I sucked in a breath as I kept my eyes shut, energy and static coursing through my veins with an overwhelming power that made my knees weak. My lungs felt like they were burning as I choked, feeling my arms shiver. I could feel my meraki shocking me away from its core.

My fingers were reaching out towards its ball of electricity, only receiving in return white-hot pains that made my entire body shudder. I grimaced, pulling my inner consciousness back to nurse my burns before daring to journey back deeper to the fire inside. It was resisting me with annoyance, and I knew it had a far more power that it hadn't unleashed yet to shove me further away.

"You're trying to force it." Secta's voice hummed, close yet distance with an odd echo. It seemed as though I were in a deep cave inside myself, his words echoing through the vast caverns and downward miles on end. The noise reverberated through my consciousness, my meraki then emitting a small spark that made my hand snap back.

I was cloaked in darkness, the only source of light being my meraki bubbling like the sun. I couldn't look directly into its vibrant aura nor could I stare too intently into the nothingness. The longer I gazed into the dark, the more I believed I could see different shapes protruding from the murky shadow and jagged lines dancing like ripples on the black sea.

It was like a cave, but it wasn't all the same. Figures were all around me, but my eyes were blind to everything except my meraki's overwhelming and obnoxious light. It demanded my attention, forcing me to stare into it knowing fully well that it would scar my eyes. It wanted me to touch it even if it knew I would be burned. 

I couldn't look anywhere too long, turning back and forth from dark to light as my head started to pound with the twirling. My stomach was stitching itself together with the sudden surge of nausea that nearly made me double over.

Something gripped my shoulder, making me suck in a breath of surprise as fingers held me steady. I'd been swaying, disoriented from the swirling universe I was floating in, the world deep inside my core.

I knew it was Secta from the tingling that ran through my body, and at the same time I could barely feel his touch as though he were touching an outer layer that wrapped around me like a cocoon. It was as though a thick barrier of ice were between us, but his heat still managed to radiate through.

Even with his fingers grazing against the upper crust of my being, I felt as though I could feel his movements, breath in with each of his inhales, listen to the rhythm of his heart against my own, and see the colors of emotion run through his mind. 

His thoughts were printed before me, the paper a sunset of hues that leapt all about with the fluctuation of his feelings. They were dynamic like dancers, morphing into one another or jutting out dangerously alone in a rainbow of prismatic color.

It was beautiful; even his emotions created art in their tango.

But they were hazy, blurred through a thickening mist of darkness that made them inscrutable past their brilliance. I couldn't decipher them and when he drew his hand away the next moment, his presence was gone.

The colors died away and left me in the harsh ying yang of fire and ice that my meraki tormented me with, seeming pleased now to have my fully attention. It seemed to rebuke me: 'beauty should not come from only outward adornment.'

I bit my lip, struggling more and more as I tried to fight my way in. It was as though I were walking into a violent sandstorm, blind and helpless against the powerful winds that struck me before knocking me to the ground. I'd come a step forward before being hit with another gust of energy sent me spiraling back three steps over and over again. It wasn't listening to me!

The sandstorm died away as a deep, rich voice echoed above the silence so great and noble that it could only be compared to that of a golden velvet. It spoke, 'be gone.'

It was a voice like none I'd ever heard before, a sound unlike a true voice but just as distinct as Secta's or my own inside my head. The ringing sensation that it produced was the final crack to any foundation I'd made, and now I was falling into darkness away from my meraki's source of light.

I was wrenched from my core, my skin on being ripped apart by sandpaper with a scream sounding from my lips. I felt myself sink, floating on a breeze as weightless as air before my body came to a halt.

I was in a place I'd never been before, familiar in a haunting way but distinctly not myself. I couldn't describe how I knew it didn't belong to me, but wherever I stood now in the pitch black was a place far off from where my meraki had once sizzled.

It was cold and musky around me now, the entire field of view having a grey hue with a sort of wetness one could feel in the atmosphere. I felt as though I was in a swamp, but there were no trees, no signs of water, and no ground underneath me to prove my hypothesis. Whatever the place, it sung with a certain dreariness, with a roughness that bore nothing fond or tender.

There was light before me, a weak glow similar to that of sunlight past the grayness I realized. It was as though the world before me rested on the other side of a sable veil. I watched the fabric ripple against the breeze that blew from the other side.

What would happen if I reached out and touched it? If I split it and walked through? Could I break it alone and feel the sunlight on my skin?

A sound made my ears prick as I gazed into the veil, a resounding click slipping through the air. It rolled over my skin, leaving goosebumps. Its volume was increasing, now an echo bursting forward as I realized that it wasn't a click but a span of abrupt hisses.

The words were muffled, a distance off but growing closer as they became more clear with each passing moment. Other noises were resounding off thick walls, scrapping shrieks and sizzling pops that made me wince.

"Gideon." It was the only word that I could make out through the veil, a tone that sounded less than kind. I jumped in surprise, movement of long shadows on the other side near the sunlight alerting me to arrival of a new figure.

The voice wasn't my meraki's, too gruff and worn to be the warm jingle of my power. More shadows jumped across the veil as I held my breath, meeting a pair of astonishing purple eyes through the darkness.

"Hello?" I called, rubbing my eyes to make sure what I saw was truly real. "Where am I?"

"Gideon. Gideon. Wilona. Gideon. Gideon." It chanted, sharp with a snap that made the hair rise on the back of my neck. The sunlight started to die away as the eyes grew larger, coming in closer to the veil as it continued to repeat the names until I thought my ears would bleed.

Before the being could reach me, a warm breeze of soothing air made the entire world bled away around me. The cave was blown back as I found myself flying upward in a tunnel of wind that nearly lulled me to sleep.

When I blinked again, it wasn't a pair of purple eyes that I saw, but a familiar set of golden ones as Secta kneeled in front of me. His hand was on my forehead as I glanced around the training room. "What happened, Kate? Explain to me what went wrong."

I coughed, rubbing my nose. My fingers were speckled with blood when I pulled it back, making my eyes widen. A nosebleed? 

"Kate?" My eyes snapped up to meet Secta, who watched me with a stern face. "What happened? How do you feel? Are you hurt?"

"I couldn't touch it." I said softly. "It told me to leave and I was forced out."

"It forced you out?"

"It told me to leave and then I was gone." I bit my lip, wrinkling my eyebrows as I tried to think. "Do you know a Wilona or a Gideon?"

He narrowed his eyes. "I don't. Kate, why..."

"Is there a veil in the Hall of Serpents, Secta? I saw a black veil that looked like it led to outside. If there isn't, then I might have accidentally gone somewhere, just like I did with Matilda." I let out a breath. "There was someone else there who kept repeating those two names. That has to mean something, right?"

"Winona and Gideon?"

"Wilona." I corrected, rubbing more blood from my face. "Is there a black veil in the Hall of Serpents?"

He drew in a breath. "I never witnessed one." His words made my heart sink. Where the hell did I go? "What do you mean by this veil?"

"It was just a huge veil that separated me from what looked like a different place in the world. All I could see was sunlight before something with wide, purple eyes approached me. It didn't look menacing, but I didn't like wherever I was. It felt cold and soggy."

"Did you see this veil when you visited your sister?" I shook my head no in reply. "I don't know if you did travel elsewhere, Kate. It could have perhaps been a vision or a warning, one that you need to be on the watch for. Let me deliberate on it another evening. Your meraki, do tell as I am of better service to you in this discipline."

I bit my lip, more eager to discuss the second encounter with the violet-eyed being. None of my experiences with meraki had shown me anything quite like the veil, and I was anxious to discover what part of the universe I had unlocked.

But it would have to wait.

"It was fighting me when I tried to touch it, a powerful storm that blew me backwards. I could see the shapes and colors of your emotion inside my head when you touched me, and my meraki spoke before ejecting me into the second reality. It said that beauty wasn't in the outer appearance."

Secta drummed his fingers against his lips before standing up straight from his crouched position beside me. "It is trying to communicate with you, to tell you something about itself that you are overlooking or an element of its being that you have to discover in order to bond with it. Pay attention to what it says to you, Kate. It wants you to adapt to its power and to harness it, but whatever you're doing, you aren't walking into its powers with grace or else you would be wielding it by now."

I drummed my fingers against the floor. "Love it with grace? Accept it? I've been trying so long, Secta."

"And you must not give up either." He replied with force. "You need to figure out what is holding you back, Kate, or else your meraki will get the better of you. Worse, a dark merakian might figure you out before even you can do so yourself."

We both knew which dark sorceress brewed in his mind as he clenched his hands into fists.

"We will be meeting again very soon, and you need to rake your mind for shortcomings." He said. "Ask Finn or Cybele to take you to the Sanctuary if you wish to truly have your mind be enlightened."

"The Sanctuary?"

"It is the temple to the Goddess Fate past the forest." Secta responded. "She is all knowing, and if you are devout enough, perhaps she will bestow upon you the wisdom you lack. Read the texts and soak in the air. I believe that it is always clearer inside the gates, and you might find answers. Meraki and Fate go hand in hand; I believe Fate might be holding you back herself, and that itself requires a conversation."