My mind was floating. Not like a feather. Not like a light thought. But like a corpse held beneath the surface, trapped under a sheet of dirty, opaque glass, impossible to break — I could see the world, yes, but it was on the other side. Distant. Unreachable. A misty veil enveloped , not soft, not comforting, but sticky, suffocating, oozing around like a second skin made of silence and oblivion. Reality was nothing more than background noise, a dull vibration behind my skull, a drum beating too slowly for alarm, too quickly for forgetting.
And then my eyes settled.
And I saw.
Hell.
Not a word. Not a taphor. Hell. Real. Brutal. Irrefutable. A carnage that no longer resembled a battlefield, but everything of a sacrilegious slaughterhouse, erected beneath the heavens to bleed humanity itself. The ground was littered with pieces. Torn limbs. Shattered torsos. Skulls split open like overripe fruit. And everywhere, flesh. Fluids. Veins that no longer knew where to go. Silence reigned, yes, but it was a saturated silence. A silence that reeked of blood, of ash... and of sha.
The air was hot. Too hot. It still carried the trace of screams. The sll of iron. The bite of fire. I felt that dull heat, that slow, creeping pain, that burn climbing up my back like a flow of molten lead. Every nerve scread inside like an overtightened string, every heartbeat made my body resonate like a fractured drum. I no longer knew where I was. I no longer knew who I was. I only knew... that all of this, was .
I was the cause.
I was the end.
And I was still alive.
I slowly lowered my head, as if my very vertebrae cracked under the weight of what I didn’t want to see — and I saw her.
Lysara.
Broken, yes. But alive. And there. Still.
Her armor, cracked, twisted, blackened by a fire I didn’t rember seeing ignite, opened like a fractured shell, revealing a body too frail to contain what she had endured. She trembled in my arms. Trembled truly. As if her heart refused to stop beating despite exhaustion, despite the pain, despite . Her lips parted sotis, just a little, but no sound ca out. And for a mont, I thought she was no longer looking at . That her gaze had fled. That there was only that cold distance left in her eyes — the kind reserved for monsters, traitors, mistakes.
But it wasn’t true.
It wasn’t indifference.
It wasn’t rejection.
It was sothing else. Sothing deeper. Older. A gaze that didn’t judge, but trembled too. A gaze that held on. That remained. I felt it, without truly being able to et it. Like a heat almost unbearable in what I thought was already frozen within . She didn’t scream. She didn’t push away. She didn’t strike anymore. And that silence... wasn’t an absence. It was an offering.
She might no longer see as a father.
But she had never stopped seeing as a being.
And at that mont, I knew that even covered in blood, even emptied of aning, even fallen to the lowest of what I had beco, sowhere in her... there was still a place for . A tiny, raw, trembling place. But a place. A presence.
And that thing — that thread — was more painful than anything I had endured.
Because I didn’t deserve it.
But it was still there.
What had I done...?
The question had no voice. It didn’t vibrate in the air. It burned from within, like a blade stabbed into consciousness, which I no longer dared to pull out for fear of collapsing for good. Had I fled again? Was that it, this dizziness in my legs, this void beneath my steps? Had I once more abandoned control, let go of the reins of my own body, of my own choices, not to face what I carried? Had I willingly erased myself, like a shadow that withdraws rather than be looked at? Had I once again sacrificed others... to protect myself from myself?
I didn’t know.
I no longer knew what "" ant.
And around... this place. This non-place. This space with neither shape nor border. A limbo with a tallic taste, a slow breath, saturated with twilight hues, as if everything here was bathed in the final minutes of a day that would never rise again. Nothing moved. But everything bled. Even the shadows. They stretched around , dripping, dense, filled with an ancient red — a red that no longer flowed from veins but from mories. This place wasn’t real. It was worse. It was what remained when everything had been consud: a decor woven of regrets, a corridor with no exit where the walls were made only of what I refused to face.
And I was alone in it.
Alone with the final question gnawing at like a cursed tooth buried in the heart:
Did I want to beco this?
Or had I always been?
Then, she spoke again. That woman’s voice, syrupy, oozing, dripping with poison beneath every syllable. A shadow’s voice caressing the void. A voice too familiar to ignore, too venomous not to wound.
— Don’t co back. Let handle everything.
I turned my head slowly. Very slowly. Each vertebra seed to judge , each bone cracked like dry wood broken to light a fire. And then... I saw them.
One by one.
The bodies.
The ruins.
The sacrificed remains of those I had known, touched, listened to, fought, perhaps loved, sotis hated, but never forgotten. They were all there. Present. Silent. Motionless. A procession of the dead frozen in the worst version of themselves. Grotesque sculptures, built not from oblivion, but from suffering, from the ultimate distortion of mory. Every detail was too precise. Too sharp. Too real to be a dream.
— Léonard, as a troll, cut in half at the waist. His entrails uncoiled like ropes, slowly crawling toward a dying fire. DEAD.
— Angélique, as a demon, pierced by her own spears, turned against her. One eye torn out, the other locked on , frozen in that gaze I’ll never forget: a gaze that accuses. DEAD.
— Jules, as a centaur... his head severed, placed on his chest, offered like a trophy. But his lips, even dead, still shaped a prayer. One last. DEAD.
— Romain, still human... emptied. Completely. Dry, gray, desiccated, like a doll forgotten in a locked attic. And his empty sockets... seed to laugh. A laugh without sound. DEAD.
— Janna, tiger-man, disemboweled. His broken claws planted in his own throat. Suicide? Or refusal to beco a beast? DEAD.
— Elmir, the goblin. Smashed against a wall. No body. Just a stain. A fresco. An imprint of violence. DEAD.
— Olivier, the giant... decapitated cleanly. Precisely. Without rage. Surgical. And around his kneeling legs... a river of blood. A flood no ocean could swallow. DEAD.
— Olivia, dryad. Butchered. Torn apart. Her roots ripped out, twisted, raised like arms in supplication. A green fla still burned silently in her belly. Like a soul refusing to depart. DEAD.
— Marie, the elf. A black branch pierced her torso. She didn’t seem to have scread. Her gaze was fixed on the sky. As if she had seen... her end. DEAD.
— Pierre, the dwarf. Buried alive. His torso still erging from the ground. Hands clenched. Teeth gritted. Eyes screaming. DEAD.
And then...
My heart gave out.
Not a sob.
Not a tear.
A collapse.
An internal fall, slow, deep, unrecoverable.
DEAD.
DEAD.
DEAD.
DEAD.
DEAD.
DEAD.
DEAD.
Each na rang like a hamr. Each body struck backward. Each image lodged itself in my throat. And then... a rain.
Not a celestial rain.
A rain of blood.
Thick. Heavy. Greasy. A rain that clung to the skin, seeped into clothes, into bones, into thoughts. A rain that fell drop by drop. And each drop carried a na. A mory. A fault.
And I knew it.
I felt it.
It was my blood.
My own blood falling from the sky.
But how? How could there be so much? How could a single being, even , contain so much death? How had I been able to? How had I dared? How had I let it happen? How had I...?
HOW?!
HOW??!!
HOOOOOOOOW!!!!!!
My throat burst — not into a word, but into a hoarse, raw, primal scream, a rasp of an animal slaughtered too slowly, a cry without shape, without sentence, a sonic tear strangled by the inner storm. That word, that word I hadn’t spoken but felt screaming between my temples, echoed in my skull like a war drum, like a tolling bell struck by hand, like a life sentence branded under my brow. And each echo tore at my soul. Each syllable... a knife. A shard. A punishnt.
I fell to my knees.
The ground welcod without tenderness. It was warm, viscous, saturated with still-warm, still-living blood — their blood. Not mine. The blood of others. Of those I had annihilated. My face smashed against it like one plunges their head into their own sha. There was nothing to see, nothing to save. Only a pool. A fusion of blood, spit, tears, of screams I could no longer push out. I was drowning. Slowly. In their death.
They were all DEAD.
And I...
I was still there.
I was breathing. Gasping. I was upright, on my knees. Alive. Monstrous. A gasping abomination planted in the middle of ashes, extinguished flas, human remains no god would co to claim. My fingers curled like claws. My nails dug into my palms with that chanical violence one can’t stop — I wanted to feel. I wanted the pain to pierce. To pass through. To take the place of the void.
Fresh blood spurted. Mine. Again. Always. As if I hadn’t finished paying.
— What have I done...
My voice didn’t co out. It was a breath, a raspy flow of air crashing against my teeth.
Once more...
— WHAT HAVE I DONE?!
— AGAIN?!
The words repeated, collided, distorted. They no longer asked, they accused. They struck. They slamd inside my skull like a fiery fist.
— I... I...
I was suffocating. Literally. My own breath failed . My own body faltered. The world spun, inverted, blurred, and my throat was a raw wound, a gash from which nothing erged but the echo of my thoughts. And those thoughts scread. They scread louder than .
— I HAD BECO A MONSTER!
It wasn’t a realization.
It was a verdict.
I turned. I fled. There was no more reason. No more restraint. No more na. Just a short, sharp, desperate breath ordering to leave, to vanish, to abandon all I was — or what was still left to destroy. And in that gesture, without thinking, without apologizing, without even looking at her, I threw Lysara to the ground. Brutally. Like a too-heavy doll. As if she too, even her, had beco a weight I no longer deserved to carry. That I no longer knew how to protect. That I had to flee.
I ran. I scread. I slamd into walls, into stones, into air, into void. My own breath betrayed , hoarse, short, wheezing like the rasp of a beast choked too late. Then a wall rose before . Brutally. A bare, black wall, out of nowhere. And I crashed into it without thought, forehead first, fists following. I pounded the rock as if it could punish , break , extinguish .
But the pain wasn’t strong enough.
Not enough.
Then my claws erged. On their own. Like a response. Like a cry.
And I tore off my skin.
Literally.
I scraped my arms. My sides. My chest. I slashed every centiter I could reach, as if I had to scrape, scrape, again, until I reached sothing purer, truer, more alive than this body that betrayed . My flesh opened. The burning rose. Blood flowed, in torrents. Red rivers, hot, screaming.
— WHY DID I DO THAT?!
My voice didn’t tremble. It scread loud enough to shatter my vocal cords.
— WHY MUST I BE A BEAST?!
— WHY?! WHY?!! WHY?!
And the rain... the rain intensified. It fell in masses. A crimson rain. Heavy. Visceral. A torrent of blood from the sky. And I knew it. It wasn’t theirs. It wasn’t mine. It was everything. Everything I had poured out. Everything I had given. Everything I had lost. The blood of the world.
And , beneath it...
I was drowning.
Screaming.
Scratching.
Fleeing.
Begging for a deliverance that would never co.
Because there was no forgiveness for monsters.
And I knew it.
A voice rang out. Sinister. Distorted. It rasped more than it spoke, erging from a throat that should never have been able to produce sound again. It was a voice of death, a voice of rotting flesh, of moldy breath, of syllables choked by centuries of decay. A human voice, yes — but human for far too long.
— Winner of the Gas: Vampire.
And everything tilted.
The world itself seed to bend under the weight of that declaration. No triumph. No fanfare. Nothing. Just that bare, hoarse announcent, carried like a death knell. The ground beneath my feet curved slowly, as if still refusing to bear my weight. The air tensed. Stretched. As if it were about to break. As if the fabric of reality was visibly cracking, slowly, under the pressure of sothing too vast, too precise, too perfect to belong to this nightmare.
And she appeared.
Without sound.
Without light.
Without miracle.
Before .
Calm.
Upright.
Unalterable.
And in that stillness... a vertigo. A refusal to admit what I saw. She was there. She. Though everything had burned. Though everything had collapsed. Though nothing, absolutely nothing, should have remained standing in this desert of ashes.
Standing.
Perfect.
Alive.
Anarael.
And her gaze, resting on like an ancient judgnt, contained everything I had not yet had the courage to face. There was no anger. No apparent violence. But in that calm... a sentence.
Reviews
All reviews (0)