Page 3 of The Amber Sunburst

He should focus on surviving first and foremost, but he lets the pillars draw him closer instead. Because there’s something about them. They’re off. Or perhaps not off. Too not off.

He isn’t making any sense. He is cognizant enough to realize that.

As he closes the distance, the hairs on his arms rise, and his eyes dry up. A quiet buzz that sounds impossibly mechanical fills the air.

The effects of the columns on his body set his internal alarms screeching, but his brother has always said that trouble is like a siren song to him. Alexander can’t help but agree as he lays a palm flat against the cool marble.

A jolt of electricity shoots through him, and he jumps backward. But rather than wonder how this random coast has electricity when every remaining country on the globe has been steam-powered since the Fall, he makes the terrible, ill-advised, dangerous decision to storm through two of the crumbling pillars.

A gentler static travels up his arms, through his body, and back again, making his hairs stand even more on end than they were before.

Then, for a moment, Alexander is sure that he really has died.

All of the muscles in his body relax without him telling them to, and every color on the spectrum flashes before his eyes all at once. The silence is so absolute it’s screaming in his ears.

He doesn’t know whether he feels overwhelmed, horrified, or peaceful, but he’s tempted to stay and find out.

That is, before the lights sharpen and the silence turns into an all-consuming shriek and everything in him tenses until…

“Mom, can we go to⁠—”

“Academy-patented tablets for all of the news you⁠—”

“And then he said to me⁠—”

“Odysseus, get your ass back inside before I⁠—”

“I’ve already started planning my watch party for the Trials⁠—”

He is surrounded by people bustling about on cobblestone city streets.

Streets that he sees, right in front of him. Streets that he wasn’t seeing just moments ago when he was facing the same direction.

His eyes go so wide he’s surprised they don’t just pop out of his head.

“What the actual fu⁠—”

A lady swiftly passing by knocks him on the shoulder. “Sorry, love,” she calls behind her.

He’s going insane. Was he, or was he not just on a beach alone?

But that couldn’t be, because now clothes brush against him. Shopkeepers in stalls up and down rough streets yell about their wares. Bright colors assault his sea-tired eyes.

This is a city, a big one at that. One that appeared out of nowhere, as cities do not tend to do. So…

So, he’s seeing things, and he cannot entertain it any longer. The beach is real. His fear is real. He needs to get out of here.

He twists his head around and back to the sea, where the crumbling pillars, once lonesome towers on a desolate wasteland, are now polished columns connected by ropes.

He rushes toward them, but the buzzing in the air around them is so intense that he has to grit his teeth. Their electricity feels malicious now—like it might do worse than just shock him.

And that’s not the only problem, he realizes when he looks down. Hundreds of feet of sheer drop separate him from the sea. He can’t even hear the waves anymore.

Teleportation versus hallucination feels like the most pressing question to answer, but does he even care? This could be the heaven his mother and brother and his whole country believe in—that he believes in too, when he lets himself. But as far as he’s concerned right now, it doesn’t matter. Because no matter what or where or how, he is still staring at the ocean from high above.

And at least the threat of starvation is something he can understand. But this? He’s never been further from understanding anything before.

The only thing he is certain of is that wherever he is, it’s not one of the Six Survivors—the countries that formed across the five remaining continents after the Fall of Nations. None of them have ever looked like the city behind him. Not prior to the Fall, and certainly not after.