A red tint hazed reality as Seven slipped into the void of dreaming. Seven opened his eyes to find himself in a copy of the landscape from one of the paintings from his father’s collection, displayed in their dining hall. The boy stood from his laid position and began to let his eyes and mind wander.

They continued to do so until they found a figure knelt in the distance. Seven closed the distance between the two. “Hello?”, he’d called out. Now he could see it was a disrobed woman, skin coated in what appeared to be blood. Her bowed head rose to meet Seven’s eye line, but it felt as though she gazed through him.

Fear flowed through the child’s veins, the woman’s composure possessing his spine to force him to kneel in front of her. He saw that her eyes were covered in white, the darkness of the pupil absent. “Whose blood is that?”, Seven asked, now that he could smell it.

“Don’t recall. For it could be anyone’s, possibly your own,” her raspy voice muttered. Her body appeared young and beautiful, but her voice old and worn. She was the size of three normal women. “Who are you?”, Seven asked, curious.

“Is that really the inquiry you’ve traveled all this way for?”, the woman laughed creepily before reaching out to rest her hand on Seven’s cheek, covering it in fresh blood. He didn’t flinch, it was odd how much like home it felt.

“Are you my mother?”, he spat out under his breath. The woman pressed her fingernails against his cheek, they were long, unkempt, and sharp. “Would you like me to be?”, she responded with a more serious look about her.

Seven grabbed her wrist before pulling it away from his cheek, him sitting in doing so. The boy exhaled a sigh. “Why do you breathe in a place that doesn’t require you to do so?” the woman asked, seeming annoyed. “Because I’m trapped here until you release me.”

“Would you like me to?”

…

“What a kind murderer you are.”, Seven picked up a stick and began drawing in the dirt by his own feet. The woman leaned very close to Seven’s face and had a threatening look about her. “I’m an anthropophage.”, she insisted.

Seven raised an eyebrow as he tried not to smell with the creature being so close. “A what?” he asked honestly. “An. Thro. Pof. Agy.” she spaced out. “Yes, but what does that mean?”

The woman stood tall and hovered above the ground as blood dripped from her fingertips and toes. “My blood is sacred. It gives me the ability to gain more than nutrition from the consumption of others. I gain their traits, memories, strengths, powers. Whatever it is I desire. I’m the god of death.” she spoke in preposterous monologue.

The boy watched keenly. “What would you gain from eating me?”, he called out. The woman stopped for a moment before lowering herself to the ground. “You’ve more than you know, Seven. I fear you’ll never truly understand.”

Seven sat and looked down at what he’d drawn aimlessly, studying it. The blood woman began to lower herself as she groaned. “I’ve worn myself, too much lecturing. You’ve hungered me, child.”, were her final words before gripping onto Seven’s arm and yanking him close. Seven felt a sharp pain sinking in through his throat and at the seam of his arm and his shoulder. And then, nothing.