This was a nightmare. 

It had to be a nightmare. 

Alaric stumbled through the snow. The heavy snow drifts, making him slower. His fingers had frozen and the numbness of his feet had crept up his legs. With each step her took, his lungs burned with each breath. 

The pain in the weeping stump of where his right hand had been had turned to a dull ache that traveled from his elbow to his shoulder. The makeshift tourniquet was still wound tight around his bicep and the bandage he had applied was crusted in dried blood. 

He had felt whatever blighted infection that had gripped the residents as he ran from the Lockwood Manor. 

Those twisted tendrils squirming through the meat, intertwining with the muscles and sinus and fussing to the very bone of his hand. He had felt it slithered and squirm and burrow and eat its way up. It was like someone had pressed hot coals to the inside of his flesh. 

Blinded by panic and scorching pain, he fell to his knees in the snow just outside the wrought-iron gates. 

His former life in the military came rushing back to his and he ripped away the length of leather that held his pants up and wrapped it tightly just above his elbow. 

He hadn't given himself a moment to hesitate as he used the amputation knife to hack through muscles and bone. His eyes rolled to the back of his head and he had to force himself to focus; to keep himself conscious. 

It took two more excruciating swings before his hand was parted from the rest of him. Blood spraying the snow, turning to a startling crimson. 

Through the ringing in his ears and wavering of his vision, he watched in horror as tendrils emerged from his severed hand. 

Touching the snow and curling back into the meat. He watched as his severed hand's fingers curled on their own before twisting and breaking to right itself; palm pointing towards the sky. Bile climbed up his throat as it continued its attack; it scuttled towards him, like an unholy spider and he slashed at it wildly. 

The blade cut through its knuckles and more blackened tendrils reach out towards him. Alaric lashed out again at his felled hand. This time, the blade pierced through the palm and speared it to the ground. It writhed and wriggled frantically against the knife, the mangled fingres slipping in the snow. 

Alaric shoved himself to his feet and crashed through the bare bramble, leaving behind the horrors that lay in the bowels of Lockwood. 

Now, deep within the Shiver, he could feel himself slipped. His mind a tangled mess of fragmented thoughts. 

The feeling was back. The squirming and wriggling, he could feel the building pressure behind his eyes. he may have rid his arm of the blighted affliction but it had spread to viciously. His ears tickled deep down and he reached up, digging his fingers in and pulled. The tendrils pulled loose and he dropped them haphazardly on the ground. He pulled them from his nose and those followed the others in the snow. 

His throat constricted and he coughed hard. Using two fingers, he gagged as he pulled long, wispy, feather-like shoots from his throat. 

From the weeping stum, he felt a prickling pressure. His body moved on its own accord. With shaking fingers, he pulled away the bandage and those same feather-like tendrils uncurled as a black cloud puffed out and carried on the wind. 

He couldn't feel the pain. Not anymore. 

He couldn't feel anything anymore. 

Through the blizzard, the flickering of oil lamp winked at him in the distance.