Was this man’s hair…turning gray? Was he aging right before her eyes?

Her curiosity did not have time to take root, nor did the rising fear that this, behind the perspective of another, may as well be happening to herself. 

That fog in her mind became several times thicker, spilling out from god knows where, becoming a thick shroud steadily turning black.

At some point she stopped thinking, that siren had gone quiet, her mind had fallen into a warm bath and refused to come out. 

All that seemed to matter was the numbness that erased her worries, that had washed away the memory that had hurt her.

Why couldn’t the days stay as sweet as this? 

Right at the tip of her tongue the glorious taste of mint tingled her down to her toes. Her heart is surrounded by several purring kittens, their fur so soft and beyond soothing.

Really, why wish for more than this? 

Her greed had lost its footing and plummeted into a ball pit as reality struggled to push open her eyes. 

Beyond the mint tinted lens suffused with pink popping bubbles, there was movement.

Once sweetly dyed red, the cold moonlight hair swayed like dense spider webs in the breeze. So soft she imagined, just looking at it pushed her into reaching forth with a caressing touch.

「…………?」

Huh? Strange. Why couldn’t she feel it? 

She touched it, ran her fingers through the silk-like strands but…nothing. Like a gloved hand running itself through water, all she felt was the resistance whilst her skin remained dry.

Instinctually confirming the status of her hands, a swift kick jolted her mind out of the warm bath and dunked her harshly into ice cold water.

「My…my hands…!」

What was wrong with her hands?!

As foggy as the glass on a cold winter day, with just that slightest of clarity to see the lights beyond, her hands appear as such. One part transparent and three parts mist. 

The bewildering sight chilled her down to her marrow and just kept digging, scooping out the kittens hugging her heart and stuffing in boiling acid.

She wished to vomit but she couldn’t.

She wished to cry but she couldn’t do that either.

Even the scream that released itself from its shackles sounded like a whistling wind passing through the cracked window at night.

Her hands…her hands…please god tell her this was all just some bad dream!

Instead of becoming this, she’d soon rather sink herself in the depths of her terrifying mind, suffering the torment of thousands of cuts run over by scalding oil. Let her heart fry in the acidic blood of her guilt.

Please god just let it burn! Anything, she’ll accept anything but this!

Death.

She is dead…

She became a ghost…

A wandering ghost of unknown regrets eating away at her to remember.

「Ugh...………!」

That siren had returned, dragging her down to the bottom of the ocean. The seaweed grabbed at her limbs and bound her several leagues below the waves, in a place light could never reach.

Davy Jones' locker welcomed her with open arms, warmly shining a light for her to grab onto, but the siren pushed her deeper into the mud, absconding before his eyes could catch her, removing from her the option of choice.

She couldn’t even die of her own free will, just as she couldn’t escape the hold of her father, the despairing embrace of her mother, the murderous blood of a family she never wanted any part of.

A vague memory drearily showed itself through the bubbles spewing from her gaping mouth.

[Dasha, papa and mama want you to grow up happy. Live without a care, just like any normal little girl would.] He softly smiled, the warmth from his heart reaching out to those tiny hands he grasped.

A contradicting memory compared to the last one, a puzzling piece that made no sense.

‘A monster pretending to be human.’

The siren stopped the bubbles by covering her mouth, her voice burning the water around them.

‘Don’t watch,’ with her free hand the siren reached out to cover her eyes.

‘This memory you do not need. Don’t let it fool you. Monsters like him don’t deserve the chance to be understood. Just sink, sink in the depths with me, in the depths of pain and…’

「Let go of me…!」

Her eyes burst open just as her head breaks the surface of the water. 

Her instincts conquered the laws of reason. Air rushed into her lungs, choking sobs pushed their way out through each gasping breath. It felt as if her heart had been stuffed into her ears, loudly beating over any other sound that would dare try to enter.

Why…why is this happening?

"Just who am I, how did I die, why am I here…"

The unknown felt debilitating, her lack of memories finally made her feel a sense of crisis. 

At first she was happy feeling like a blank slate, but now, with these two confusing memories and a plague threatening to drown her, she couldn’t handle this debilitating feeling of tug of war, her mentality treated like rope that would never fray.

Why…who…what…

So many questions with answers too terrifying to uncover. Her hands, too weak to search, circled around her knees. Cowering into herself, she rocked herself back and forth.

"Just who am I, how did I die, why am I here…"

Once more she spoke on repeat, a broken record skipping on perpetually.

Her lips closed. A shadow fell over her so she looked up.

『Master, you’ve taken from me so I shall take from you all that you’ve built. I will destroy it all. Watch as your traces all come crumbling down due to your selfishness.』

The man was still there, his back to her, his moonlight hair flowing in the breeze. Her eyes followed those silky strands and stayed locked on the pomegranate dyed tips.

Beauty losing out to tragedy, was the thought that suffused her mind. 

For some reason, looking up at this man, her eyes blurred, and an image of herself had replaced him. 

A teenage “her” stood there overlooking the sunset with a pair of scissors, her long black hair just a few inches shorter than the man's.

He is her, the her moments before she ‘killed’ herself and stepped out of the light into the darkness.

She lifts the scissors.

The sharp edges fell upon her heart.

The crisp slice cut through every nerve in her body. 

In that moment the softness was cut away and burned to ashes with a lighter, stinging her nose with the terrible smell of burning hair.

What an extreme act this was, and even in her amnesic state, she knew how far gone she’d have had to be pushed to resort to this.

For she had loved her long hair that garnered countless compliments, that became a habit to twiddle with when her emotions became too overbearing, to style in avoidance of work, to shower love on for it was her way of showing love to herself.

Cutting it away was severing the hopes of love.

Burning it to a crisp was denying love’s very existence.

Although she was alive she was dead, a zombie with not much purpose besides eating.

Click, click, click, heels struck the stone floor.

At some point, as her apparition trailed behind him, her mind had gone numb again and her memories fell back into the fog.

Her body moved forward just as the man walked. Where he went she followed, aimlessly like the wandering ghost she was.

The care for who she was is gone.

The care for how she had died was left behind on the trail.

And the care for anything besides the shadow her eyes remained fixed to had vanished.

Just as the man too vanished from her sight in a confusing parade of events.

Thud! 

Abruptly her forehead collides with an invisible force, one that just as suddenly as it hit her, picked up her misty form, thrusting her several yards back into the forest and away from that disappearing back she clung to.

「No, don't leave me………!」

She screams, hoping he would hear, to turn around and come back.

He did not stop, he did not turn around, he didn’t even flinch.

He was gone and she was left alone on the forest floor.

A ball of numbness that could only feel the most basic of emotions was all she was. A cotton ball that could be melded into any shape but would bounce right back once let go.

『Xiomara was that the tower lord?』

A voice from in the trees echoed overhead. 

She looks up and sees three girls sitting amongst the branches. The one who spoke sat forward, legs dangling, and both hands grasping beside her to remain upright.

『Mmm, it looked like him.』

The one who spoke next sat with her back to the bark, one leg dangling, the other folded to her chest. She kept one hand on her knee and the other resting in her lap.

『He’s not going to start another war, is he? That last one still has the mages compensating for the damages and his deceiving words. If he starts another one…will we be okay?』