Chapter 36

(Trains POV)

After the boat exploded we all managed to get off safely, but we were blasted in different directions, I saved three of them, but I couldn't find Cat. They all start to cat their breaths. "You guys doing okay down there?"

The blond girl sits up on her forearm a bit and coughs out the rest of the salt water out of her lungs. "Where are we?"

"We're on Kraken Island." I explain.

"Where is everyone else?" She gets to her feet and dusts the sand off of her.

"I don't know…" I'm sure Ara is fine. I grin. She is a lot stronger than I giver her credit for. I open my eyes and begun to remember who she was standing next to. My smile slowly fades, and my eye twitched. "If he knows better, he needs to stay away." I say through gritted teeth. "McDougall…"

(Ara's POV)

I wash up on shore choking on the salt of the sea. I take a deep breath of fresh air and compose myself. My vision begins to clear, and no one is around. "Hello?" I cough and stand up. "Where the hell is everyone?" I muttered, and a thought crosses my mind, the entirety of me being here, I am truly alone. I can't really count when Train ran off because of Kevin, but I was truly alone.

I struggle to keep my balance on the shore of the Island and cross my arms holding myself close. I can do this… I think. I've been through worse when I lived in my own world, with that evil women… I shake my head trying to forget.

The memories begin to return, of a world I once knew, the emptiness I felt, the darkness. I had my sister, but even then, we were always separated by her. My face scrunched up at the thought of that place, but then it softens.

My sister, I wonder how her life turned out, I almost forgot about her. My hand was fading, and I begin to panic. What's going on? Before I knew it, I had become transparent. A light wrapped around me, and my vision blurred.

"What happened?" I mutter my vision coming back to me.

"Ara?" My heart stopped. That voice, I recognize it anywhere. I spun around on the balls of my feet and I wasn't on the island anymore, but a room, and she stood in the center of the small space.

"Cora?" I managed to squeak out. I tried to rub my eyes squinting through my blurred vision, my head so light from the adrenaline, and from the sudden flash.

"It really is you, I thought you died all those years ago…" She took a precarious step toward me to wrap her arms around me and fell through me.

"I'm still transparent…" I whispered and shake my head. "Cora are you safe, maybe I can finally get you out of our prison." I say, and she smirks. I tried to keep my voice low just in case our fake caregiver would overhear me, but Cora clicked her tongue against her teeth.

"She's dead." Something in the way she said that was just so off, my mind still fuzzy from all that has happened in such a short time. She had no remorse in her voice. "She died the day you did." I look at her, she was so calm, so…. still.

"Cora…. I…" I breathed.

"You don't have to explain, you were never about the work." Work? I lifted my eyebrow at her and she was still so stiff. Thinking back to a time once forgotten, she was never about the work either. What was she talking about?

"So, what happened to you." I say between breaths, my heart racing, and my head pounding. There is no way I can be back here. All those years ago when I last spoke to her on the phone, she said I had passed away. I just accepted that maybe I was living an afterlife, but this changed everything I knew. Her aura changed, and I felt panic course through my body.

"What do you mean… I've always been like this, you should know unless you forgot about me completely." She chuckles. "Because I never forgot about you, not once, you were my motive, my inspiration, my Muse!" Her chuckle began to sound more manically. "It was her fault you died." She screamed her eyes getting intense.

"What did you do?" I took a step back and she stepped closer to me. Her anger was pouring out of every inch of her body.

"I did what I had to do to survive…" She grins again, and fear ruptures down my spine. Cora was always about glam and the party aspect of our job. She was never a killer.

"I'm so sorry." I feel my eyes begin to swell, tears forming but they don't run down my face, I take a breath to compose myself, and Cora's body contorted. I couldn't believe what I was looking at, hearing a snap and crackles of her unkempt body. Hair fell over her face, and she began to shake a bit.

"You left me! You left me to die… You self-centered bitch!" She screams lunging an advance once more, this time she was able to pull me headfirst, and she swung me across her body and I hit the wall hard, the wind knocked out of me.

That's right, in this world I am much weaker than the world I've become accustomed to. My memory of the first time I landed in his world, I was much stronger, faster, and my pain tolerance was much higher, to nonexistent. Here… it's as if nothing ever changed. Her eyes widen, and she began to cross the floor to reach me. "You're alive?"

"Huh?" her hands began to shake when she slowly lifted them up, reaching outwards and towards me. Her body was still shaking, and her face warped, unfathomable, unrecognizable.

"You're real, not an illusion in my mind." A tear rolled down her face and anger once again took over. "I am stained crimson with the shame you brought to me!" I am so confused. What the heck is even going on with her.

Her outreached hands moved to the side of her face and she began to scream. "My Queen what's going on, are you having another episode?" A mans voice calls from behind the door.

My Queen? For some reason something about that triggered a reaction in me and my heart began to tug in pain, like the very first time I met Train. My body was on fire, and I can start to see a glow around me, like right before I left the island. I was starting to fade become transparent like before. I wonder what triggered this in the first place or how I even got back. I scream out in pain holding myself close. Cora lifted her head, her pupils getting smaller.

"NO! You're not leaving me again!" The door flung forward and she sprung at me. Just like before, there was a flash of intense light, then darkness consumed me. I withered away.