My head began to pound painfully as their voices grew louder, my vision becoming hazy. Every time I blinked, the pain would only intensify as their smiles grew twisted in my vision. No longer did I see people eager to speak to me, but instead I saw the nightmarish faces of those in hell. I could feel it again, the darkness shrouding me, telltale whispers of claws against my skin. The hot and humid winds surrounding me, suffocating me, as the voices spoke.

“What a rotten soul,” they hissed. “The stench of despair and betrayal in the darkest parts, what a treat for us. What a treat. You took so many lives, don’t you know they’re waiting for you here?”

Their shadow-red claws, drenched in blood, grabbed me at my throat – pulling me closer to meet them eye to eye. What once were mere blips of light in the darkness grew in number. 

Multiple eyes, yellow and bulging out of their sockets with red irises and red pupils, leered at me as a toothed smile stretched on their thin lips from ear to ear. Crooked, unholy, and all-together terrifying was that creature who awaited me in the darkness.

I was ready to accept my fate. The grief I had felt just before I died was all-consuming, the knife the man drove into me – more of a justice than a murder. I was ready to sink into the lone dark, alone, to succumb to my mistakes forevermore. But just as the creature’s jaws creaked open wide, I opened my eyes to be surrounded by flowers.

And I was crying.

“Hello?” a voice called, a cool touch on my shoulder.

A face in between the purple petals. A man with dark hair and navy blue clothes. Bright blue eyes that pierced through me – a voice fading away as the world grew dark once more.