"He comes for you, child; hide - swiftly now!"
How familiar the room looked. How different. Like he had never left, and yet, so distantly past. Ushered into the closet, as the door broke downstairs. That smile; her last tearful smile, full of worry and hope. The end of a chapter. And then the doors closed, and there was darkness.
He heard her hurried steps descending the stairs. Commotion, below. Beasts, snarling. Monsters, growling. Horrors, laughing. A defiant scream. "You shall not have him!" A fiendish chuckle. A sickening slice. A cry of despair. He heard it all. And the darkness crept closer. Heavy steps on the stairs. Closer. Closer. He forgot how to breathe, how to blink.
The closet's doors flung open. There, he was there. The monster; the towering tyrant; all teeth, and hair, and eyes. Green eyes. Green like his own. "You are mine!" Bloody, pillaging, raping hands seized him. Seized and pulled, lifted and flung over the shoulder. A voice beyond the voice. "You," the ethereal edict ordained, "are mine." He fell. He ran. He passed her on the stairs, choking in tears and blood. He ran. He fell.
And once more, there was darkness.
A thunderclap startled him awake. The woman's body lay discarded on the soil. Mangled. Mutilated. And he, knelt over her. Eyeless, she smiled at him. "End me." Crimson hands around her throat. Hands that burned. Hands that bled. Hands the rain could not wash away. A ship still burned on the horizon. "Seal your curse. Embrace your beast."
She lay still in his grasp. His vengeance. His damnation. The soil shifted, it swallowed him. He fell through this mountain of bodies. Breathless. Heartless. Sightless. Dismembered and ravaged. And the blood - so much blood - blood enough to paint the white city red; blood enough to fill the deepest canyons. Blood enough to drown in. "Make me bleed."
And again, there was darkness.
The room was cold. The fire was cold. The crib was cold. The child was cold. His fault, she had said. Her fault, he had said. Blame would not awaken the dead. Within reach, only to slip from his hands. She begged for death, for release, for rest. He would not give it. Generosity was dead. Mercy was dead. And he, a breathing corpse.
A revenant, sowing naught but grief and misery in his path. Another loss. Another tragedy. Every heartbeat, every painful second of existence, his penance for his sins. Sins that ever multiplied. She was brave. She wanted to see, to know, to learn. She did. And the terror was too much. Another ruin. "Should I fear you?"
He jolted up screaming, sweating, his palm tightly clenching a dagger that was not there. And she was not there. But her boots remained.
And sunlight shone through the cracks.
[Originally written by the player of Crow (Derakoth)]
