Who Will Hold the Universe: The Lightless Prophecy, #0

By Kel E Fox

How do you fix a world without magic? Jairo has a plan, but he can't do it alone. When a mysterious client contracts his performance troupe to put on a show for a school ball, he takes the job with apprehension, worried that it will stall his efforts to repair the plane between worlds.

 

But there's more going on than a simple school ball, and the events that unfold are just the beginning…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kel E Fox
• Release date: Oct 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223810292

Book preview

Who Will Hold the Universe

A Lightless Prophecy Prequel

Kel E Fox

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Outfoxed Media

Copyright © 2023 by Kel E Fox

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by the Australian Copyright Act 1968. Quotes may be extracted for review purposes.

This publication is a work of fiction. Names, places and events described in this book are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, locales and events (except for satirical purposes) is entirely coincidental.

Cover by Outfoxed Media

Outfoxed Media

Perth, Western Australia

Contents

Content Warnings

Part One

1.Gabby

2.Jairo

3.Gabby

4.Zenna

5.Gabby

6.Gabby

7.Gabby

8.Jairo

Part Two

9.Zenna

10.Gabby

11.Zenna

12.Jairo

13.Gabby

Part Three

14.Jairo

15.Gabby

16.Jairo

17.Gabby

18.Zenna

Part Four

19.Gabby

20.Zenna

21.Jairo

22.Jairo

23.Zenna

24.Gabby

Darkhaven: Prologue

Darkhaven: Chapter 1

Darkhaven: Chapter 2

Darkhaven: Chapter 3

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also By

Content Warnings

I believe in safe reading! This story is not grimdark or gory, but it contains self-harm, suicide ideation, burn injuries, human sacrifice (willing) and infrequent coarse language.

For a more detailed content warnings, please visit my website, kelefox.com.

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Please note that this work uses Australian spelling and grammar. Is that a content warning? Perhaps, for some! If it looks weird or wrong, just remember that Gabby and Zenna are from the land down under, where everything is topsy turvy. After all, we wear thongs on our feet. That should be a fun mental image for some of you!

Part One

On the Other Side

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Gabby

Six weeks before the ball

Don’t go, a little voice whispered in the back of my head as I sat at the kitchen table for breakfast and opened the latest school email on my phone: Dear Miss Whitehall, get your tickets to the Wonderland Ball.

‘You should go,’ Dad said from behind me, between mouthfuls of Bircher muesli piled with fruit and pot-set yoghurt. ‘The Year Twelve ball is a rite of passage.’

‘Dad.’ I took a mouthful of my toast and strawberry jam. More jam than toast, really. ‘Stop reading my stuff.’

Dad put his bowl on the table and pulled out a chair. ‘Are you going?’

He had a gleam in his eyes, one he got whenever he asked if I had a boyfriend (I didn’t) or had decided on a university (I hadn’t) or was going anywhere special for Leavers, the week-long party that students in Western Australia went to after finishing high school (I wasn’t). He wanted me to have fun, to be normal despite my unusual upbringing. Everyone said being in Year Twelve was the best time of your life. Don’t blink. Don’t miss it.

But the thought of spending an evening wrapped in satin and gauze, making small talk with random students and trying to avoid dancing with sleazy boys – or not being asked or talked to at all – was, when I compared it to the thought of lounging on the couch in my pyjamas with a packet of crispy M&Ms and a whole season of something to binge-watch …

Well, there was no comparison.

I deleted the email.

Jairo

Three months before the ball

Jairo slumped at his desk, pen in one hand, head propped in the other, and stared at the winter tour budget, not seeing the dates and locations and lines of red numbers. Instead, he saw the acidic look on his sister’s face when he inevitably showed up in her office to beg more funding.

Who knew what she’d ask him to do to get it. As far as his sister was concerned, the Veifa, Jairo’s performance troupe, was a frivolous waste of time, albeit one that didn’t waste any of her time, and it had kept Jairo occupied in Australia instead of screwing up her delicate international operations. But as the years wore on and Jairo failed to produce any significant findings for his sister’s research, she became tighter with the purse strings.

The show had never been profitable. That, perhaps, was something else wrong with the world, but Jairo could only fix one thing with this life, and it wasn’t going to be a lack of economic support in the arts sector. Not this time.

Maybe if he still had Gavrin by his side, they might have saved the world in more ways than one.

There was a soft tap at the open door. Jairo set the tour folder aside and looked up, smiling. ‘You don’t need to knock, Mel. That’s just for the riff-raff.’

Melarie, his co-production manager, smiled back and stepped into the office. ‘The riff-raff are drinking prosecco out of a disco ball.’

Jairo didn’t want to know. His cast and crew played hard, but they worked harder. As long as they hadn’t hollowed out one of the touring mirror balls, they could do what they wanted.

‘Here.’ Melarie slid a sheaf of papers across his desk, her forehead creased with a frown. Her near-black hair tumbled in all directions, wild curls that defied her otherwise brisk appearance: black shirt and pants, black boots. Simple, black-framed glasses. Jairo had never asked her why she needed glasses. A magician shouldn’t, but he’d seen her when she mislaid them, patting the space around her until her fingers found the frames, the lines of her face relaxing as she lifted them back to the bridge of her nose.

‘What’s this?’ he asked, picking up the papers.

‘A solution.’ A faint Welsh lilt carried her words. ‘But not without problems.’

Jairo scanned the first page. ‘A commission?’

‘Read on.’

‘For a school ball? Melarie, we don’t –’

Melarie waved a hand. ‘Read on.’

Jairo’s eyes widened when he read the number on the last page. ‘That would set us up for the next three years.’

‘Indeed.’

The Veifa never took commissioned shows. Their program was subject to change with the weather. And the money wasn’t good enough to be worth the hassle, despite his sister’s accountant demanding perfect books every quarter and spotting even the smallest of petty cash discrepancies. But a performance fee this high was something else. For one night. They could work in a town hall for one night.

Jairo glanced at Melarie’s tight expression. ‘What’s the catch?’

‘There’s a storm that night.’

Ah. Jairo put the papers down, leaned back in his chair and extended a hand, inviting Melarie to sit. She took the chair opposite the desk.

Jairo steepled his fingers. ‘You’re sure?’

She nodded.

‘Then we won’t take it.’

Melarie eyed him. ‘I think we have to.’

‘I’ll get the money. We’ll carry on like we always do.’

‘It’s not the finances. I had another vision. There’s a girl there with a shard.’

‘That’s a strange coincidence.’ Soulshards were the whole point of the Veifa, of Jairo’s project for the past twenty-odd years. A shard was a tough burden to bear, but the Veifa helped those willing to join the cause. Melarie’s visions found people with shards and predicted the thunderstorms the Veifa needed.

‘I don’t believe in coincidence,’ she said.

‘Me either. Who’s booking this? I can’t imagine a state school throwing that kind of money around.’

Melarie shifted. ‘Dark Star Productions.’

‘Never heard of them. What do they want us to do?’

‘Anything we like. We can do the H’nsla.’

The storm sacrifice