Chapter 9: The Gemini Cage

Chapter 9: The Gemini Cage

The choice Liora had laid before him—his sister’s life versus a potential apocalypse—was a weight designed to crush a man. But as Elio stood in the decaying drawing room, the phantom taste of Leo the guitarist’s erased soul still lingering in his mind, he found a strange clarity. The choice was an illusion. There was no world worth saving that allowed his sister to be consumed. There was no peace to be found in upholding a cycle of torture. Liora could debate the philosophy of it; he only knew he had to get his sister back. The rest was just noise.

“Send me back,” he said, his voice hard as iron. “Now.”

Liora studied him, a flicker of something unreadable in her ancient eyes—respect, perhaps, or merely satisfaction that her chosen tool was proving sharp enough. “The path will be clearer this time. Your resonance is stronger. Do not be distracted by the ghosts of the past. They are echoes, nothing more. Follow her light. And try not to die. It would be a tedious inconvenience.”

He didn't grace her with a response. He closed his eyes, sinking back into the cold velvet of the armchair. This time, there was no hesitation. He didn't grope for his anger; he summoned it. The white-hot spear of protective fury formed in his core, familiar now, a weapon he was learning to wield. He envisioned Sarah’s light, the only true thing in a world of lies and shadows, and pushed.

The transition was sharp and clean, a swift, silent dive into the roiling grey sea of the astral plane. He bypassed the lower levels, the haunted architecture of the mansion, and the hungry, amoebic entities that fed on psychic scraps. He was an arrow, fired with singular intent, his rage the engine and his love the compass, just as Liora had taught him.

He moved through the disorienting void, the formless mist parting before him. He flew past crystalline spheres of memory, fragments of other lives offered to the Cycle, ignoring their siren song of forgotten hopes and fears. He saw the psychic tripwires Liora had laid—visions of his past failures, his infidelities, his moments of cowardice—but they had no purchase on him now. They were yesterday’s ghosts, and his war was today.

Then he saw it. And his astral heart broke.

It was Sarah’s light, but it was no longer a distant, flickering candle. He was upon it. And it was trapped.

It was a cage, but not of iron or steel. It was a latticework of shimmering, obsidian energy, constructed from pure darkness. It pulsed with a malevolent, anti-light, and at the twin vertices where the bars met, milky-white eyes opened and closed like cosmic wounds. The Gemini Cage. It was a living prison, built by The Echoes themselves.

Inside, Sarah’s essence burned. It was smaller now, dimmer than he remembered, flickering erratically like a flame in a gale. He could see the shadowy tendrils he had witnessed in his first vision, dozens of them now, latched onto her light, patiently and relentlessly siphoning her away. He could feel her essence being drained—not just her life force, but her very self. He felt a flicker of a memory—of her learning to ride a bike, of the proud look on her face—being pulled from her and consumed. They were devouring her past.

Rage, absolute and volcanic, threatened to overwhelm his control. He fought it down, focusing it. He drifted closer, his own light a furious, protective star.

Sarah? he projected, pushing his thought into the cage, a desperate whisper against a hurricane. Sarah, can you hear me? It's Elio.

For a moment, there was nothing but the silent, hungry pulse of the cage. Then, a flicker. A thought, so faint it was almost lost in the void.

…Elio? Is that… is that really you? It’s so cold.

Her voice in his mind was thin and frayed, laced with a profound, soul-deep confusion. Relief washed over him so powerfully it almost destabilized his form. She was still there. She was still her.

I’m here, Sarah. I’m going to get you out.

I… I don’t know where ‘here’ is, she thought back, her light wavering. I was… I saw a light. I thought… Her thought trailed off, colored with shame and sorrow.

What did you see? Elio pressed, needing to know.

It looked like Dad, she whispered into his mind, the memory piercing him with a shard of shared grief. After he died… sometimes I would feel him. Just a feeling. But this was… brighter. He was calling to me. He said he was proud of me. He said he was waiting for me. I just… I wanted to see him again so badly. I followed the light… and then… this.

The sheer, calculated cruelty of it struck Elio dumb. They hadn't just used some generic lure. They had reached into her soul, found her deepest wound, her most desperate yearning, and fashioned it into a hook. They had worn the face of their dead father to lead her to the slaughter.

His fury at Liora was nothing compared to the cosmic hatred he felt for these things.

His presence, his focused rage and connection to their meal, had not gone unnoticed. The two entities that were the cage itself began to coalesce, drawing their substance from the surrounding void. Their tall, slender forms solidified on either side of the cage, their featureless faces turning toward him, their milky-white eyes glowing with cold, ancient intelligence.

They were no longer just feeding. They were defending their property.

The Beacon, they whispered in unison, the sound a thousand scraping knives inside his head. It has come to interfere. A foolishness born of sentiment.

One of them raised a long, shadowy arm. The darkness of its hand deepened, congealing into a spear of pure void. It hurled the weapon at him.

Elio reacted on instinct, drawing on the memory of his first lesson. He didn't try to dodge. He pulled his rage inward and then exploded it outward, forming a shield of incandescent white light just in front of his astral form. The spear of darkness hit the shield and disintegrated with a silent, jarring impact that sent psychic shockwaves rippling through the void.

He had blocked it. He had actually blocked it.

It has learned a new trick, the second Echo observed, its tone devoid of emotion. The flavor of its defiance is… interesting.

They attacked in unison. Tendrils of shadow erupted from their forms, lashing out at him from all directions. It wasn't a physical assault; they were trying to latch onto him, to drain him, to unmake him as they were unmaking his sister. He was a second course, arriving before the first was even finished.

He fought back with everything he had. He abandoned the static shield and forged his rage into a sword of pure, white-hot energy. He spun and slashed, severing the shadowy tendrils as they came for him. Each cut was a monumental effort, sending jolts of feedback through his astral body. He was a single frantic light battling an encroaching, infinite night.

He could hold them off. He could parry their attacks. But he was fighting a defensive war on their turf. He was losing energy with every desperate blow, while they were connected to the endless, feeding darkness of the plane itself. He glanced at the cage. Sarah’s light flickered, weakening with every passing moment.

He couldn't break the cage and fight them at the same time. He was a guard standing outside a burning house, fighting off the arsonists while the person he loved was consumed by the flames within. He was failing. And he was running out of time.