Light streamed past my curtains, despite my best efforts to cover the window and block out the relentless mid-day sun. I would usually be a lot more productive on a Sunday, but the events yesterday thoroughly traumatized me. I didn't want to do much.

Autumn, on the other hand, was miraculously fine- chipper, actually. There were a few minutes in the morning where she was alone in the kitchen looking quite somber and daunted with a secret that burdened her hunched shoulders, but the instant she saw me her face was glowing with joy. Though I have grown to understand my sister down to a tee, there were things I could never know. She could be pretty two-faced. If there was something she didn't want you to know, you would never know it. Autumn hides the biggest of secrets, even parts of herself, very well.

I always thought she could do well as a secret agent or spy. Autumn could live a double life without the two worlds merging, to where the other wouldn't know that an alternate exists.

It's hard trusting her sometimes, since you could never know what she's really thinking, but there was one part that I could always admire about this side of her. If she felt a fraction of the fear that I have been facing, she was hiding and handling herself admirably- especially since she was the one that was attacked twice by those shadow monsters.

Sarah probably had no idea of what we encountered. With Autumn's positive energy and laughter, it just seemed like any day out of the ordinary. Even though both of them were just hanging out and talking in the basement, I could hear their laughter and energetic squeals from the second floor.

Groaning, I flipped over on my bed facing the wall. Why did they have to be so loud?

Last night was not kind to me. Though I had slept, vivid scenes of our near death experience overshadowed the darkness of my closed my eyes- black shadows haunting my sister's pink walls, sharp, jagged smiles, and skeletal hands dripping with oily tar. My mind, thankfully, had been able cut off memories of the monsters before I became petrified with trauma, but then once I managed to do that I was overwhelmed with questions from my later experience with the blue orb. I couldn't stop thinking about one event without being reminded of the other.

Yesterday evening, Autumn lay limp in my hands, and the cold air was brisk against my skin, causing chills and bumps to flare across my body like fire as I ran outside. But it wasn't as cold as my sister's blood. When the early fall wind shrieked past me, it's cool breath would chill the trickles and patches of Autumn's blood on my arms in such a sinister and haunting way, reminding me that her life was draining out from her like the warmth from her body. She was losing too much, and it had dripped down from my arms and splattered across the ground in such a way that it created a perfect beeline, a skarlit path towards the forest trail by our house.

Blindly, I had followed the call of the blue orb and did as it told me. I set Autumn down on a bed of freshly fallen, yellow leaves and cleared patches of ruby red in Autumns blonde hair as best I could- streaks of maroon running across her forehead.

And I stared, devastated, at her face to see if her eyes would open, but instead they remained completely sealed shut while her breathing slowed down considerably. Panic welled in my chest because I knew very well that this was my fault, and in desperation I finally glanced up at the blue orb for it to quickly help her in any way it could.

But that was when I found it wasn't a blue orb at all, nothing like how I previously imagined it.

Instead of a levitating ball of light, it was more like a rupture in the plane of our existence- a portal.

Crystalline, white walls bordered with the the spectacular flare of ever changing colors of the rainbow glistened out to me, and passing in and out from my window view, of this other world, in a frantic pace were human figures with the most unnatural colors for hair and eyes. Some, even at their young age, had hair white to the roots, the old with hair like fire, and others with dark shades of green. But eventually, two younger helpers and one elder pulled a young man with messy brown hair and disturbingly green eyes to the front of the portal.

He seemed not much older than I was. I tried to speak to him and ask if he could help my sister, but he completely ignored me.

Instead, he turned to the two blonde assistants by his side, tilted his heads towards them as they whispered in his year, and nodded along carefully. And like he was instructed, he stretched his arms out from the portal and hovered his fingers over Autumn's battered body- all the while trying to avoid eye contact and acknowledgment of me.

There was a tension from him that chilled me to the bone the more and more he ignored me. I was extremely grateful that he was helping my sister, so I didn't want to push it, but I couldn't understand why he was helping when it appeared he would rather be anywhere but here. That was until I saw the contraption his two helpers pulled up from behind him- a metallic structure that strikingly resembled an IV machine.

However, it was a lot more simple- an antique version of it. Instead of a pad of buttons and an electronic screen, there were only two buttons and a lever. And in place of two plastic IV bags were two copper like bowls containing a substance that caused its rims to radiate with a white, ever-moving light. There were also two black tubes that flowed out from each bowl, which intrigued me the most- mainly because they disappeared from my field of vision. The portal only enabled me to see much; it had the size of a drive thru window.

"Asht moyah seur le moy neera." The boy huffed quietly.

An elderly man, one of the helpers, glowered up at the boy, his grey eyes not taking any appreciation to whatever the boy just said. "Osht don balvore. Osht tahn zedum le yaloteesh. Neera lesht Jodah, za bamorvasa." His scraggly white beard shook as he reprimanded the boy sharply.

The words, again, were absolutely foreign, so I had no idea what either one said, but the boy's pained and agitated expression was enough to tell me that this was something he was unwilling to go through.

By now, he was quivering, and the anger that once fueled him quickly faded into shaking fear when two, long metal needles- that ended up being the ends of the black tubes from the IV like contraption- came into his view.

He opened his mouth to protest, but the steel and hardened gaze of the elder besides him caused him to seal his lips. The boy was only left with the choice of blocking out his fear by closing his eyes and clenching his fists. And when he turned his forearms upright, it was easy to tell he was fighting himself to do it.

Anyone could tell he didn't want to go through with this.

But the people on the other side of the portal needed him to do this, for some reason I have yet to know, and I needed him to do this. My sister's life was in his hands, and she was dying by the second. He was the only one that could save her now.

The assistants were clearly aware of the dire situation Autumn was in because they didn't even ask if they boy was ready. They slid the needles deep into the center of his forearms and secured their position with metal clamps.

After each of his groans of pain and toss of the head, I was ridden with guilt. I felt disgusted, and to see someone else sacrifice themselves like this for my mistake dove deep into my stomach and ate me alive The only way I felt I was able to redeem myself was do the same for him or at least owe my life to him. This was a debt too large for me to pay, and I watched in unnerved silence as the boy did his best to gather himself, straighten his back, and clenched his fists.

Pain wrecked havoc on his face- his jaw tightened to where the nerve on his neck bulged like it was going to burst. However, he miraculously restrained himself from yelling in pain and flexed his fingers out from his fists- a blinding swirl of all shades green and yellow streaming out from his palms and into my sister's body. And as the light entered her stomach, all the veins in her body began to glow with a glittering gold, shining out from her skin like she was transparent.

Magic. This all looked utterly like magic.

My jaw fell at the mysterious, odd, glittering beauty that began to fill and reveal the random spider-web scatterings in Autumn's arm, and it continued to flow through her like thousands of small minuscule rivers.

Dazed and in awe, I traced them upstream and was led back to the source- the boy's hands. His vessels, underneath the needles, were glowing as well. It was like whatever was in that machine behind him was pulsing light into his veins, in which he was able to distribute to Autumn. However, a few seconds in, his face paled in exhaustion, and he fell back into the two assistants who caught him- the light from his hands disappearing in a sputter the moment he dropped out cold.

"Is he alright-"

But before I could finish asking, my concentration was immediately shifted towards my sister.

Her eyes flashed wide open, and her back catapulted forwards in action- like time had stopped the moment the shadow monsters attacked and just resumed.

I had to stand up to catch her when she sprung up to her feet and teetered forwards. And like she hadn't been dying the minute before, she looked at me baffled, not quite sure she was making sense of what she had experienced correctly. But before I could explain and Autumn could look down behind her, the portal had disappeared.

Though my main question from day one had been answered and I finally discovered why I saw a face in the 'orb', there were many more that took its place. My main concern was whether the boy that helped Autumn would be alright.

As he fell back, his face was disturbingly pale, his lips blue, and eyes shut- almost like he and Autumn had traded places. I wish I would have gotten his name, so that if I ever managed to see him I could thank him.

"Kalum." A mysterious whisper resonated from all areas in my room.

The sheets on my bed flung out into the air and off to the sides as I abruptly propped myself up on my side and tried to locate the mysterious voice. I scanned every corner of my room, and there was nothing there. Typical. By now, I should at least expect this much. Whenever I hear a small myriad of voices like the wind whispering Kalum, a title that has quickly become a second name to me, it usually comes from everywhere- only an audible presence.

I rubbed my ear. It really did sound like it was right over my ear though.

Sighing off the thought, I sat upright and patiently waited in the silence to await further instruction.

The voices would never call me unless it was urgent and there was something that called my attention, that was what I have noticed so far. And they would also appear when the portal, the blue orb, was nearby. It happened three times so far, I wonder if there was a direct connection.

The clicks and tocks of my bedroom clock occupied the silence, and after every tick I started to wonder if I missed something. Like last time, I was looking for that feeling that threaded my gut and pinpointed me to the exact location I met the blue orb last time, tugging me towards it like some fifth sense. But this time there was absolutely nothing.

I sat farther back in my bed and crossed my legs, feeling more doubtful by the second. Was I doing something wrong? As far as I could remember, I did absolutely nothing to feel the way I did before.

A few more minutes have passed and there was still nothing. The room felt emptier than it ever had, and the voices were no longer there to guide me. It was like I missed an important call- a call that I had to answer immediately or miss entirely.

Anxiety slowly began to eat more and more at my already shortened nerves. What the hell was I supposed to do?

Again, I scanned my room and lingered in my hope to feel or see anything, but I took a moment to analyze myself. This was infuriating, and I violently ruffled my hair in frustration and fell back into my fluffy bedroom pillow. It wasn't just missing this supposed 'call' I was supposed to answer; it was this entire damn situation that had me up the wall. Here I was, hiding in the dark shadows of my room in the middle of the day, hearing voices in my head and seeings things that are not supposed to exist.

Really, I was turning borderline crazy.

What I needed was a good nap, so I went to close my eyes but that's when it hit- finally. However, it was more than an instinctual pull and bond that connected my gut to the portal. It was like I hadn't closed my eyes at all, and my body all the sudden became levitated, hovering mid-air. What the-

I quickly glanced down below me, and I couldn't see my limbs, my body, nothing. It was like my existence had been stuffed into a levitating, ocular sphere that warped anything in sight into a dizzying tunnel- the edges surrounding the borders of what I could see curving inward like a circular, swirling vortex that only offered a small pinpoint of focal clarity. But as I started to panic and wanted to escape back into my own body, I flashed through my house- my movement no longer mine to control.

In less than a second, I had zoomed off my bed, out my room, through the hall, down the stairs, out the front door, past the forest trail, and near a small creek with a quaint, old wooden bridge that curved over it.

"Come here, Kalum. I will be waiting."

Like the snap of someone's fingers, I was back in my own body and the reality that I knew. 

I catapulted off my bed as cold shudders coursed through my body, and I did a double check by looking down at my fingers and wiggling them. They all obeyed like I commanded them to, and everything looked normal- not all curved, circular, and zoomed. Blinking my eyes and spinning back towards my bed, I tried to assess what had just happened.

Though my body was here, I managed to speed past the local vicinity of my surroundings. This had to qualify as an outer-body experience, but I didn't want to question and take a minute to be at awe over this whole phenomenon.

Grabbing a thick red and black plaid cover up, I ran over the exact path I had blazed through in my out of body experience: running down the street, trotting across the trail, veering right at the dying cottonwood tree, and began my hike up the hill.   

A/N: So I decided to do something a bit different. 

Wattpad chapters are going to be a lot shorter than the actual chapters I have in my 'actual' copy. Besides, I discovered people on here like shorter chapters but weekly updates. 

SO, instead of doing 4000+ word minimum chapters, taking forever to update, I will do a 2000ish one with weekly updates :). 

ANYWAY, thank you so much for reading! I appreciate all the votes, comments, or criticisms. 

More exciting things in the next chapter, I promise ;).
~Unicorn