Jennie woke up screaming. Agony rushed through her, incessantly, destructively, as if her Vis had been replaced by acid. Her skin burned so hot that it felt cold, like needles pushing against her flesh from the inside, ripping through her muscles and making movement impossible. Beneath the tightened covers of her eyelids, red and black shapes danced, faces arranged from geometric patterns, mocking her, basking in her pain.

    Then, it broke, allowing her senses a moment to breathe, her mind a moment to think of anything but the torture. Jennie curled into a ball by reflex, wishing there was a flat surface beneath her that she could lie on. That’s how it normally was, anyway; this kind of torture often took place in dungeons and basements. Never within the eternal night.

    Jennie opened her eyes. She drifted in an ocean of black clouds. Lines of blood and violet swirled around her, jumping from place to place, surrounding her in a field of electricity. She wiped the moisture from her cheeks (she hated herself for crying, but had never been able to hold back the tears) and allowed her body to slowly relax. Her breath came harshly, on nervous lungs.

    Then, she felt a Presence approach her. The pain had gone, but a new, twisted, feeling - like a psychic sword - ran through her brain. More tears came, and she gritted her teeth. This was the hardest part. The physical torture she could take, but the emotional turmoil that her father inflicted afterwards was hell. Against her will, sick images played out before her. Children dying, innocent mortals being violated and transformed into monsters, a woman with blonde hair (platinum blonde, so blonde that it was almost white) being drowned in the eternal night, pleading for help, hands reaching out, eyes filled with terror and betrayal and sadness-

    “No! Stop! Please! Make it stop, or just kill me!” Jennie shrieked, yanking at the roots of hair.

    Her mind emptied, and her vision returned. The Presence still lurked above and around her, watching calmly. She scanned through her brain, desperate to remind herself of what was real and what wasn’t. She shoved aside the manufactured memories, the ones that were tinted with black slime at the edges. Those were fake, leftover imprints from her punishment…

    She found the image she was looking for: blue irises tucked within almond-shaped eyes, platinum blonde (almost white, it was almost white) strands laying across bare shoulders, face like moonlight on a warm night.

    Jennie’s fingers relaxed, unwinding the clumps of hair from between them. Her knees straightened, body uncoiling, tension releasing.

    She’s okay, Jennie thought, panic slipping away, leaving her for now, Rosie is okay.

    Jennie righted herself, falling easily into the rhythm of beetle-black that surrounded her, and looked up at her dad.

    Here, he manifested as a massive, roiling construct of dripping darkness and shadow-lightning. Bodiless, formless, he appeared as a mass thousands of feet high and hundreds of miles long, rows of violet fire and lightning ignited between the intangible sections of his being. This was how Jennie had always seen him, whether he was in the Astral Plane or the Mortal Plane. She should have been used to it by now, but the sight of him still brought her fear, still made her legs shake and her hands tremor like a human trapped by a pack of Sirdar.

    “You have made an unwise decision, child,” her father said, voice rattling her mind as though it came from within her, “You have aided my enemies.”

    Jennie tried to think of something to say - an explanation, a lie - but couldn’t. There was never any point in lying to her father; he always knew when she wasn’t telling the truth. Lying would just make everything worse. So, she decided to be honest.

    “Mom was in trouble,” Jennie said, trying not to whine, trying not to sound like the scared little girl she was, “I couldn’t just let her die.”

    “That was not your decision to make,” the darkness rumbled, crackling with static as lightning bolts escaped from its depths. Jennie cowered, taking hold of her Vis by reflex. It wouldn’t do her any good at her father, but it brought her a little comfort. “You disobeyed your sister, and in doing so, disobeyed me as well.”

    “I… I’m sorry.” Jennie stammered. There was no denying it; she had long ago been ordered to follow Jisoo’s instructions. Any conflicts between the sisters were resolved by a simple, undeniable rule: Jisoo’s will was synonymous to that of their father’s.

    “I don’t want your apologies, child,” the void said sharply, boring into her mind, “You have shown your true self. Your loyalties do not lie with me any longer.”

    Jennie felt a great pressure folding in around her, like a wind blowing from every direction at once, forcing her limbs up against her body. She gasped, constricted by the invisible fist clutching her. Both types of her Vis flared up around her, a shifting shade of white and purple aura.

    “No! Please, dad! Pl-please don’t!” Jennie begged, squirming. She opened to speak again, but the pressure forced the air from her lungs. She could feel her Vis trying to keep her strong, to resist her father’s power, succeeding only in prolonging her end.

    “I always knew you were a failure,” he said, a sprinkle of sadness settled over his furious tone.

    “Please don’t,” Jennie gasped, growing delirious from the pain and panic, “Please… help… help me, Rosie…”

    For a fraction of a second, the darkness took her. Then, she inhaled freely, released from the pressure, feeling the pleasant tickling sensation of her Vis repairing her body. Organs filled in with new tissue, bones reset and healed, skin woven back together… she was lucky that the eternal night provided her with so much energy.

    Had her father decided to spare her, after all?

    Jennie’s vision cleared, and she found herself staring in the face of a rugged-looking man. Tall, with dark skin and a solid jawline, he had a kind of imperfect handsomeness to him, like a roughly cut statue of stone brought to life. In his hands he held slim-handled daggers, the kind without crossguards. The left dagger was a spotless, clean white, with serrated edges. The right was a deep onyx, barely visible against the eternal night’s backdrop.

    Jennie met the stranger’s eyes, and nearly screamed. Within the voids of those pupils was a field of corpses, an unthinkable number of claimed souls. Despite his appearance, this was obviously no normal man, Representation or mortal.

    “Y-you’re… Death?” Jennie managed to squeak out, cowering. “Where’s my dad?”

    The man chuckled, but his smile faded fast, replaced by a neutral, detached look. Almost like he was bored.

    “Close to it, but not quite. Death is my wife. Well, ex-wife. Kinda. Long story,” he said, shrugging. How could a being this powerful act this… weird? “As for your dad, I made him go away for now. He seemed like kind of a dickhead.”

    “You… you did what?” Jennie asked, disbelieving. She looked around frantically. The eternal night was frozen, clouds stilled, lightning extinguished. The silence she and the stranger stood in was no longer stifling, but empty and comfortable, like the silences between her and Rosie. Blissfully open. No fog of darkness over it, no constant oppression keeping her from thinking clearly.

“How?” she demanded, turning back to him, “You can’t do that, he’s… he’s a god!”

    The stranger gave a large, sloppy grin, a goofy expression that looked out of place on his serious face.

    “He’s no god,” the man said, tossing his daggers from hand to hand, half-juggling them. “I know I said I’m not Death, but I’m close enough to it that old Eodum still knows to fear me.”

    Jennie perked up in fear, holding back a gasp of indignance at the stranger’s audacity. She quickly realized how silly she was being, however; why should Death respect a black hole? Or darkness, or whatever her father had become through years of destruction and conquest.

    The stranger flourished his daggers one final time, allowing them to arc above his head, then catching them by the handles and slipping them into sheaths at his belt.

    “Why did you save me?” Jennie asked.

    “Because you’ve still got things to do.” the stranger said as if it were obvious.

    “Here, on Earth?”

    “No. Where you’re needed is a little far away. Don’t worry, though. I’ll send you somewhere nice, first.” Death reached out and held Jennie by the wrist. His grasp wasn’t rough or inappropriate, but Jennie felt herself wanting to recoil.

    Jennie’s emotions must have been plain on her face, because the stranger offered a smile that was, in a way, reassuring.

    “I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said softly, the ghosts of a past trauma dancing in the creased, tight expression he wore,  “That’s gonna take you some time to get used to, isn’t it?”

Before Jennie could even begin to think of an answer, the eternal night was gone. She fell between the Astral Plane and the Mortal Plane, somehow bypassing the darkness of eternal damnation, came out… somewhere else. An endless globe filled with revolving bodies, celestial objects, and the heart of creation. Universes passed her by, entire lifetimes condensed into tiny pockets. Pasts, presents and futures that she dared not look at, knowing that they would drive her mad.

It was over a second later.

Jennie blinked, then squinted hard against a beam of moonlight. A sky streaked with blue, green, and purple lay above her, stars visible in the spaces where the auroras didn’t touch.

“Jennie?” a warm, accented voice questioned.

It was a unique accent, one that was unheard of outside of specific regions on a specific planet, from an island nation known locally as “New Zealand”. Or so Jennie had been told.

Jennie sat up slowly, grass itching at her exposed skin, the songs of chirping birds gracing her ears. The air smelled fresh and fertile, and the breeze carried with it the scent of budding life.

A figure knelt beside her, a slim woman dressed in robes of colors that constantly changed, matching the tones and hues of the phenomenon above. She held a small satchel in her hand, partially obscured by a sheet of blonde hair. Platinum blonde, to be exact. So blonde that it was almost white. A pair of aqua-blue irises - ringed with gold at the pupils - regarded her with a shocked gaze.

“Rosie?” Jennie asked, rubbing her eyes, “Is… is that you?”

The blonde-haired woman crouched low in the grass, used her fingers to remove a few strands of hair from Jennie’s face. It had to be her. That touch was too gentle, too intimately tender to belong to anyone else.

“Hey, Nini,” Rosie said, cupping Jennie’s face in her hands. “How did you find your way to me this time?”

    A smile, tiny and innocent and curious, spread over Rosie’s lips. Upon seeing that smile, the reality of everything that had happened to Jennie in the past few days came crashing down. Her lip quivered, she sniffled once, and then she broke.

    Jennie let out a mewling, pathetic sob, head slumping down to her chest. It was a sob of anger, betrayal, and sadness. Anger at Jisoo, anger at her mother, anger at father. But most of all, anger at herself. Why did she have to be so weak? Why couldn’t she be commanding and powerful like Jisoo? Why couldn’t their father see Jennie’s strengths? Why… why did he have to make her hurt so bad?

    Jennie hiccupped, about to let out a wail, but she was stopped by a pair of slim arms. Rosie pulled her into the fold of an embrace. The blonde smelled of dewdrops and clean fabric and home. Jennie retreated into that embrace, tucking her head into Rosie’s chest.

    “R-Rosie,” Jennie moaned in a broken, croaking voice, “I changed my mind. I don’t wanna leave anymore. I… I wanna stay here with you. Forever.”

    Those slim arms folded tighter around her, and Jennie felt herself being rocked back and forth, careful hands running through her hair, undoing the knots with those tender fingers.

    “You can do that,” Rosie whispered, gracing the top of Jennie’s head with a kiss. “You can stay as long as you’d like.”

    Jennie closed her eyes, losing herself in the perfect sensations that her love provided for her, and tried to forget.

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I really wish I could flesh out Chaennie more in this story, but there just isn't any time. So, instead, once "Starlit" is finished I'll be starting a short, novella-like story that includes Chaennie and Lisoo from this AU.

Next chapter is the final part of the "Battle of Earth"; with Solar and Moonbyul dead, the Earth is pretty much doomed regardless of the whether Eodum is killed. What are the girls gonna do?

Thanks for reading, and make sure to comment and upvote if you like the story!