why anyone would break the world in half for him. If it meant having him, if it meant saving everyone you know and loved and make it all seem worth it, then—of course.
That makes sense, doesn’t it?
There are stars and then there is this. Galaxies swirling lazily above her, dizzying in their scope and their variety. Colors filling her eyes. A horizon that never ends. Shadows inbetween everything, inbetween her hands and his.
She tightens her grasp on Jim’s, and he grips back. Comforted by that familiarity. Comforted by the fact that she is not alone—and she can tell Jim is, too. Finally finding someone to share this burden with.
Claire nestles her body, lying on this field of green, the night sky glowing above them, on a mountain somewhere far away, and rests her head on his shoulder.
Wondering if the darkness she walks into day-by-day, the darkness she no longer fears, is the same space between cosmic bodies. If she has become something cosmic all on her own—lost to time and space and the shapes and lines that make up all of it, yet belonging to it all the same.
Time sings, and Claire learns to fall asleep to the melody.
But you must always wake up eventually.
Claire Maria Nuñez takes a breath at around 6:30 AM on the 23rd of December, 2017, a glowing, ghostly green copy of the Amulet rebuilt by an alien prince held in her hand.
Terror and despair swirls in the back of her mind. Hoping this won’t be the same sight and the same sensations that greet her, every single time. But she knows—knows that this is how it ends, how it begins.
That Tobias Domzalski will always choose to die. Will always never think, but become—will always be there at the end.
An orchestra hums, and Claire throws herself sideways through the world, through the spaces between cosmic bodies, and lands in front of a doorstep.
Wondering. Waiting. Feeling the sun on her skin, looking at the shadows around her and knowing they are hers. Hearing the sound of shuffling and footsteps inside that home, where that boy waits for her, for Jim, lying in bed, asleep. Safe. Alive.
Claire closes her eyes, and thinks: the story is as follows. Jim Lake Jr. and Tobias Domzalski are there at the start, and will always be there at the end, for each other, with each other. She is the third party. She has become part of the narrative, the fundamental tragedy that makes up their new life, this new cycle she is now a part of. She has walked into it and now it owns her just as much as she owns it.
She wonders, even as Jim silently appears beside her, hand sliding into her grasp, if there was ever a point she could have just walked away.
The answer is simple. But it is too hard to bear. Too difficult to want to know, to listen to.
So she doesn’t. She puts her arm around Jim’s waist, and waits to hear the ding of an Amulet falling far away, below a bridge. Waiting for the story to begin anew.