“Baba! Answer me!” 

The petrified child plead for her remaining father to come to his senses, but it was futile. The poor soul had just witnessed his precious husband disintegrate into smoldering limbs and ashes. 

Auriel plead, “Please, Baba… I am scared!” 

Her presence was insignificant. She too was being erased from his world. 

The forlorn father shakily rose to his feet. Auriel thought he was regaining his composure but she did not take notice to his eyes. They were hollow and brimming with wishful tears that longed for a different reality. The petite man staggered towards the mutilated corpse of his lover, leaving behind his still befuddled daughter. 

Auriel watched her father fumble towards a grotesque figure. Little to her knowledge, it was, in truth, her deceased father; at least, what was left behind. 

Sizzling before him, Pénthos knelt down on one knee by the still tender bag of crisp flesh. He befriended the dead. He rose once more, turned around to see his daughter, now in the distance, and gave a sincere, disturbed grin. He averted his attention back to the deceased and eyed its spinal cord. He chuckled to himself under a cynical, hushed tone, but loud enough for his daughter to slowly tread towards him out of concern. She sensed something wicked. 

In his brief moments of solitude, Pénthos, now filled with determination and purpose, stopped trembling. His teary eyes dried. Grief was replaced as hatred ensued. To him, the Gods made foul play and they savored his woeful tears like some sort of delicacy.

With swift deliberation, he reached for the spinal cord. He grasped the searing bone and snapped it in two, gripping onto them with unholy strength. In doing so, the arched corpse, the grotesque symbol of Tryferós’ love and adoration for his darling family, collapsed to the ground. Wielding two fractured spinal pieces, he raised them towards the vast, blue skies. 

The serenity of the heavens mocked him. He cursed the gods and flailed with berserker’s rage beside the body. In his tirade, he staggered on the pool of blood. He stopped briefly as something dawned on him. He had an audience now. Pénthos drooped his neck to the side and saw her, freezing Auriel with his gaze as a smile crept in. 

With a swift, graceful motion, he rushed the bone spears into his eyes. The pain was the only thing that could distract him from his torment. No more, he thought, would he be the puppet for this twisted reality. Auriel could only watch as she tried making sense of this performance. 

The stage was set. His dance had come to a halt. His voice was muffled by his blood. His body became limp as he withered down unto his knees. The curtains had descended

Silence. 

Set free by the mercy of his insanity, Pénthos was beside his lover at last.

And all that remained was an abandoned little girl, a smudge of the Íroas name. Auriel was alone once more.